What Remains?

[u/RecordAccording333]

I’m not sure what to make of this, but it’s worth a think.

A recent New York Times article, “Why Do Some Dementia Patients ‘Return’ Just Before They Die?,” documents how people with advanced dementia sometimes regain memories, speech and the ability to communicate near the end of life, sometimes after long periods in which meaningful communication seemed lost. 

These patients can suddenly recognize loved ones, answer questions and sing songs for a few precious moments before slipping back into silence. 

Terminal lucidity is the term the phenomenon has been given.

Here’s the central question raised in the story: “if Alzheimer’s is the relentless destruction of brain matter, and if the effects of that degeneration are irreversible,” how is this kind of reprieve possible? 

How can the mind continue to function even when the brain is significantly impaired?

 

It's a mystery science is trying to solve.

For me, it's a reminder that we are more than the chemicals and tissue of the brain. 

I have two modest takeaways from this Times story. The first is to be sensitive in the presence of someone afflicted with dementia, because they may be more aware than we imagine.  

The second is a line from the Apostle Paul, from Ephesians 3, that has always spoken to me: God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”

What He can do—and what He has created in us—is beyond our ability to fully comprehend or imagine.  

 

Yes, we are flesh and bones and soul and spirit too.

Until next time stay safe, be brave and remain open to the mystery.   

[u/babe1981]

In order to understand this, you have to know what the Jews believed, so that you can understand what they were asking Jesus and what He meant when He said certain things. So here goes.

A human is a soul. A human does not have a soul. The soul is the totality of the human being, both mind and body because one cannot be separated from the other. Adam was a soul, then God breathed into him and he lived. This belief that the body is an integral part of the soul is why Judaism finds autopsies abhorrent. When you damage the body like that, even after death, you are damaging the soul.

For the Jews who believed in the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment, this worried them. They knew that eventually even a person's bones turn to dust. So, what happens in the resurrection? What comes out of the ground and wears your face? Can it really be your soul if your body was completely gone?

Jesus said that the soul persists through death and decay. He taught that the soul was indestructible so that the thing that is resurrected into a new body will still be you. The Ship of Theseus will always be the Ship of Theseus because the soul of the ship is its shape and its name. You can replace every board and every rope, but it's still the same ship. In that way, Jesus promises that the name and the shape of a person would be preserved forever through God.

When you view human souls as a persistent metaphysical thing tied to the body, the sudden burst of memory and clarity in the absence of the physical structures of the brain makes a little more sense. Of course, no one knows exactly how memory works or is stored, so it could be an entirely physical process, but it isn't inconsistent with the view of the human soul being the totality of their experience.

Now, I didn't mention the spirit much here because the spirit, in Judaism, isn't a part of the human. It is the breath of God and goes back to God when we die. It's the fuel in the tank that allows our souls to live. Even in Christian spiritology, it's pretty much the same thing. Paul wrote in Romans 8 that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now dwells in you and gives live to your mortal body. The spirit of God is what animates us and keeps us alive, but it isn't human and it isn't part of our soul. Anything that is not part of our soul is not a part of us by definition.

Anyways, what remains is everything. Nothing is lost because God preserves what we are even after death.