Megachurch Pastor and Bestselling Author John Ortberg on Why Your Soul Is 'Kind of Like a Car'

 

Two men tend to their cars.

The soul, the only aspect of a human being the Bible says is eternal, is like a car, according to megachurch pastor and award-winning author John Ortberg. "If you want to care for your car, you kind of have to know what the parts do, what the carburetor does, what the fan belt does — somebody's gotta know that if they want to care for it."
And the car — that is, the soul — has nine needs that must be met in order to function at optimal efficiency, or in this case, to experience God's shalom, Ortberg suggests in his new book Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You.
"The soul is a little like the king on a chessboard," he explains in Soul Keeping. "The king is the most limited of chess pieces; it can only move one square at a time. But if you lose the king, game over. Your soul is vulnerable because it is needy. If you meet those needs with the wrong things, game over. Or at least game not going well."

The soul, writes Ortberg, needs a keeper; a center; a future; to be with God; rest; freedom; blessing; satisfaction; and gratitude. The greatest need among these, according to the author, is gratitude. But the biggest obstacle to a soul meeting these needs is sin.
Ortberg writes in Soul Keeping that "sin is the sickness that our souls have inherited" and that sin is not only the bad things we do but also the good we fail to do, and that there is no such thing as a small sin.
Ortberg, who pastors the 3,400-member Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (which recently voted to leave PCUSA) spoke with The Christian Post about his new book, and explained his take on the soul, sin and how suffering can play a part in caring for one's soul.
A transcript of CP's interview with Ortberg is below. It has been edited for clarity.

John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, published April 22, 2014, his new book, "Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You."

CP: What motivated you to take on this subject of caring for the soul?
Ortberg: It was a relationship with a person who changed my life. His name was Dallas Willard and he is a philosopher. He just died this last year. He's the smartest guy I have ever known, but has also thought more deeply about God, life and faith than anybody I had known. [He] also lived a remarkable life and taught wonderfully about the soul and that really made me hungry to look at my own soul and eager to learn more about the soul.
CP: How do you define "soul?"
Ortberg: A lot of people think they understand about the soul, but maybe not. Of course we live in a day when increasingly the word "soul" doesn't get used much or doesn't get taken seriously. Some folks think that it's incompatible with science.
From ancient times, the core idea of the soul, is the soul is the capacity to integrate different functions into a single being, or into a single person. The soul is what holds us all together, what connects our will and our minds and our bodies and connects us to God.
CP: Is it that human beings have a soul, or that human beings are s