A Thinker

During my chaplaincy internship at the hospital I was recently asked one of those deep seeming theological questions that most people couldn't give a whip about but nerdy divinity students love to consider: At what point does the soul leave the body? Like the great statue by Auguste Rodin portrays, I was forced to ponder.

Because of today's advances in medical technology we are able to keep a person alive using machines when 100 years ago that person would expire. Often because of this technology peoples' bodies are given adequate time to heal and they are able to recover. The difficult reversal is that sometimes these machines keep a person's heart beating when he or she has otherwise passed away.

Many religions, Christianity included, teach that the physical body has a spiritual counter part: the soul. When our body no longer works, i.e. we die, the soul passes on to another realm of existence. Christians believe that if a person has a relationship with God then his or her soul goes to be with The Creator in a place we like to call heaven. But when does this spiritually divine transaction occur? When a person is brain dead his heart is still beating and supplying blood and oxygen to his organs. Medicine teaches that when a person is brain-dead he is actually dead. From this there is no coming back.

So when does the soul leave the body? A brain dead person's body can be kept functioning for days, even weeks, on enough aid from machines. But realistically and medically the person has died. When faced with this question my answer was as best as I can figure, "That is something we just have to leave with God."

If you can find me the verse in the Bible that answers this question please let me know. I invite theologians, which is all of you, to consider this and respond. Until then, we'll just have to trust God to take care of us as he has throughout human history.

Thank you God for receiving our souls no matter when they come to you.