出版社：Regent University School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship
摘要：At the center of each human being dwells a unique spirit that is the essence of who he is. According to Genesis 2:7, God created Adam’s body first but Adam did not become a “living being” until God breathed breath into him. The Hebrew word used here for breath, nišmat, means inspiration, soul, spirit and so we see that our spirit IS our life, without which our bodies would be dead (compare this to James 2:26). Breathed forth from its perfect Creator, each human spirit was designed to share in and reflect God’s holiness and love as we lived and ruled with Him in the paradise that He lovingly created. But sin destroyed the godly condition of our of spirit replacing it with what Thomas Keating calls “the human condition,”2 the broken, wounded spirit that was born of original sin that directs us away from God in search of happiness, and which is an ever-present influence, both consciously and unconsciously, in how we relate to God, respond to the world, think, feel, act, make decisions, and treat each other. It is a deep-seated, highly complex aspect of our humanity that actually forms another “self” that overshadows the “authentic self” God intended and created us to be - a “false self”3 that operates not from a place of one-ness with God but from the uniquely personalized fortress of carefully constructed and vehemently guarded “emotional programs for happiness.”4 These paradigms began forming even as we grew passively in our mother’s womb and continue their dark evolution well into our adult lives, clouding our perceptions and casting their shadow over virtually everything we do.
