Old Beacon Hill

I sometimes wonder how spiritual a person is born. I know that I'm from the old Beacon Hill, in fact I'm from a Belmont address that no longer exists, but it's very, very urban. I went to cradle roll in a church that was near both two other larger church and the Theosophical Society as well as an Anthropological Waldorf High School. Many (at least three) other good-sized churches stand in the immediate neighborhood, but it's also the gay center of the city, and the overtly Satanic venues (by which I mean stage nightclubs with bars that actually say "Hail Satan" on a sign) are exactly in the same few city blocks, and it's heavy with tarot stands and yoga. I'm no weirder than anyone else, including in the straightedge "alternative because not alternative" way, it's just something I've thought about.

I lived there for a few years before I was even old enough to get out of my stroller, let alone make great decisions. But they do say that we are all born with souls, and I sometimes wonder if my Broadway and Roy area origins in Seattle near Broadway ever really impacted my spiritual life.

"The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all the dough had risen."

I wonder myself about how some people are spiritual and others go straight into sin. Ive heard some people say, it depends on how the child is turned.

I ve been praying here lately and asking the Lord, If anyone else wants saved, let them be saved. Surely there is someone that we have missed.

Tonight I heard someone say that a retired school teacher is attending there church tonight because she told them she wants the Lord.

Good question. The short answer is yes, we are very much affected by environment. No one is born "spiritual". We are born dead in trespass and sin. The spirit is the part of us that needs to be made alive. This is what it means to be born again. We lose our old, dead spirit when God includes us in the death of Christ. We receive a new, live spirit because God includes us in the resurrection of Christ. For this to happen, we must believe and receive Christ as Saviour and Lord.

The soul is how we express ourselves. It is coloured by natural temperament and moulded by upbringing. I am a complete introvert by temperament and I grew up with a negative attitude to God and the little I knew of church. We grow in Christ two ways, by what we gain and by what we lose. We need spiritual knowledge, which is revelation of God's word. We need to be set free from wrong thinking and the memory and habit of our old way of life. People are inherently selfish, some more bound up than others. God works in our lives to weaken the self and to bring us into greater dependence on Christ. As we lose our fears, pride, rebellion, laziness and such, we become more free to serve Jesus. This is a lifetime work that God does as we cooperate with Him.

Yes, all living things have a spirit (soul) and our spiritual environment affects us very much but with God the effects can be dealt with, at least in part. I personally grew up in a neighborhood that had a spirit of pride, including false humility, and it had me all out of sorts with trying to be humble. But God taught me to see the truth of real humility. I still struggle with pride, but not like I did before.