When did we stop calling them souls?

It's been several years now since something struck me out of the blue one day while I was not exactly watching a movie that some relatives had on television. As I recall it was a 'christian' movie. I know it was clean and I seem to recall it was right around Christmas. I remember the movie was a Christmas movie but I don't recall much else about it.

What I do remember was that at some point in that movie a woman referred to someone, not by name, not as this person or that person, but as a soul. It went something like 'we can't leave that pour soul...' And I remember being struck by the realization that there was a time when people often referred to others as souls.

I remember my intent to delve deeper into that thought. I remember my desire to write on it. I also know that none of that ever came to fuition. I did not research it. I did not write on it. And here I am several years later, writing on that very thing.

There is no deep revelation in this post. No in depth Scripture studies. No discussion with my husband. This is nothing more than my own thoughts and what the implications and consequences were/are, or may have been from losing the perspective that we no longer call people souls.

I think of my own encounters with strangers in town. Whether I speak to them or not, whether I get close enough to exchange smiles or not, whether I have a pleasant conversation with them or a frustrating encounter, I see them as...people. Rarely in the rush of accomplishing tasks that must be done do I stop to think of the lives these people live and even more rarely do I actually think of each person, or even one person, as I stand face to face with them, as having an eternity.

Yes, I am fully aware that every single person faces an eternity either with Christ or deprived of Him. I am aware that heaven or hell awaits everyone that has ever lived or will ever live.

I know these things.

I know the verses. I've studied the passages. But when I stand there, face to face, I rarely think of these things. Life and it's troubles and trials, needs and responsibilities push those thoughts from my mind in the thoughts of what I must get done today. And so I run my errands, do my shopping, tend to what needs tending and in doing all that I encounter people.

What would happen if instead of encountering people...I encountered souls?

How different would we...would anyone that professes a belief in Christ...interact with and respond to people if they thought of them not as people but as souls?


.. we regard no one according to the flesh. 2 Corinthians 5:16 ESV

We regard no one...according to the flesh.

According to the flesh.

And yet...we live in the flesh and we see in the flesh and where people once were in the habit of thinking of others as souls, somewhere, somehow, for some reason, our society as a whole stopped thinking of them as souls.

I can't even remember the last time I was in a 'church', a building that supposedly deals in souls, that anyone in that building referred to people as souls. But then again I can barely recall the last time I was in a 'church' at all.

And still I wonder...when did we stop calling them souls?

And what would be the difference, if anything, if we stopped regarding others according to the flesh and saw them as souls?