For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. – Psalm 62:1 (ESV)
The last verse of the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley goes like this…
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
The sentiment “I am the captain of my soul” may be true to an extent as we have been given a free will to decide what we do with it; the ultimate result will affect us eternally.
For those who do decide that they are indeed the captain of their soul, it will end in their destruction. We were never meant to be in charge of our soul. If left to our own devices, sin will corrupt us and leave its mark on our souls. A corrupted soul is restless and cries out in pain, but it is supressed. You may feel no guilt or shame and may even think and feel good about yourself. This, however, is a lie, a cover-up orchestrated by Satan to make you believe that being the captain of your soul is a job for only you and that you don’t need anyone else to determine your fate.
A captain is a person who is in command. They make sure things run well and that everybody is doing what they are supposed to do. They decide what to do and where to go. A good captain is also responsible for dealing with the consequences of decisions that he or she makes. As humans when things go wrong, we don’t handle it well and our soul is troubled. As captain of our own soul we eventually realise that we’re not very good at the job.
When that realisation comes, we need to hand over the job of looking after our soul to the true captain. Jesus knows what our soul needs. He will guide and lead it in the right direction. Even during the times when we want to take back the captaincy, He will stand by and wait until we give it back to him.
Deep down our souls know who the true captain is. Even when we don’t listen and ignore the messages we receive and continue to try and steer our soul in the direction we want it to go, it still knows. Our soul continually seeks the One who gave it to us in the first place. It responds to God’s voice and tries to get us to answer the captain’s call. It cries every time we ignore it.
Being the captain of our soul is not an easy job. We are tricked into thinking that it is, but Jesus knows the reality of the situation. Sometimes, Jesus has to resort to drastic measures to get us to pay attention to what our soul is trying to tell us. The soul God gave us, knows that for it to return home, we need give the captaincy over to Jesus. To let go and let God help our soul to be all that it can be is what the true role of the captain of our soul is.
Originally published October 2018