The mysteries of the Bible can be stumbling blocks to faith for many people. One of the biggest mysteries is “How can one God be made of three parts?”. This is known as the Trinity.  While there are several different ways to approach this, we can begin by examining ourselves.

Since God created man in his own image, we can look at certain aspects of our being to help explain characteristics of God. One quick example of how we are made up of three parts is that we have bodies composed of Matter, Energy, and Soul. We’ll talk more about that when we discuss creation. For now, lets look inside our minds for a different idea.

While you read this, there are three portions of your consciousness active. I label these as the speaker, the listener and the actor. When you think to yourself the speaker is the “voice in your head”. What you would mostly consider to be the seat of intelligence is the listener. The actor gets involved when you do something.

We’ll go through a short example to show how this works. You are talking to your friend. As the listener, you hear and understand what they’re saying. They ask you a question. The speaker makes up one or more responses. You, the listener, approve, and the actor is engaged to cause the body to give the answer to your friend.

If you’ll consider what’s going on inside your head when your engaging in any activity, you’ll see how these three parts work together to form your personality. Sometimes the speaker will come up with an off-the-wall idea. The listener acts as a filter to keep things in check. Without the actor, we’d all just sit around and never do anything. All three are required and inseparable, and yet distinct.

Of course, one can take this analogy too far. I wouldn’t presume to assign these roles to The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. That’s one mystery we’ll have to take on faith.