We’ve all seen pictures of the egg-sized cloud of electrical discharges that moves around in our mind as we think about first one thing, then another. When people talk, one cloud of electrons communicates with another.
When we think we’re talking to a flesh and blood person, the flesh and blood is a smokescreen disguising the real person, the soul, living within.
Worldly people spend a lot of time and money altering the appearance of the skin. Some spend an inordinate amount of effort expanding and contracting the underlying tissues. Beneath all that is the soul, each surrounded by a cloud of charged particles with which information stored in the brain is accessed.
When we try to convince someone of something, we are actually trying to get through to the soul beneath the cloud of charged particles. The only reason to look respectable is so that the people we’re talking to think we’re plausible.
In the late 1400s, the one of the holiest men in Spain was a cave-dwelling hermit who was to become Cardinal Ximines, advisor of Ferdinand and Isabella. They wanted someone they could trust, and the simply-dressed hermit was the man who could inspire their souls with a love of God and Church. His advice was so good that they ended up with Spain and much of North, Central, and South America.
If we are to have an effect, we must be believable as we try to alter the arrangement of thought particles in the minds of listeners, changing them to openness toward God and His Kingdom.
Changing minds is a little like shooting at a clay pigeon made of a fast moving cloud with another, faster cloud. In an argument, we have to know where the charged particles from the other party are going, get our own cloud there first, and neutralize them.
