On Growing Old
First, a few words about Time. Time is one of the most precious commodities in the world. Nobody knows how much of it the good Lord has given him; but we do know it is a finite quantity, so that by this time tomorrow you will have one day less of it; you will be one day nearer to the moment when you will be taken out of time. And no power on earth, not all the scientists and governments working together, can recover one single second of time when it is passed.

According to the manner in which we use our time, we shall be happy or miserable to eternity. You would expect, therefore, that everybody would take the trouble to discover how best to use his limited. quantity of time. Experience, however, shows otherwise. We squander it, throw it away, and even pay big money for various devices for destroying it. Or, if we are of the “busy” type and enjoy filling every moment with activity, we often just run round and round in circles. We have so many things to do and are always in such a tearing hurry, that we consume weeks, months, even years of time, without making any progress whatever toward heaven. It does seem that some of us would do well to slow down our feverish activity and allocate more time to the real things of life: to be with our family and friends, to be with our heavenly Father; to think, to dream, to grow. Some of the busiest people I know will probably remain emotionally and spiritually immature to the end of their days. Those who are really grown-up and mature, usually have “all the time in the world.”

When we are using up our allocation of time too quickly, God sometimes allows us to fall sick, to remind us of the need to slow down. This is like putting the brake on a car when it is traveling so fast that its occupants cannot see and enjoy the countryside through which they are traveling. And, as we grow older and our supply of time begins to run short, the Lord allows our arteries to harden, our heart-beats to become more noticeable, our breath to shorten. Our bodies become heavier to move around, we stiffen up with arthritis; our sight and hearing become less keen, our memory begins to fail us. There is nothing abnormal or wrong about this gradual slowing down of our physical activity. It is the mellowing of the fruit in preparation for the moment when it must fall from the tree. Our ties with the world are loosened one by one, so that we can have more opportunity for looking inward, and growing inward, in order to become better prepared for our eventual transfer to the inner plane of being.

I am sorry for people who die suddenly, in the full flush of their worldly cares, say in a car or airplane accident. They are thrown into eternity without warning. Their minds are seething with their business concerns, terribly preoccupied, under the greatest possible strain of Time; when suddenly they find themselves in a world where there is no time, just an eternal present. What a shock! The difficulty of readjustment in such cases will be severe. That is not how we are meant to go. Even a few weeks in bed before the transition, will provide a merciful preparation for the unhurriedness of heaven.

There is nothing to be alarmed about in the aging process, nothing to be ashamed of, and I cannot understand why people should ever disguise their age or pretend to be younger than they are. Why attempt to return to states you have outgrown? It would be as if someone at college was ashamed of nearing graduation and tried to be demoted to a lower grade! Strange, isn’t it? Even the idea that beauty fades with age is not necessarily true. Walt Whitman, speaking of women, said something like this: “Some are old and some are young; all are beautiful, but the old are more beautiful than the young.” One of the most beautiful women I ever met was a wizened old Zulu great-grandmother in whose wrinkled face shone the glory of angelhood.

Grace and beauty stem from the poise of spiritual maturity. There is a lack of self-consciousness about it, as with the innocence of childhood, which is perhaps why Jesus said we must become again like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Children are dependent on their mothers, being attached at first by the umbilical cord and then by the apron string. When they are launched on the world in their own strength, their innocence disappears. Then they generally display too much self-consciousness; they want to attract attention, they show off, they put on an act. That’s youth! When they marry and sober down, this self-consciousness often still clings to them and becomes a nagging worry. They are concerned all the time with what others are thinking of them, whether they are doing the “right thing,” what impression they are making. This is a kind of psychological adolescence which many people remain in all their lives. To become fully adult, you must stand on your own feet, at ease in every situation, afraid of nothing, dependent on nobody except God, answerable to nobody except God. In order to achieve the innocence of maturity, you must establish a new kind of umbilical relationship – with your heavenly Father. This is likened in the Bible to the relationship between the branches and the main stem of the grape vine. “I am the vine,” said Jesus, “ye are the branches.” To be mature we must draw life from Him; we must abide in Him and He in us.

Spiritual maturity produces a re-orientation of our whole outlook. We no longer feel the itch of worldly ambition. We lose all desire to impress. If our worth is not recognized, what of it? We lose all sense of jealousy and rivalry. If other people get rewards that are rightly due to us, good luck to them! We are no longer touchy or easily hurt, nor do we harbor resentments. We are no longer possessive or inclusive, wanting to grab things for ourselves; we are satisfied with the way things work out. So we lose all undue strains and stresses, and can adapt to situations as they are. We are not afraid of anything that can happen to us, and develop an absolute trust in the Lord’s Providence. That is what I mean by spiritual maturity.

In the Bible, growing old usually has a good connotation, relating to experience and wisdom; but sometimes, as in the Psalms, bodily deterioration is deplored. “The days of our years are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they be eighty years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away. We spend our years as a tale that is told. Therefore (adds the Psalmist), so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Again: “As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; then the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, to such as keep his covenant and remember his commandments to do them.” Here the contrast is made between the physical body which does decay and disappear, and the spirit of man which does not. And the spirit is the man himself.

Another thing the ageing person must learn to accept, is that the nature of his usefulness will change. In youth, our “use” consists in doing. As middle age approaches, it consists in knowing, understanding, counseling, advising. When we become old, it consists in loving. These three stages (doing, knowing, and loving) are what Swedenborg refers to as natural, spiritual, and celestial. Some old folk seem to resent the fact that they can no longer do all they used to do. They bemoan that they are no longer useful for anything. But this is a fallacy. The truth is merely that the kind of use they can perform has changed. Nobody expects much physical activity, or mental activity, from the “golden ager.” If he can still care for himself and play his part in the affairs of life, that’s fine! – but it is not necessary. The primary requirement from old age is LOVE. Great-grandmama sits in her rocking chair, beaming around on everybody. No one expects her to jump up and wash the dishes, or vacuum the floor, or fill in the income tax returns. But they all look to her for sympathy, love and compassion. She prays for the family and is a channel from God to them. She provides a celestial sphere in which they can live their lives more effectively. And who can say she is not performing a far greater use than any of them?

Finally, there is one difficult lesson that old folk must learn before they pass over. They must learn to receive as well as give. Old age, like childhood, is dependent on others. How hard it is for someone, who has been giving out all his life, to receive help and support from others in such a way as to give satisfaction to the donor! How humiliating to have to be dressed and cared for! – to have to ask for everything you need! – to be a “burden” on others, even though the others love it that way! This is indeed one of the hardest lessons to master. Yet, unless we learn to receive gracefully, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, where we shall have to accept from our heavenly Father everything we possess and are. We must sink our foolish pride and learn the humility of submission and dependence.

So at last the end will come. The fruit, being ripe, will fall easily and naturally from the tree, without a maggot in it. What then? What happens to old people in the spiritual world? Why, they grow young again! They enter the springtide of youth and vigor, able to do all the things they dreamed of doing in the earth life, but could not, because of weakness or lack of know-how. They become the personification of all the ideals they ever cherished. In a word, to die from this world is to enter Real Life.

When the time comes for you personally to “shuffle off this mortal coil” (as it will surely do, maybe sooner than you expect) I hope you will be able to repeat the words of old Simeon in the temple: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” And may the Lord say to you: “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!”

“The Lord giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:29-31).

Peculiar People
Most of us would not like to be thought of as peculiar people. It seems kind of cranky. For someone to boast that he is peculiar would seem to be the craziest form of egoism. The Israelites of old, however, took it quite naturally when Moses exhorted them: “The Lord hath chosen you to be a peculiar people unto himself” (Deut. 14:2). Again, “The Lord hath declared this day concerning you, that you are to be his peculiar people, and that you should walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his judgments, and hearken unto his voice” (Deut. 26:17,18). Evidently the word “peculiar” has changed its meaning since the Bible was first translated into English. It simply meant: “of one’s own,” as one might speak of the properties “peculiar” to oxygen or some other chemical. The peculiar characteristics of a certain person meant the characteristics specifically his own. “God’s peculiar people” were those who belonged specifically to God. Paul wrote in this sense to Titus, that Titus as a minister should show himself a pattern of good works, and exhort his flock to shun ungodliness and worldly lusts, live soberly and righteously in this world, looking to the blessed hope of a life in heaven hereafter, because “the Lord gave Himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14). In Phillips’ translation, this reads “Jesus gave himself for us, that he might make for himself a people of his own, clean and pure.” There are no overtones of crankiness or egoism, therefore, when we claim to be peculiar people. It simply means that we feel we have been set aside for a specific calling: to demonstrate in our own lives a peculiar relationship with God. Others may follow the crowd, or run with the herd; but we as Christians believe that there are many areas in which we should stand aloof from the crowd, or oppose the herd, especially if the herd, like the Gadarean swine, is running down a steep place into the sea!

In the old days, it was fairly obvious who were Christians and who were not, just from the way in which they lived. A rich young ruler, after watching Jesus with His disciples, was so impressed that he came humbly and asked the secret of eternal life. And, despite the apparent failure of the movement with the execution of its Leader, thousands of people soon joined it, finding in its discipline something which made life worth living, even though in many cases their life was cut short by a cruel death at the hands of the secular authorities. Today this zeal for the Lord seems singularly lacking, so that you can hardly tell from a man’s life whether he is a Christian or a pagan. Is this perhaps why the churches are losing their influence, especially with the young? The young people today, in this New Age of freedom and anti-hypocrisy, are pragmatic, realistic. They do not take for granted the customs and values of their parents. They ask: “Why should we do this or that? What use does it serve? Why should we believe these dogmas you tell us about? Does it make any real difference whether we go to church or not?”

Well, let us see some of the ways in which a sincere Christian is outstanding, “standing out” from the crowd. Perhaps it shows best when trouble strikes. Everybody at some time or other has troubles to bear. How does he stand up to them? If he is a practicing Christian, with a proper understanding of Providence, he will take trouble in his stride. It will not be any lighter for him than for anyone else, but it will seem to be lighter because he will carry it in a different way, like a man who changes the position of a load so that he can carry it more easily. The Christian will be at ease and content where others are fuming with frustration, because he will understand the educative purpose of the whole of life, including its hardships and difficulties.

We knew of a dear old Christian lady who used to say, when anything harassed or harmed her, “This will do me a world of good!” When eventually her aging body was no longer able to support her spirit, and we heard she had died, I said I was sure she was saying as she slipped away, “This will do me a world of good!”

It was this capacity to bear unavoidable misfortunes with equanimity, even torture and martyrdom, which made the early Christians seem so peculiar to the Romans and explained the immense and rapid increase in their ranks. It was obvious to all that the Christians “had something.” Everybody saw they had inner resources, and wanted to know the secret.

Then there was their mutual love. “How these Christians love one another,” marveled the whole pagan world, with scarcely concealed admiration. You see, the Christians believed in a God of love, who required of His worshippers two things only: that they should love Him and love one another. So long as Christians obeyed these primary requisites and loved the Lord and the neighbor, the church flourished. It only began to lose its influence when other loves took the place of those two fundamental loves, and a self-perpetuating establishment with a power structure and all the trappings of worldly dignity and wealth, took the place of the “Koinonia” or shared fellowship of souls committed to one another and to their God. Sensitive Christians today are realizing this, and trying to get back to the spirit of the early church, with small groups of members personally known to one another, worshipping together in their own homes. It is here that one can see the miracle of what love can do.

Love leads to toleration, and toleration leads to a due respect for the other person’s personality and point of view, which Christians should always cherish. The opposite of toleration is indignation. Every time anyone is indignant with anyone else, the devil steps in and destroys in a few minutes all the good which you had been building up for weeks! The power which enables us to overcome our indignation and irritation is the same resource of power from which we can draw forgiveness for ourselves in our own weaknesses and sins. For, if we forgive others their trespasses against us, so will our heavenly Father forgive us our trespasses.

You may ask, “Are we to condone and accept evil?” Of course not. We must oppose it in every effective way possible. But being indignant will not help, for indignation springs from contempt and self-righteousness, putting up our own standards, and mentally condemning others for not doing things our way. This is itself a very great wrong, and two wrongs do not make a right. Christians ought to be outstanding in their ability to relate to people and situations, by virtue of the resources of reconciliation available from the Lord working redemptively within them.

What other ways are there in which a Christian can be outstanding in our modern secular society? Principally, I would say, by a lack of anxious thought for the things of this world, and a great deal of thought and concern for the things of the spirit. In the early days of the church, you could tell a religious man by his poverty and a pagan by his wealth. St. Francis of Assisi refused on principle to own anything at all, and the immense force behind that choice of holy poverty exploded like an atom bomb in the sophisticated and over-civilized upper circles of the thirteenth century, and thousands of wealthy young men and women gave away all their worldly goods, taking literally our Lord’s statement that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. We learn from Swedenborg how to take this teaching spiritually, as referring to the wealth or poverty of the human ego. Worldly riches and poverty are not in themselves either good or evil; it is the ruling love that takes a man to heaven or hell. Nevertheless we can demonstrate in our own lives that we do not worship prosperity and success, and that we are quite prepared to go short in our bank account if by doing so we can build up our balance in the kingdom of heaven. For what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

The Christian does not have to take himself so seriously as the pagan does. It is the pagan rather than the Christian who is pompous and self-important. I detect a lot of laughter, even banter, in Jesus’ relations with his disciples. And, although Swedenborg did not find laughter in the highest Celestial heaven, he found it in the Spiritual heaven, and, of course, in the lower Natural heavens. If only we can grasp the idea that we ourselves are supremely unimportant, not even sufficiently important to be evil! – and that the only important thing in us is the Lord’s life which can and should infill us. With such a philosophy we acquire a nature so light and buoyant that nothing can knock us down. We are entirely free of the itch and burden of self, and able to travel light, even walking safely on the waters while others founder beneath the waves.

I wish most sincerely that you and every one of us could acquire this lightness of touch, free from all selfish ambition, all desire to make a name for ourselves or amass property, or dominate other people; content with our lot, neither complaining nor expressing any sense of frustration or jealousy; feeling neither superior nor inferior, guilty nor innocent, but just joying in the presence of the Lord and our brothers and sisters. This would give us a reserve of power, contentment, stability and inner satisfaction which nothing could take from us. And my dearest wish would be that so many people would walk in these paths, and keep the Lord’s statutes and commandments and judgments, and harken to his voice, that this kind of life would no longer seem “peculiar” but would become the normal thing. Meanwhile, let us do all we can personally to make ourselves a “peculiar treasure” to our God; for we have not chosen Him, but He has chosen us, and ordained us, that we should bring forth fruit, and that our fruit should remain.

Salt
People sometimes say disparagingly of some small religious sect: “Oh, they think they are the salt of the earth”! – meaning that they are spiritual snobs who imagine they have got a corner in salvation. Yet salt is just about the humblest of all cooking ingredients, and I am wondering whether the disciples took it as much of a compliment when the Master likened them to a pinch of salt! Rather a blow to their pride I would say. The whole point about salt is that, though a certain amount of it is necessary for health and well-being, and even life, yet it must not be conspicuous in itself. Think of some dish of meat or soup, or a stew, or scrambled eggs, or a plate of spaghetti. Without that pinch of salt, the meal is “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.” Yet you don’t have to taste the salt. It is retiring and inconspicuous in itself, but brings out the full flavor of the meat and vegetables. This gives a new slant on what we should be doing as the salt of the earth.

A good Christian doesn’t push himself forward. He does not say: “Look at me, everybody, and do as I do – I am holier than you.” That would be like drawing attention to the salt, spilling it all over everything. You can have too much of a good thing, even if it is holy. Salt, to do its work properly, must keep in the background. It brings out the best in everything else, but does not want to be caught doing it. A really good man does not seek attention; all he wants is that somebody else should feel good. And if his own contribution to the situation is not noticed, he is perfectly content. You probably know such people. They are not necessarily brilliant, learned or clever, not outstanding in any way. Yet they seem to bring out the best in us. They make us taste good. They are the salt of the earth.

The next thing I want to say about salt is that it is tangy, bracing and astringent, not cloying or debilitating as sweetness tends to be. Sweetness is a very attractive quality, and Jesus might have said to His disciples, “Ye are the sugar of the earth.” But in fact He didn’t; He said salt. It was characteristic of the Victorian era (at any rate in England) to think of the Christian religion as sweet and sentimental – a velvet cushion to soften for us the shocks and blows of worldly life. One thinks of the syrupy hymns and anthems produced during that period, the pretty-pretty religious pictures of clean little Palestinian children with flowers in their hair. The emphasis was on the first part of our Lord’s words, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” – overlooking the second part, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” The yoke was a symbol of bondage, slavery. He also said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Be prepared, if necessary, for the gas chamber or the electric chair. Submit to death by torture even. No mention of a velvet cushion! Sweetness there will be in the life of religion (and thank God for that!). But the challenge is that we should be salt, not sugar.

Have you noticed the difference in smell between a fresh-water lake and the salt sea? The lake is enervating, the sea bracing. Often on a lake shore there is a whiff of rotting fish or vegetation; never by the seaside, for a saline solution is a mild disinfectant and preservative. The sea is not sterile – far from it! It is teeming with plankton and fish, and a far greater variety of strange creatures than we have on the land. But there is never any sense of decay. You cannot, of course, drink sea water. If that is the only water available, you will die of thirst. Salt water doesn’t quench thirst, it makes you more thirsty than ever. And this brings out another quality of salt: it is thirst-provoking. That is why it helps us digest our food. Religion and church life do not refresh us or satisfy us in themselves. They make us thirsty for something else… for what? For the living water which springs up into everlasting life. This comes direct from the Lord, and from Him alone. “Blessed are they that thirst.” Blessed is the man or the church that thirsts. Are you thirsty for the living water? If not, you need some salt!

This reminds me of an incident in the eventful life of Elisha. The Sons of the Prophets, a religious fraternity who were living in a kind of retreat house near Jericho, said to him, “The situation of this city is pleasant, but the water is bad and the ground barren.” A stream was there, but it was bitter, and carried death wherever it went. Now, Elisha did a strange thing. He called for a new pot, and put salt in it, and threw it into the stream. You would have thought this would have made it worse, but on the contrary. Bitterness is not the same as salt. Bitterness destroys appetite, salt stimulates it. With salt, the waters were healed, and they have been fresh ever since; the modern tourist can quench his thirst there. The symbolism of this little miracle is clear and interesting. The Sons of the Prophets, who boasted of the splendid situation of their city but admitted that the ground was barren, were just like us Christians with our wonderful teachings and our fine church buildings, if we rest content with our situation but lack the healthy, life-giving thirst for God which salt stimulates in the palate: a thirst which enables us to digest the truths we possess and absorb them into our lives, to transform truth into goodness.

So we see that salt represents, in the abstract, “Truth thirsty for goodness.” As Christians, and especially as Swedenborgians, we have plenty of truth, which is pleasant and satisfactory in its own way, but entirely useless unless it leads to an improvement in the quality of our lives. If it does not do this we remain sterile. “Faith alone” has actually been found to carry death with it. Faith inevitably brings a responsibility; we must live according to the truth we know. The professional theologian is at a disadvantage in this respect. He has immense quantities of truth and loves to accumulate it. Perhaps he has written books on it. He is a wholesale dealer in salt. He has warehouses full of salt, and wants to pass it on to other people. But maybe he never takes a lick of it himself. It never occurs to him, perhaps, that he must take the Lord’s teachings out of his study into his everyday life. He could live and die in a wilderness of salt.

Remember Lot’s wife. Oh yes, she knew all about the wickedness of Sodom. She had special insights which other people lacked, revealed by an angel from heaven. But it didn’t seem to occur to her that she herself was involved, that her own life was in danger; that she must get right out of her evil situation, and never look back. She had plenty of salt, but it did not make her hungry for goodness. So she became a dried-up pillar of_ salt in the desert, a perpetual warning of what happens to those who make the salt of doctrine into a monument, instead of using it as an appetizer.

This leads us to the Lord’s parable about salt which has lost its savor. You and I can probably look back to a time when we were really in love with our religion; it meant everything to us. But now, perhaps, the bloom has worn off. Its cutting edge is getting blunt. We are becoming slack and apathetic. This is a dangerous state to be in. With the ordinary worldly pleasure-seeker who has never had any close contacts with religion, salt can be given him to make him thirsty for a better life, which may lead to repentance and reformation. But the religious apostate has been through it all before. He knows the teachings from A to Z. They are “old hat” to him! Such a case is indeed difficult to deal with. As Jesus said: “Salt is good; but if the salt itself has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out on to the dunghill.”

This comes as a serious challenge to you, if you have once accepted the responsibility of being the salt of the earth. You must be continually on your guard, lest your savor wear off. You must be careful never to grow careless or apathetic. Remember, on you depends the salting of the world in which you move. It rests with you, as a Christian, to demonstrate in your life how a true son or daughter of God should live. Nobody expects you to be a saint; we are all very ordinary people. But a few ordinary people can make a tremendous difference to their environment, if they live in simplicity and sincerity according to the Christian doctrine. A little leaven can leaven three measures of meal. A small pinch of salt can transform a large saucepan of stew. A few good people can transform a family, a community, a town, a nation – so powerful and far-reaching is the force of example. Your kindliness and gentleness, your unselfishness, your intimacy with the Lord, your reverence for holy things, your honesty, integrity and purity, on these may depend the salvation of thousands of people. Not many will be aware of your influence, but it will be there. And some there may be who will say, when at length you leave this earth-life for the Great Beyond: “The world tastes better because he or she has passed this way.”

Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
The question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is asked very early in the story of mankind (Genesis 4:9) but no answer is ever given. Maybe there is no one right answer; it depends on the circumstances of the case, and also on the kind of person who is asking the question.

Roughly speaking, there are two classes of people, the dominant and the recessive. The dominant man or woman is inclined to say, “Yes, I am my brother’s keeper.” The recessive will say, “No, I am not my brother’s keeper.” Both could be right, and both could be wrong. Many dominant people who have a keen sense of responsibility toward their neighbor become outstanding figures, a source of tremendous strength. Friends and strangers come to them for help. Everybody looks up to them and admires them. On the other hand, dominant people can be a dreadful pest: officious, fussy, bossy, trying to control all the traffic, playing God. The recessive individual who says, “I am not my brother’s keeper,” will be a much easier person to live with; but he will back away from responsibility, avoid committing himself, being afraid of sticking out his neck. He will be quite useless when trouble strikes, a liability rather than an asset.

A visitor to your home may be of the kind who has to be waited on hand and foot. You think, “Surely he might offer to do something toward the work of the house!” Then there is the dominant type of person who comes forward and says, “Isn’t there anything I can do to help?” and soon you find he is running the show! Even worse, he goes around the house putting things right! Just as an example, I knew someone whose garden gate squeaked whenever it was opened or shut. A house guest, wishing to do his good deed for the day, insisted on procuring an oil can and oiling the hinges, so that the gate opened and closed without a sound. But – the owners of the house liked the squeak! It gave the lady warning when tradesmen or visitors were coming up the garden path, or when her husband was returning from work; and anyway it gave a characteristic sound which meant home to them. What right had this meddlesome visitor to change their way of life by oiling their gate? Who made him his brother’s keeper? The trouble was, he had acted from his own ego, utterly insensitive to the feelings of his host. He had taken it for granted that what he thought was good for them would necessarily be what they thought, and it isn’t always so.

In many marriages one partner tends to be dominant and the other recessive. Sometimes it is the husband who dominates, sometimes it is the wife; I have known it both ways. We will call the dominant partner A, and the recessive partner B. A feels impelled to be B’s keeper. In the early days of the marriage B struggles a bit but eventually gives in and lets A decide everything, arrange everything, and even do everything, until B is a mere nonentity or shadow. If you challenge A, A says heor she has to take the initiative or nothing would get done at all. If you put this to B, B says it is no use his or her trying to do anything because it is always wrong! What sort of a partnership is that? The only advice one can give in such a case is that each should stand on his own feet and be himself, and let the other be himself, because otherwise how can there possibly be a love relationship between them? The dominant one should respect the right of the other to be recessive, and guard that right for him, never infringing it. Each should allow the other to go at his or her own pace, without needling or pushing or pulling or trying to compete or trying to make the other feel guilty. Remember Lucy in Peanuts. First she accuses Charlie Brown of being wishy-washy; then, remembering her psychology, she says: “Stick up for your right to be wishy-washy, Charlie Brown!”

I used to think that in a marriage the husband should do everything he does as an act of service to his wife, and she should do everything as an act of service to her husband. But I have changed my mind about this, because I have so often seen one partner swallow up the other. The counsel I now give to young couples is that marriage is a team relationship, and each should contribute all he has to the team. They will contribute different things, of course, and they will work at different speeds and in different ways. Neither has any right to interfere with the other or criticize the other’s contribution or try to impose on the other. So long as both are contributing to the team in their own way, the marriage is likely to come out all right.

Returning now to the question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” – this was originally asked in the Bible story by Cain after he had murdered his brother Abel. God found Cain walking alone in the open country, and asked, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain answered with a show of innocence, “Why ask me? I don’t know! Am I my brother’s keeper?” It was not a real question but a piece of shameless hypocrisy. Maybe Cain was not his brother’s keeper, but that did not excuse him for being his brother’s murderer! Yet that is a strong temptation for anyone with a dominant personality. If he cannot keep his brother, he tries to abolish him! I saw it often in Africa. The paternalistic whiteman comes out, full of wonderful plans for the welfare of the “natives,” whom he regards as inferior beings. He tries to introduce all these good reforms which would indeed save hundreds of lives and make the “poor savages” more healthy and better nourished, and raise their standard of living. But, unfortunately, the African does not see it in that way. He fails to recognize the wonderful superiority of the whiteman. He declines to cooperate, he resists the improving innovations, preferring to go in the immemorial ways of his ancestors. In the end the whiteman is so frustrated and angry that he dismisses the African as ungrateful, unappreciative, unhelpable. He murders him in his own mind with bitterness and contempt. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he asks in despair. “No, I am not. He is dead anyway. I’ve killed him. Let’s pack up and go home!”

In contrast to this, the Peace Corps are trained not to try to dominate and control other people’s lives, but instead to live and work with them, respecting their traditional ways and being sensitive to their feelings, influencing them by loving example rather than by bossy instruction. It is only in partnership that you can help anyone, going along with him so that he will go along with you. God Himself works on this basis. He never forces good on His children. He does not compel anyone to go to heaven. It must be done by first of all getting the person to want to go to heaven. The Lord works with us in partnership, and, if we agree to this procedure, if we accept the “covenant” which God offers us, then He can gradually lift us up. We shall feel we are doing it ourselves; and, before we even begin to realize what is happening, we shall find ourselves angels in heaven!

I think the general answer to the question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” should go something like this. No. No man should be his brother’s keeper, in the sense of a keeper at the zoo. You can own and control animals, and you can own and control machines and things. But not human beings. That is the basic evil behind Fascism and Communism, where the State claims the right to control the lives of the people, whereas it should be the other way around. Let us rephrase the question: “Am I responsible for my brother?” That sounds better, but still the answer must be “No.” I am responsible for myself alone, not for any other adult. Children are a different matter; you have to be responsible for them. And for teenagers in a lessening degree as they grow up. At what point must we take our hands away from under them? – cut the umbilical cord? That is another question! The point I am making now is that the time will come, whether we like it or not, when they will become adults. And every adult is responsible for himself or herself alone. I may be responsible for some element in another man’s environment, especially if an act of mine, or thoughtlessness of mine, causes any restriction in his freedom to be himself. There are gross evils in our society which hinder or even prevent the full development of countless people. We could probably contribute towards improving these conditions if we exerted ourselves sufficiently and in the right way. Anything we can do, or could do if we tried, we are 100% responsible for. We are responsible for the way we vote in an election, and to that extent for the kind of government that results from the voting. We are responsible for the way we spend our money or occupy our time. We are responsible for the way we pollute our environment, whether with rubbish or smoke or the over-loud noise of a radio. Even more are we responsible for the spiritual forces which emanate from us, the love and encouragement which can build our neighbor up, or the contempt and scorn that can crush someone down. You are 100% responsible for your attitude towards other people and all that follows from it. But you are not responsible in the least degree for the way they choose to run their lives, nor for their attitude towards you, nor for what they do to you.

If this were not so: that is to say, if you could be your brother’s keeper, then it would have to be equally true to say that he could be your keeper! How would you like that? Not too much, I guess! There are some people, no doubt, who would welcome having someone else whom they could blame for their troubles and mistakes. As it is, they blame their heredity, their childhood traumas, their parents and upbringing, their married partners, their children, the government, anything but themselves. But this is sick. Far healthier to take the blame on one’s own shoulders and do something about it. Your brother is not your keeper! Even God is not your keeper! God is your partner, as we have seen, but He leaves it to you how you choose to manage your side of the partnership. God is 100% responsible for His side, and you are 100% responsible for your side…..

This suggests what we should be like in our relations with other people. We should make ourselves 100% available to help and heal them. If our neighbor does not wish to receive the help we offer, that is his privilege. We should not hit him over the head if he does not respond as we want him to. Rather, we should patiently continue making ourselves available, in case at any time he does want to relate to us and receive our love and help. What if he hits us over the head? Well, that is his responsibility, not ours. Our responsibility lies only in our reaction to what he does, in the attitude we take towards him. It is that – our reaction – which will judge us, not anything he does to us. When Shimei cursed David and threw mud and stones at him as he went down to Jericho, it was Shimei who was hurt, not David. David reacted appropriately to it, and actually benefited spiritually, for the Lord repaid him with good on account of his patience and restraint (II Samuel 16:5-14). If you are angry or indignant or resentful on account of any bad thing that anybody does to you, you hurt yourself, not him. It is not our environment or circumstances or anything that anyone else does to us that can help or harm us spiritually, but only our reaction to our environment or circumstances or other people’s behavior. We are responsible for our attitude towards the other person; he is responsible for his attitude towards us. We each judge ourselves by our attitudes, not by anything specific we have done or left undone. When we die and leave this world, it is solely our attitude of heart that takes us to heaven or hell. Someone will object: “How about that well-known saying of John Donne’s, No man is an island?” Well, as far as our environment is concerned, we are, to a very large extent, responsible for one another. We are traveling through space together in this little space ship called the Earth. Our quarters are getting rather cramped as our numbers increase; there is certainly no room for quarrelling and fighting among ourselves! We have got to work together to see that everybody is comfortable and safe, or we shall all be destroyed. Even on a deeper level, the level of love to the neighbor, we do interact tremendously, and so we should always “do unto others as we would they should do unto us” (the Golden Rule).

However, on the deepest level of all, in our relationship with God, each individual is basically alone. Each man is an island. He cannot escape being so. Each one of us, male and female, must face that final interview with God alone. (Yes, my friend, that includes you!) In your confrontation with your Maker, you are alone; and whether His searing love and wisdom envelopes you with joy, or shatters you with agony, that is your affair, and nobody else’s.

42: SALT

People sometimes say disparagingly of some small religious sect: “Oh, they think they are the salt of the earth”! – meaning that they are spiritual snobs who imagine they have got a corner in salvation. Yet salt is just about the humblest of all cooking ingredients, and I am wondering whether the disciples took it as much of a compliment when the Master likened them to a pinch of salt! Rather a blow to their pride I would say. The whole point about salt is that, though a certain amount of it is necessary for health and well-being, and even life, yet it must not be conspicuous in itself. Think of some dish of meat or soup, or a stew, or scrambled eggs, or a plate of spaghetti. Without that pinch of salt, the meal is “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.” Yet you don’t have to taste the salt. It is retiring and inconspicuous in itself, but brings out the full flavor of the meat and vegetables. This gives a new slant on what we should be doing as the salt of the earth.

A good Christian doesn’t push himself forward. He does not say: “Look at me, everybody, and do as I do – I am holier than you.” That would be like drawing attention to the salt, spilling it all over everything. You can have too much of a good thing, even if it is holy. Salt, to do its work properly, must keep in the background. It brings out the best in everything else, but does not want to be caught doing it. A really good man does not seek attention; all he wants is that somebody else should feel good. And if his own contribution to the situation is not noticed, he is perfectly content. You probably know such people. They are not necessarily brilliant, learned or clever, not outstanding in any way. Yet they seem to bring out the best in us. They make us taste good. They are the salt of the earth.

The next thing I want to say about salt is that it is tangy, bracing and astringent, not cloying or debilitating as sweetness tends to be. Sweetness is a very attractive quality, and Jesus might have said to His disciples, “Ye are the sugar of the earth.” But in fact He didn’t; He said salt. It was characteristic of the Victorian era (at any rate in England) to think of the Christian religion as sweet and sentimental – a velvet cushion to soften for us the shocks and blows of worldly life. One thinks of the syrupy hymns and anthems produced during that period, the pretty-pretty religious pictures of clean little Palestinian children with flowers in their hair. The emphasis was on the first part of our Lord’s words, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” – overlooking the second part, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” The yoke was a symbol of bondage, slavery. He also said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Be prepared, if necessary, for the gas chamber or the electric chair. Submit to death by torture even. No mention of a velvet cushion! Sweetness there will be in the life of religion (and thank God for that!). But the challenge is that we should be salt, not sugar.

Have you noticed the difference in smell between a fresh-water lake and the salt sea? The lake is enervating, the sea bracing. Often on a lake shore there is a whiff of rotting fish or vegetation; never by the seaside, for a saline solution is a mild disinfectant and preservative. The sea is not sterile – far from it! It is teeming with plankton and fish, and a far greater variety of strange creatures than we have on the land. But there is never any sense of decay. You cannot, of course, drink sea water. If that is the only water available, you will die of thirst. Salt water doesn’t quench thirst, it makes you more thirsty than ever. And this brings out another quality of salt: it is thirst-provoking. That is why it helps us digest our food. Religion and church life do not refresh us or satisfy us in themselves. They make us thirsty for something else… for what? For the living water which springs up into everlasting life. This comes direct from the Lord, and from Him alone. “Blessed are they that thirst.” Blessed is the man or the church that thirsts. Are you thirsty for the living water? If not, you need some salt!

This reminds me of an incident in the eventful life of Elisha. The Sons of the Prophets, a religious fraternity who were living in a kind of retreat house near Jericho, said to him, “The situation of this city is pleasant, but the water is bad and the ground barren.” A stream was there, but it was bitter, and carried death wherever it went. Now, Elisha did a strange thing. He called for a new pot, and put salt in it, and threw it into the stream. You would have thought this would have made it worse, but on the contrary. Bitterness is not the same as salt. Bitterness destroys appetite, salt stimulates it. With salt, the waters were healed, and they have been fresh ever since; the modern tourist can quench his thirst there. The symbolism of this little miracle is clear and interesting. The Sons of the Prophets, who boasted of the splendid situation of their city but admitted that the ground was barren, were just like us Christians with our wonderful teachings and our fine church buildings, if we rest content with our situation but lack the healthy, life-giving thirst for God which salt stimulates in the palate: a thirst which enables us to digest the truths we possess and absorb them into our lives, to transform truth into goodness.

So we see that salt represents, in the abstract, “Truth thirsty for goodness.” As Christians, and especially as Swedenborgians, we have plenty of truth, which is pleasant and satisfactory in its own way, but entirely useless unless it leads to an improvement in the quality of our lives. If it does not do this we remain sterile. “Faith alone” has actually been found to carry death with it. Faith inevitably brings a responsibility; we must live according to the truth we know. The professional theologian is at a disadvantage in this respect. He has immense quantities of truth and loves to accumulate it. Perhaps he has written books on it. He is a wholesale dealer in salt. He has warehouses full of salt, and wants to pass it on to other people. But maybe he never takes a lick of it himself. It never occurs to him, perhaps, that he must take the Lord’s teachings out of his study into his everyday life. He could live and die in a wilderness of salt.

Remember Lot’s wife. Oh yes, she knew all about the wickedness of Sodom. She had special insights which other people lacked, revealed by an angel from heaven. But it didn’t seem to occur to her that she herself was involved, that her own life was in danger; that she must get right out of her evil situation, and never look back. She had plenty of salt, but it did not make her hungry for goodness. So she became a dried-up pillar of_ salt in the desert, a perpetual warning of what happens to those who make the salt of doctrine into a monument, instead of using it as an appetizer.

This leads us to the Lord’s parable about salt which has lost its savor. You and I can probably look back to a time when we were really in love with our religion; it meant everything to us. But now, perhaps, the bloom has worn off. Its cutting edge is getting blunt. We are becoming slack and apathetic. This is a dangerous state to be in. With the ordinary worldly pleasure-seeker who has never had any close contacts with religion, salt can be given him to make him thirsty for a better life, which may lead to repentance and reformation. But the religious apostate has been through it all before. He knows the teachings from A to Z. They are “old hat” to him! Such a case is indeed difficult to deal with. As Jesus said: “Salt is good; but if the salt itself has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out on to the dunghill.”

This comes as a serious challenge to you, if you have once accepted the responsibility of being the salt of the earth. You must be continually on your guard, lest your savor wear off. You must be careful never to grow careless or apathetic. Remember, on you depends the salting of the world in which you move. It rests with you, as a Christian, to demonstrate in your life how a true son or daughter of God should live. Nobody expects you to be a saint; we are all very ordinary people. But a few ordinary people can make a tremendous difference to their environment, if they live in simplicity and sincerity according to the Christian doctrine. A little leaven can leaven three measures of meal. A small pinch of salt can transform a large saucepan of stew. A few good people can transform a family, a community, a town, a nation – so powerful and far-reaching is the force of example. Your kindliness and gentleness, your unselfishness, your intimacy with the Lord, your reverence for holy things, your honesty, integrity and purity, on these may depend the salvation of thousands of people. Not many will be aware of your influence, but it will be there. And some there may be who will say, when at length you leave this earth-life for the Great Beyond: “The world tastes better because he or she has passed this way.”

At the Receiving End
We all know very well that it is our bounden duty to love our neighbor as ourselves. This applies also in reverse; our fellow men, if they are Christians, must love us! Do you think they find this easy, or difficult? Don’t you think that, in common charity, we should try to help them, to make it somewhat easier for them? Don’t you think it is our Christian duty to make ourselves a little more lovable?

Christians in past centuries do not seem to have considered this necessary. There were periods when Christian saints thought it was a sign of holiness to shut themselves away from their fellow men. Hermits would live in solitary confinement in caves in the Egyptian desert. They would deliberately allow themselves to become dirty and unkempt, as a sign of self-denial. Neatness of dress and cleanliness of body were considered worldly and sinful, to be renounced by a holy man. If you told a hermit that he should smarten himself up so that people could love him more easily, he would be astonished beyond comprehension.

However, I am not thinking of clothes and personal hygiene, but of one’s character as it shows itself in one’s life. What do you look for in a friend, and what personality traits do you find attractive in other people? We should all try to cultivate some of these traits ourselves, so that other people will find us easier to get along with. The TV commercials and glossy magazines do not help at all. They equate beauty with face cream, or, if you are a male, with after-shave lotion. Vivacity, brightness, charm, these are attractive features and can be fun if you are having a good time, but they soon wear thin and are not the kind of qualities I have in mind.

I like a person to be sincere and honest, with a sense of humor, yes, but able to be serious when occasion warrants it. He should be fundamentally optimistic, liberal and broadminded, not easily hurt or resentful of slights. I want him to be easy to relate to, able to talk freely, but also willing to listen. Conversation with him should be like a game of tennis, the ball going back and forth over the net, not like baseball where the fellow with the bat swipes the ball as hard as he can and doesn’t expect it to come back ever! Above all, I want my friend to be warm, tender, and readily accessible. Some of this may seem external and superficial, but, in fact, I believe these traits all go deep if you consider them carefully. Anyway, if such qualities as I have mentioned are desirable in a friend, should I not try to develop them in myself, so that other people may enjoy having me as a friend?

How does one set about it? Well, one of the first things we should do is to try to love ourselves – in the right way! The wrong kind of self-love is hell, and is condemned by every religion. When I meet an egoist, whose whole world revolves around himself, I think, “This man is so deeply in love with himself that he won’t notice whether I love him or not – so why bother?” But there is a good kind of self-love, which we could refer to as self-respect. Jesus evidently had this kind in mind when He told us to love our neighbor as ourself. The two kinds could be illustrated with reference to patriotism. Patriotism of the jingo type is dreadful. “My country, right or wrong.” “My country is the only place in the world where you can enjoy freedom of speech; it is the finest, best, greatest, most powerful, etc., etc.” Well, this is ridiculous, of course, and our young people are right to turn against such egoistic nonsense. But it is even worse, perhaps, to go to the opposite extreme, as when young Americans declare, “Everything about

America is bad,” and tear up the flag, and try to destroy all their country’s time-honored institutions. If other nations are to love America, the Americans must love themselves, love her for the good that is in her, for the potentials of her particular kind of government and culture – potentials not yet fully realized, but one day to be realized. Our love for America should be so great and deep that we can see her realistically. We should be able to recognize her faults as well as her virtues, and still love her.

This is the kind of way we should love ourselves, not egoistically or on account of our achievements, but because of our potentials and the particular qualities the Lord has given to us. We are children of God, made in His image and likeness; that’s something, isn’t it? God loves us dearly, so should we not be able to love ourselves unselfishly? So many people today seem to be ashamed of themselves, for no particular reason; they think they are failures, they are bored with themselves, they don’t even like themselves! They drive themselves to drink or sex, or to endless frivolity, simply because of loneliness and self-boredom. Learn to enjoy yourself more, and then other people will find it easier to enjoy you.

Next I would suggest that you take it as a natural thing that people should love you. Stop all this nonsense about, “Nobody is going to like me! I’m not important, or clever, or well educated, or witty; my face is homely.” That kind of attitude will frighten anybody off. Remember you are a Human Being, heir to the Kingdom of Heaven! Human beings are marvelous creatures, God’s finest handiwork. You may not be an outstanding specimen of the genus Homo Sapiens, but you have that rare gift of humanity which God implanted in you, and which can respond to humanity in other people. My wife came home the other day really happy, because in the street she had smiled at an old woman, who had smiled back and said a word of greeting. Human beings are made to respond to one another in love; it is natural. Just let people know you are aware of them and let your love flow to them, and they will naturally love you.

Next I would say, you must develop the faculty of receiving gracefully. Jesus is quoted in the Acts as having said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” But how can anyone perform the blessed act of giving, if there is nobody available who is willing to receive? In our culture, with its tradition of pride, “giving” has become much more popular than “receiving.” If someone receives something as a gift, even from a friend, he immediately tries to work out how he can make a comparable return, to even things out. If it is a Christmas present, he thinks, “How much did it cost?” and then tries to buy something, at about the same price to give in return. The reason is, of course, that the person at the receiving end feels inferior to the person at the giving end, and must establish his sense of self-importance by neutralizing the gift. Pride, you see! Yet, why should “receiving” make one feel inferior? And anyway, what harm is there in being inferior? It is no disgrace! I think friends should be able to give and receive without embarrassment, just as members of a family do, and as the early Christians did, holding their goods in common.

What are we to say of the lady who has spent her life doing things for other people, giving herself out and running around helping those who are in need, but who won’t allow anyone to move a finger to help her when she is in need? “Oh no,” she says, “I couldn’t dream of allowing people to trouble themselves on my account!” Pride again, and the implication that you cannot expect anyone else to be as generous and unselfish and helpful as she has always been. When I offer to help someone who is obviously in need of help, I would much rather they said, “Thank you! That is very sweet of you! I don’t know how I could have managed without you!” and let me do it, instead of, “Oh no, I couldn’t dream of troubling you!” thereby brushing me off.

It is not only senior citizens and sick people who must learn how to receive gracefully. We must all learn it. Do not be afraid to open yourself to love from other people! Do not be ashamed to admit you need it. We all need love, desperately; we should not be human if we didn’t. Of course, defenses are sometimes necessary to protect us from those who would abuse our love, but do not put up defenses when there is obviously no danger of abuse. Take them down! Give yourself out to others, and let them give themselves out to you.

Those who find difficulty in accepting from other people, are likely to be unable to accept from God. God loves us all equally, because His love is infinite, and the infinite cannot be divided into parts great and small. He loves the lowest devil equally with the highest angel. The difference lies in their receptivity. The angel receives the Lord’s love in full measure with humble joy; that is why he is in heaven. The devil turns his back and blocks the inflow with his own pride, and so is in hell. Here, then, is a tremendous fact: our future lot, whether in heaven or hell, is determined solely by our willingness or unwillingness to receive the Lord’s love!

The suggestions I have been making to help you in your relations with other people, apply also on a deeper level to your relations with the Lord. You must make yourself lovable to Him! He loves you anyway, of course; but He cannot make any real contact with you unless you make yourself lovable to Him. To begin with, you must learn to love yourself in the right way, without the slightest taint of self-conceit. He does not want us to throw dust over our heads and grovel. What father wants his children to do that? He wants us to be truly happy, as we human parents want our children to be. Whatever we want for our children in a finite way, He wants for us infinitely. He is not particularly interested in how clever we are, nor how beautiful. He is not much concerned with the niceties of our doctrinal position, nor whether we perform certain rituals in our worship, though these may be of great help to us. What He wants is our human response. He wants us to be good Receivers, fully appreciative of His bountiful gifts. “Thank you, dear Lord! Thank you, Father!” – such expressions of sincere gratitude should be continually on our lips; because, if we are truly grateful, we are happy. which is what He wants for us beyond all else. We have nothing to give Him but our love and gratitude, and even these must come from Him in the first place. We are basically mere vessels made to contain His life. If we empty ourselves out of self, it is only so that we can receive more fully from Him, just as we breathe out foul air from our lungs so that we can draw in fresh air from His infinite supply.

“Behold,” says Jesus, “I stand at the door and knock.” He is outside, knocking at our door. To let Him in we must remove all the obstructions and defenses we normally put up to prevent the invasion of our ego. To have Him dwelling within us, we shall obviously have to abandon many of our former pleasures; we shall have to devote more time to Him and the things of His Kingdom. We may have to change the whole pattern of our thinking and living, which would be tough. But who cares, when the Lord’s love is offered to us? It will suffuse us, and heal us, and bring us heavenly joy and peace.

Did Jesus really say, as reported, “It is more blessed to give than to receive?” The greater blessing is surely to Receive – from Him. In fact, to receive Him.

Forgive Yourself
Sermons are often preached on forgiving other people, people who have trespassed against us, who have hurt our feelings, and so on. But someone said to me the other day: “My problem is not how to forgive other people, it is how to forgive myself!” I said, “Have you done anything particularly bad that needs forgiveness?” “Oh no, it’s not that I have done anything wrong; I just feel that life is too much for me. I’m inadequate; I’m a failure. I guess I’ve got a guilt complex!”

How to forgive oneself! It sounds crazy, somehow. Psychiatry is probably responsible for popularizing the idea. When I was young, no one would have known what you meant if you had said you couldn’t forgive yourself. Yet it is not so new after all. The apostle Paul understood all about it, and describes the psychology of it very well in his letter to the Romans (chapter 7). “What I do,” he said, “is not what I want to do, but what I detest. Nothing good lodges in me; for, though the will to good is present, the deed is not. The good that I want to do, I do not, and the evil that I do not want to do, that I do. I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Paul knew that God had forgiven him, but he could not forgive himself.

For convenience, we will refer to the “I” and the “me.” The “I” is the higher self, the enlightened understanding, the executive. The “me” is what we actually are: our unregenerate will, our activities in the world, our achievements, the person other people know. The “I” can observe and appraise the “me” and say: “You’ve made a horrible mess of everything. I cannot forgive you. I don’t even like you. What are you going to do about it?” The contribution of modern psychiatry is not to point out that this clash can exist between the I and the me, but to emphasize the danger of it – danger to bodily health, danger to mental health, even to sanity. It leads to the splitting of the mind in two; and the Greek word for a split mind is “schizophrenia,” a word which is in common use today.

We must somehow come to a satisfactory working arrangement between the I and the me. If you feel disappointed in yourself; if you feel you have failed to achieve what you hoped to achieve; if you have contracted bad habits that you seem unable to control, or a mediocre pattern of life which disgusts you: examine and appraise yourself carefully, and see whether perhaps the expectations you had for yourself were unrealistic. It would be ridiculous, for instance, if you were flagellating yourself and feeling guilty and miserable because you had never succeeded in becoming President of the United States – or First Lady as the case might be (or first Lady President!). Or perhaps you had never succeeded in becoming the head of a multi-million dollar corporation. Or a golf champion. Or a world-famous pianist (which I had hoped to be when I was a child!). Only one person in a million gets to the top of any of these big high ladders of life; it is not likely that we should be among their number. And those few who do make it, turn out to be no happier than the rest of us. They have their domestic troubles (many of them are divorced), and their stomach ulcers, and their frustrations, and their fears, like the rest of us. They grow old like the rest of us, and when they die they leave all their possessions behind, and are received in the other world with no more honor and dignity than anyone else. Don’t bother about the big ladders, then, and don’t envy those who have made it in a big way. Choose some little ladder within your competence and climb that, and you will be just as happy at the top of your little ladder as the President is in his position as allegedly the most powerful man in the world.

In moral and spiritual matters, too, be merciful to yourself. To begin with, don’t feel guilty for anything over which you have no control. And don’t be unrealistic in your demands for self-improvement. Make demands of yourself, certainly. The drifter inevitably ends up in hell. But let them be demands that you can reasonably hope to fulfill. And then see that you do fulfill them! The importance of seeing things through cannot be overstressed. We are so made, as human beings, that we need to succeed in what we set ourselves to do. And everybody can be a success in something, even if it is only making a good meal, or being a good friend to someone. Much of the joy of life is derived from setting ourselves new goals and achieving them. Don’t try to do too much all at once. Take one thing at a time. A pianist who wants to learn to play a complex piece of music, can probably sight-read it more or less. He can bumble through it in a slovenly kind of way, messing up runs and slowing down for the difficult chord progressions. He might stumble and fumble through it twenty times that way, making no real improvement. Rather, he should take a few measures at a time, and really work at these until he has mastered them and can play them perfectly without even looking at the score. Then take the next few and master them, and so on, until the whole piece is his. So in life. The man who criticizes himself, saying: “You are a pretty low type; you must pull yourself together all round” – won’t make much progress. He will go on blundering and bumbling and failing; he will grow more and more discontented with himself until he is just a mess. But let him take one little fault at a time and master that, and then move on to something else; and his improvement will be rapid and remarkable. Set yourself a strict discipline in some area where you are weak, and stick to it! This is the important thing – you must succeed! If you fail, you are worse off than before. One success leads to another, whereas one failure leads to another. And it is the pattern of failure that brings on the feelings of guilt and misery which seem to afflict so many people today in this competitive age and culture.

Another reason why we dislike ourselves, I think, is through boredom with the endless round of trivial thoughts which forever occupy our minds: self-centered thoughts concerned exclusively with the external happenings of our daily life. You can travel the world and see all the sights, and go to parties every night, and still be bored stiff. We talk endlessly about ourselves, and it is dreadful! The cure, of course, lies in entering into other people’s interests, learning about their families, seeing things from their point of view. Also, in being less concerned with the external details of life, and more with its deeper issues. Running people down can also be boring, whether we are running down individuals, or whole groups. I always feel uncomfortable when I hear anyone running someone else down, and still more uncomfortable when I find myself doing it! (How I hate myself for that!) I like myself much better when I am praising someone, appreciating people and enjoying them. Appreciation of others is a fine cure for boredom and guilt. If you feel like criticizing someone or running him down; if you think that such and such a person is just dreadful, it might help you quite a lot if you deliberately set about doing that person a kindness, or at least calling him up on the telephone for a friendly chat. This is surely included in what Jesus meant when He said: “Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44).

So we come to the main point. Insofar as you are aware of being a son or daughter of your heavenly Father, and conscious of your dependence upon Him, you will be happy and at peace with yourself and the world. Paul, after exclaiming what a wretched man he is because of the antagonism between the two parts of his nature, says that insofar as he has the Spirit of God dwelling in him, his lower self drops away. “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:5,6). To be spiritually minded is not to covet the things of this world, but to value only the qualities of the heavenly life. If you have not succeeded too well in this world, or made a name for yourself or a heap of money, what of it? Nothing to be ashamed of! The important thing is: have you succeeded in developing the qualities of kindliness and gentleness and helpfulness and outgoing warmth, qualities which attract other people, so that they enjoy being with you and seek your help in time of trouble? And these inner qualities are gained, not by struggle in your own strength, but by total submission to the Lord, by letting Him take over the ego or “I” and bring the whole of the “me” into alignment and harmony with the Divine “I Am That I Am.” The projects we have to undertake on this deeper level are not so much mastering ourselves as yielding ourselves up to the Lord’s control. We get guilt feelings because we have not done this, but instead have been clinging to the idea that we must go our own way and control our own destiny. “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” says the evil spirit as he plunges into hell. And if he no longer feels guilty about that, it is because his capacity for guilt has been deadened, his conscience has been destroyed. If you do feel a sense of guilt on this deeper level, it is a very hopeful sign. It proves that your conscience is still alive! But you must do something about it to keep the conscience alive. You must listen to its voice and obey its dictates, otherwise your conscience will eventually cease to speak to you, and then you will be sunk! And what does your conscience tell you? You yourself are nothing but an empty vessel. Anything you yourself put in that vessel is tainted with the poison of self. All the qualities which you are normally inclined to boast of, are tainted with the poison of self. Empty them all out, throw them away, and let the Lord fill you with His life, His joy, His peace. Then you will become His child indeed, reborn in His image and likeness, a prince or princess of the heavenly kingdom. In that you can glory without shame or guilt!

This is the final answer to those people who ask, “How can we forgive ourselves?” They must take that vessel which is their ego and empty out of it all the dirty, unforgivable, boring little oozings of selfhood, and refill it with the exciting and glorious Life of God! Sounds easy, but of course it is not easy. It takes a long while, a lifetime and more. It must be done like learning to play a piece of music on the piano: here a little, there a little, precept upon precept, line upon line. But, to the extent to which we succeed in this greatest project of all, the load is lifted and we are free.

This is also the answer to those people who say or feel that they cannot forgive their circumstances, what life has done to them – the unfairness of their lot; some crippling sickness, perhaps, which they must live with all the time; hard labor, to which they have been condemned for life; domestic unhappiness, from which there seems no way out; poverty . . . whatever it is that they feel resentful about. Some people, in fact, cannot forgive GOD! But to feel indignant about one’s circumstances is to miss the whole purpose of life, which is not just to have a good time and get one’s own way in everything. You would not send your child to a school where he could have everything he wanted, every whim satisfied. There is too much “permissiveness” in the world already, and we can see where it has led us. No, our purpose here on earth is to develop an angelic character or nature, and it is toward this that the Lord is leading us all the time. And He can do it just as well under bad conditions as under good. He can do it equally well in the framework of sickness or health, poverty or wealth, worldly failure or success. The Divine Providence must necessarily be working secretly, out of sight, because if we saw it we should oppose it. But it is working, perfectly! It is helping you to transform your heart of stone into a heart of flesh; it is helping you to acquire gentle humility instead of arrogance. Without interfering with your free will, it is wearing away your resistance to the inflow of life from heaven.

Do not be angry about your circumstances, however, bad they may be. Do all you reasonably can to improve them, of course. But, if you cannot improve them, never mind. The spirit is the important thing; and if you can open your spirit to the Lord, He will flow into it with all the deliciousness of the beauty of holiness. The question of forgiveness will never arise again, whether forgiveness of others, or forgiveness of oneself, or forgiveness of God. You will be forever content in the security of His loving embrace.

Digging Ditches
It seems to me to be fairly obvious that God does not want His children to settle their disputes by killing one another. This, of course, includes war. War of any sort is from hell. To quote Swedenborg: “Wars entail murder, plunder, violence, cruelty, and other terrible evils, which are diametrically opposed to Christian charity.” Because of this, I used to get very worried and puzzled as I read about those dreadful wars in the Bible which seem to have been approved by God, and sometimes even enjoined by God. What kind of a loving Father could this be, who encouraged and even commanded His children to hate and kill one another? I realize now, however, that the scriptures are not to be taken literally in this respect, but allegorically. All these old tales have an inner spiritual meaning, by virtue of which they are God’s Word. The battles which the Israelites fought against their enemies represent or correspond to conflicts which take place within the mind and heart of every regenerating man: warfare which must be waged against evil spirits from hell who are bent on our spiritual destruction.

By way of illustration and example, consider the strange and memorable military campaign described in II Kings 3. Jehoram King of Israel and Jehoshaphat King of Judah declared war on Moab, because Mesha King of Moab was refusing to pay his annual tribute of sheep: 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams with the wool. The country of Moab lies on those blue hills east of the Dead Sea and lower Jordan, which you can see in the distance looking down eastward from the summit of the Mount of Olives. The obvious route for an attacking army would be down the famous road from Jerusalem to Jericho, across the River Jordan, and up the other side. However, Moab had natural defenses along the Jordan valley, with rocky ramparts rising steeply. So, after consultation, the two kings decided to make a detour right round the southern end of the Dead Sea and attack Moab from the rear, from the Eastern Desert. This would mean going through Edom, so first of all they approached the King of Edom. He was friendly, and not only agreed to their passage through his territory but offered to join them with his army. The three kings and their troops, some on foot and some on horseback, made the seven days’ journey round through the desert to the eastern side of Moab. One wonders how they expected to survive that terrible region. True, they were now in an excellent position to attack Moab, but before the battle could be joined, men and horses were collapsing in the heat and dying from thirst.

Being now at the end of his human resources, Jehoshaphat decided to lay his case before the Lord. Traveling with the army was the prophet Elisha; the three kings went personally to his tent and asked him to make enquiry of God as to what they should do. Elisha summoned a minstrel to play on the lyre, and as the music began to have its effect, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha and he said: “Thus saith the Lord: Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord: There shall be neither wind nor rain, yet those ditches will be filled with water, that you and your animals may drink. And moreover, the Lord will deliver Moab into your hands.” All this came about as he said. The soldiers dug furrows and ditches, which filled with water overnight. As the sun rose over the desert behind the camp, the Moabites saw the red sky reflected in the water and supposed it to be blood. They said excitedly one to another, “Surely the three kings have quarreled among themselves and are killing each other; see the blood that is being shed! Now come, let us fall upon the spoil.” So, without troubling to arm themselves, the Moabites ran into the enemy camp. They got a different reception from what they had expected. The Israelites fell upon them with a great slaughter, so that panic seized them, and they were chased back by the allied armies who killed and destroyed everyone and everything. Thus was avenged the Moabites’ refusal to pay the stipulated tribute of 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams with the wool.

Whether or not such action was morally justified, is not our concern for the moment. What I am interested in is the means the Lord told them to adopt in order to obtain their victory. They were to dig ditches. There is nothing unusual about digging in the ground for water. In most areas, the water level or “table” is fairly near the surface, and if you dig a hole below the water level, water will seep into it – which, of course, is the principle of the well. At one place where we lived in England, you had only to dig down a couple of feet and there was water. In dry South Africa, you might have to dig a hundred feet, but you would surely strike water eventually, which is a problem with the deep-level gold mines. In the Arabian Desert behind Moab, you would probably have to go down deeper still. The miracle was that a ditch which could be dug overnight filled up with water in the morning.

We are speaking now about ditches and wells dug in the ground. But there are other kinds of ditches. At school and college, ditches are dug in the mind! Education is not a matter of filling the mind with facts, as one might fill a bucket from a faucet. Rather, it is like digging wells, which fill up with water from within. When the student goes into the examination room, his mind is probably quite empty. The test comes when he begins to read the question paper. Does the water well up from within? Have the ditches been dug deep enough?

In a somewhat different sense, we can dig ditches in the Word of God. Nor do we have to dig down very far; the water table is surprisingly near the surface! Remember the conversation Jesus had with the Woman of Samaria at Jacob’s Well outside Sychar. Jesus promised to give her “living water.” She replied, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; how do you propose to obtain this living water?” Jesus replied, “Whosoever drinks of this water that you are speaking about will thirst again; but he who drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst again, for it shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13, 14).

The Israelites wanted water to drink. By approaching the Lord through the prophet Elisha, they got it – all they needed, and more than they needed. At the same time, they found it led directly to the total collapse and defeat of their enemies. The process is somewhat complex, but I think you can follow it if you raise your mind a little above the literal level of the story. When the evil spirits see us drawing water from the Bible or Word of God, they mistake the water for blood. “These people are killing themselves,” they say; “Let’s run in and collect the spoil!” In a sense, we do commit “suicide” when we drink water from God’s Word. We die unto our lower selves, the selves in which we were born, and become re-born or “regenerated” from the Lord. We “take up our cross” and follow Jesus to death and resurrection. Jesus “died” as to His lower, finite nature on Calvary hill. As he hung on the cross, many must have thought, “That’s the end of Him!” They supposed He was weak and vulnerable, because His blood had been flowing. But His submission to torture and execution was not a sign of weakness but of tremendous strength. If the evil spirits imagined Jesus was at their mercy, they were greatly mistaken. Seeing the bloodshed, they rushed in, like the Moabites, to collect the spoil, but they acted too precipitously. Jesus drove them back into hell, and utterly and permanently defeated them. It was the Redemption of the human race. And so, to a lesser degree, with us. His crimson blood gives us the power to conquer in temptation’s strife. We can overcome our lower natures in His strength and enter with Him into glory.

There is an interesting relationship between water and blood, or, to extend it into a triplet, water, wine and blood. All represent the truths of the Sacred Scripture, but at different levels of comprehension.

(1) Water – truth seen naturally, in its obvious literal meaning.
(2) Wine – the same truth understood spiritually, adapted to the higher faculties of the mind.
(3) Blood – truth seen, as it were, with the heart: perceived, appreciated and loved.

Jesus performed His first miracle at a wedding party at Cana in Galilee, by changing water into wine. He took the natural teachings of the Hebrew Word and spiritualized them. Then, at the very end of His ministry, His final act before His arrest and execution was to take wine and give it to His disciples, saying, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” He had virtually changed the wine into blood. Blood is the Divine Truth living from Him and conveying His life to as many as receive it. Remember the countless multitudes of the saved, mentioned in chapter 7 of the Book of Revelation: “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more . . for the Lamb shall feed them, and shall lead them into living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Our human blood symbolizes death. It flows out when we die, which was why the Moabites thought the Israelites were killing each other. The Lord’s blood, the “blood of the Lamb,” symbolizes resurrection and everlasting life. “He that drinketh My blood,” said Jesus, “dwelleth in Me and I in him.”

Turning back to the story in the Book of Kings, we note that the whole thing was triggered by the rising sun. A new day was dawning, just as in our contemporary world a new Age is dawning. All is being made new – everybody recognizes this. We are blinking our eyes in the light of the sun as it bursts over the horizon in the east. This new light is inexorably revealing hypocrisy, corruption and crime, even in the highest places; it is also bringing out new beauties unsuspected before. Especially is the Word of God being shown to possess new and amazing depths of meaning. We can see it shining with gold and crimson and all the glorious colors of dawn. Those who are interested in this new understanding of the scriptures will probably be regarded by the secular world as weak, spineless, vulnerable, not quite “all there!” But in fact the Word of God will be your strength, your stay, your refreshment in the desert, your weapon of conquest in temptation.

Study the Bible at as great a depth as you can. Live in harmony with its spiritual teachings. Get soaked in it. Make it your regular drink. Let the minstrels delight you with its music, and the prophets prophesy to you of it and from it. Then the evil hordes, who are bent on withholding from you the innocence which is your due – represented by the 100,000 lambs and the 100,000 rams with the wool . these will be seized with panic and go scattering back to their abode in hell. There will not have to be any actual fighting at all when the crunch comes. No nuclear warheads, or bombs, or napalm or other horrors of weaponry. The gates of hell will not prevail against you. And this wonderful New Christianity, which is just beginning, will bring life-giving truth to the surface, which will cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea, fertilizing and refreshing it. The desert will blossom red as the rose.

David’s Sling-Shot
We all love the story of the young shepherd boy, raw from the fields but with courage in his heart and a prayer on his lips, who brought the monstrous giant of evil crashing to the ground with his little sling-shot.

Before David came into the story, the opposing armies of Israel and Philistia had reached a deadlock. Their fighting strength was approximately equal. Each side had as its leader a man of gigantic stature. Saul is described as being head and shoulders above the average height; Goliath the Philistine general must have been ten feet tall – though this may have included his helmet! The Philistines had the propaganda initiative: for forty days in succession their champion had challenged the Israelites to provide a man to meet him in personal combat, but no one had responded. Saul evidently considered it too great a risk to expose himself in this way, and there was evidently nobody else brawny enough to match the Philistine giant.

That was the situation when David arrived on the scene, bringing food from back home for his three elder brothers who were serving in the ranks. David heard Goliath’s challenge (the “propaganda broadcast,” as we should say today). He looked questioningly to those standing around, and received the information that if anyone could kill that infernal Philistine, Saul would reward him richly and he could marry the princess. When David’s eldest brother saw him taking interest in the situation, he was angry; and I think the ensuing conversation is so typical of what the big brother in any family would say in like circumstances. “Why did you come here? With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the haughtiness of your heart. You’ve come to watch the battle – that’s what you’ve come for!” (The battle? It seems there wasn’t much “battle” to watch!)

Eventually, as we know, David himself accepted the challenge to fight Goliath. He explained to Saul that he was not a trained soldier like his brothers, but he had killed a lion and a bear when they had attacked his flock. “The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and the bear,” he assured the king, “will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” The Lord? Saul must have felt rather disconcerted at this reference to God. It was true, of course, that his army was supposed to be the army of the Lord; but one was inclined to forget this in the heat of battle. Well, here was a young boy reminding him of their theoretical dependence on God. “Very well,” said Saul, “Go, and may the Lord be with you.”

Now came the attempt to arm David in the conventional panoply of war. Since he was to fight Goliath, he must be at least as well armed as Goliath was. A helmet of brass, a coat of mail, a great sword. Goliath had copper leg-shields or greaves, so I am sure David was given these too. Goliath had a spear with an iron point; David must have a similar one. There had to be parity at least.

It reminds me of the desperate race in armaments on the part of the nations of the world. If the U.S.A. has ten thousand nuclear missiles (enough to destroy the whole human race several times over) then Russia must build up her stockpile to equal that number.. Then America must get ahead again, and so on. Yet France is actually just as adequately armed as Russia; for, with (say) six nuclear bombs she could wipe out Washington, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Los Angeles, which would destroy our nation’s economy just as effectively as 10,000 bombs would do. A couple of small old-fashioned uranium bombs dropped from an airplane brought Japan to her knees in the last war; would 10,000 have done it more effectively?

“Ah!” people say, “but ten thousand is a deterrent!” And so we come back to our story. I am sure that if Goliath had had a hundred spears and fifty enormous double-edged swords, David would have been given that number, or twice that number. And Saul, looking approvingly at the piles of steel breast-plates, leg greaves, shields, helmets, spears, swords, clubs, battering rams, and the rest, would have said, “Even if the boy cannot use them all, they will act as a deterrent!”

You can imagine how exasperated David must have been with this idiotic display of logic. He could not possibly meet Goliath on Goliath’s own terms. He could not hope to defeat Goliath with Goliath’s own type of weaponry. This weighty armor obstructed his movement; these swords and spears were a mere encumbrance. He had a different kind of weapon up his sleeve – a sling. Not an easy thing to handle; it required a steady eye and a balanced and practiced judgment; but it was suited to his style. So he set out, apparently unarmed save for his shepherd’s staff, and calmly picked out a few stones from the brook, which he slipped into his sheepskin wallet; then he was ready for the confrontation.

Goliath does not seem to have noticed him at first. When it was pointed out that this was a challenge to mortal combat, he was very angry, and shouted: “Am I a dog, that you come to me with a stick? Let me get hold of you, and I will give your flesh to the vultures and wild beasts!” But David was not at all put out. He answered, “You come to me armed with a sword and a spear and a shield; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day will the Lord deliver you into my hand. And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give it into our hands.” David thereupon slung his stone, which sank deeply into the giant’s forehead; the enormous warrior crashed to the ground, and David, drawing Goliath’s own sword out of its sheath, hacked off its owner’s head. The Philistines broke ranks and fled in alarm, so that the Israelites achieved a resounding victory.

What can we learn from this, to help us in our regenerating lives? One thing we learn is that the terrible and frightening evil forces of this world cannot be met on their own ground with their own clumsy weapons. You cannot put out fire with fire. Force cannot overcome force, neither can hatred conquer hatred, nor insults counteract insults, nor contempt defeat contempt. If evil is equally on both sides, then, in the long view, neither side can win. The armies of Saul and the Philistines stand glaring at each other across the valley, paralyzed into a deadlock, with the boastful Philistine giant shouting his challenge morning and evening for forty days, and no one doing anything about it.

“Forty” represents a full period of temptation, and we are reminded that the incident we are considering took place not very far from the spot where Jesus Himself spent forty days in the wilderness, tempted of the devil. (Goliath again? No doubt!) Jesus defended Himself by quoting from the Word of God. Each quotation was a smooth stone selected from the river of spiritual truth and thrown with the sling of doctrine; it sank deep into the tempter’s forehead and floored him.

It is the spirit of God in man that conquers in the long haul. Nothing can check it. The clumsy armor of worldly reasoning and expedience offers no protection against it. It is like a little plant springing up from within, which can split rocks; or, if the rocks are too strong, it finds its way under them, around them, between them, heaving them apart, and reaching the open air at last. Jesus said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it becometh a tree, and the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches.” We know that very powerful spiritual forces are impinging on the earth at this very time, resulting from a reordering of the spiritual world witnessed by Swedenborg and called by him the “Last Judgment.” Strange would it be if there were no upheavals or signs of realignment and change in our human society. The way to deal with them is not to double the size of the police force and throw tear-gas bombs and bring out the guns, nor drop high explosives and napalm on defenseless villages behind the so-called Communist lines; but to spread Ideas – ideas of truth and love and forgiveness and human kindness, which will open the way for the Spirit of God to flow in, and the world-wide New Age to dawn.

David with his sling-shot of spiritual truth is still young in our midst: unrecognized, unacknowledged, just somebody’s kid brother from back home. But he has the means – the only means – of breaking the deadlock of materialistic thinking, in our society and in our own hearts and minds, and giving victory to the army of the Lord. Eventually, we are assured, he will marry the princess and succeed to the throne. True, there will be a long, unhappy period of rivalry between Saul and David, as Saul grows less and less, and David grows more; but the time will come in each one of us, as we develop our spiritual natures and make our judgments from the spiritual rather than the natural view-point, when David will entirely supplant Saul, and become the prototype of Jesus Christ, whose kingdom shall be forever. Then will all the enemies of our peace be vanquished, and we shall enter into the joy of our Lord.