“Worship of the Lord consists in performing useful services.”
Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia 7038
humanity
Human
Human
The Lord, in His essence, is perfect, infinite love given form through perfect, infinite wisdom. Because He is love, and love wants something to give itself to, he created human beings so that we could accept his love and return it, and thus be conjoined with Him.
Two things had to be done for this to work. First, we had to be structured so we would fit into a state of union with the Lord – which means we had to be forms of love and wisdom ourselves. Second, we had to be free to reject the Lord’s love, or the choice would be meaningless (in fact, if we were purely good, with no choice, we would be extensions of the Lord; in that case loving us would the Lord loving Himself, which is contrary to His nature).
The things that make us human, then, are the fact that we have thoughts and feelings (thoughts come from wisdom; feelings come from love), and that we can choose – in freedom – to use those thoughts and feelings to open ourselves up to the Lord’s love and be conjoined to Him.
And how do we do that? By bringing our thoughts and feelings into line with the Lord’s love and wisdom, so His love and wisdom can flow into us. We accomplish this first through our thoughts, which are more external and more under our control than our feelings are. We can fill our minds with the Lord’s teachings through the Word, through ministers, teachers and parents and through the wisdom of people around us. Using those ideas of what is right and wrong, we can force ourselves to stop doing what is wrong and instead do what is right. If we stick to it out of a desire to be good people, the Lord will start rewarding us with joy in doing the right thing, and will eventually change how we feel so that we genuinely love to do what’s good.
If we do that, we will eventually become angels – who are also human, people who once lived in our world and followed the Lord. If we don’t, instead letting selfish loves rule us, we will eventually become evil spirits in hell – who are also human, though barely so, since they reject the Lord’s love.
An interesting aspect of this is the role of freedom. Free choice is essential to our humanity, but it seems like the more we force ourselve to follow rules the less freedom we have, until as angels we do nothing but obey. Following our urges and doing whatever we want seems like a much greater degree of freedom. This, however, is exactly wrong on a spiritual level. If we follow our urges we will end up desiring only evil. Since evil wants only to hurt and dominate others, we will face constant obstacles and resistance to our desires. That will be all the more true in hell, where the Lord prevents evil spirits from doing any actual long-term harm. On the other hand, if we force ourselves to be hind and loving, the Lord will eventually fill us with the desire to be kind and loving – and in heaven, with everyone in such a state, there is no need for rules at all. Every angel does exactly what he or she wants to do.
There is one other aspect of humanity that is worth mentioning. The Writings also tell us that because both heaven and the natural world were created by the Lord, they are in human form just as we are. That means every aspect of life has some analogy to the human body, and to the human spirit. Since humanity is modeled on the Lord, this also means that every aspect of heaven and earth has some analogy to the nature of the Lord. Think about this next time you go for a hike – every leaf on every tree could tell us something about the Lord, if only we could understand it. And every leaf on every tree could tell us something about ourselves, as well.
http://newchristianbiblestudy.org/
This video is a product of the New Christian Bible Study Corporation. Follow this link for more information and more explanations – text, pictures, audio files, and videos: http://www.newchristianbiblestudy.org
This video is a product of the Swedenborg Foundation. Follow these links for further information and other videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/offTheLeftEye and http://www.Swedenborg.com
Nature — How should we value it?
Discovering inner health and transformation
People need to economically make use of the world of nature by hunting for fish, growing crops, felling trees, and quarrying and mining for minerals etc. Humanity cannot survive unless food is eaten and shelter is built. Yet, in recent decades we have come to realise the insidious damage to ecosystems due to industrialisation, extraction of raw materials and modern transportation.
Natural habitat has been changed endangering some species of plant and animal: deforestation and desertification have taken place: waterways and land have been chemically polluted and there has been a rise in greenhouse gases contributing to climate change. There has been a failure to consciously consider the environmental impact of our industrial lifestyle on the children of future generations as well as on the people of the non-developed world.
The effect on nature of excessive consumption
The priority of most politicians of the richer countries seems to be on economic growth even though 20% of the world’s population consume 80% of the world’s resources. Reliance on ever expanding technology and material comfort continues as if happiness were to come from a life of excessive consumption. Once the initial thrill of purchasing something is over, we feel empty again. Materialistic aspiration also seems to be due to unnecessarily seeking social status by trying to show by one’s possessions one’s own importance and success in the eyes of oneself and others.
Environmentalists have assumed that scientific support for their viewpoint would lead to fundamental political change. However some of them are now saying that the underlying environmental problem is one of selfishness, greed and apathy and that we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.
Here are some spiritual ideas that can help us face this eco-spiritual crisis
The sacred in nature
In the industrialised world we find ourselves more and more enclosed in artificial buildings surrounded by fascinating technology and are separated from the world of nature. It is thought that we need to do something about this in order to be more in touch with the natural rhythm of life: to feel naturally grounded rather than alienated from meaningful reality.
One emphasis for many people is on seeing the sacred in nature. It is argued that a richer experience of the natural world can help us find a sense of identity relating us to a larger design. In other words mankind is part of nature and will find wisdom and well-being only in harmony with nature’s mysterious powers.
According to religious philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, nature can be seen as a theatre expressing in a symbolic way all that is deeply good and true. He claims that in ancient times people could see something spiritual in everything belonging to the natural order. There was a respect for God’s creation. Something of this can be seen in the way indigenous tribal peoples even today take for granted the existence of souls or spirits in animals, plants and rocks they encounter in daily life.
Nature reflecting the spiritual
However, there has been an unfortunate error found in religion. By focusing on human spiritual well-being, religion has often placed human beings at the centre of the universe and at the head of a hierarchy of living creatures. Many Christians have supposed that when the book of Genesis states that mankind is to have dominion over the creatures of nature that this statement is to be taken as literally true. On the other hand, there has also been the view that the Genesis story is a myth with an illuminating message rather than a textbook on history, law or science.
According to Swedenborg the creation story in Genesis is about the re-creation of a person as fit for heaven — in other words it is all about spiritual transformation of the individual rather than any prioritising of people over animals and plants. For Swedenborg, mankind symbolises what he regards as the Divine Humane Spirit operating within the spiritually growing individual. He maintains it is this spiritual source that can come to dominate the way such a heavenly person naturally thinks and feels: the fish, birds and animals correspond to our ideas — illuminated or not, our understanding — enlightened or not, and our intentions — unselfish or not. All these can be symbols of spiritual and natural consciousness rather than things of nature to be exploited. And so reference to humanity having dominion over nature is really about what is divinely good and right in our higher mind ruling our natural ways of thinking and intending.
Bringing heaven into the world of nature
Bishop James Jones has pointed out that unfortunately within religion there has also been those who say our destiny is to escape the world and find a place in heaven or the equivalent. For them what is natural is even sinful and to be avoided. An alternative Christian view is that humanity is “a part of creation” and not “apart from creation”: that in acting as stewards of the earth serving and conserving God’s creation, salvation is about bringing down heaven on to earth.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” (Lord’s Prayer)
The Quran talks about the Creator embracing creation and that the animals that swim, fly and crawl are creatures like us we have to respect.
Valuing nature
I would conclude by suggesting that valuing nature means using and enjoying natural things but doing this by neither abusing nor exploiting them: whether they be animals we rear, the wild side of nature we can respect and try to live in harmony with, or the nature of our own bodily needs.
Copyright 2013 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
Posted on10th October 2013CategoriesEthics, Ethics & Environment, Ethics & LifeLeave a comment
Biblical Science vs. Reductionism
Traditional science has worked under the assumption that reality can be reduced to smaller and simpler elementary parts. This is called reductionism.
However, some pioneering thinkers have taken the view that nature is complex even on its most fundamental levels. Physicist David Bohm believed that quantum entities contained subtle and complex inner structure.
Theologically speaking, if the universe was created by an Infinite God, then it must have had its beginning in unfathomable complexity.
This raises an interesting question. If the Word, which existed before creation was God, and all things in the created world came from the Word (John 1:1-3), does Scripture contain a pre-space and non-physical substrate that is infinitely complex?
Like science, traditional theology believes that the biblical stories are reducible to the simple meaning of its words. But, if the Holy Word was communicated to the human race from God in heaven, shouldn’t its stories contain deeper and more complex ideas?
This is exactly what scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg actually discovered. The Holy Word, like the physical world it generated, contained a similar patterning principle and template, whereby the deeper one probes, the more wonderful the spiritual message becomes – gaining new powers of abstraction until its message finally transcends the comprehension of mortal men and women.
Angels can grasp these more intricately beautiful teachings woven into Scripture, but its deeper levels of God’s truth and divine wisdom ultimately transcend angelic comprehension as well. Angels call the Holy Word “the great deep.”
Swedenborg suggested, that because all earthly men and women are interiorly spiritual beings, they too possess the higher levels of mind that angels enjoy. But these higher cognitive functions only represent latent powers, which need to be opened up through a willingness to learn deeper spiritual truths and a commitment to spend some effort on training the mind to think in new ways.
Swedenborg labored nearly thirty years of his life to help people acquire this deeper knowledge through extraordinary books that challenge and exercise the mind to distill higher meaning from mundane language. If this interests you I recommend that you contact the Swedenborg Foundation and order Vol.1 of Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven).
It is a wonderful opportunity to make your life more valuable to the Lord God in heaven and to humanity on earth.
Posted on January 8, 2009by thegodguy
Im ashamed to die until i have won some victory for humanity. 