If you look at the universe, containing so many stars and galaxies, extending so far, and containing so much sustaining energy, you can sense the overwhelming order that enables it to provide for solar systems and planets that surely provide other places for life to thrive.

If you learn a little about the physics of matter, where scientists are continuing to postulate building blocks of larger particles and the various forces that bind them at close distances or operate over astronomic distances, you can see not only a mind-boggling complexity, but also a serene order that keeps everything operating as it should and has been doing so for billions of years.

This order comes from God, the creator. His infinite Divine love, as it gets finited and sublimated, is the only real thing, the only thing that exists in itself. Everything else, time and space, elements and physical matter, living creatures and human consciousness, all natural and spiritual entities come from Him. This flowing down, so to speak, is the order that exists, and it is dominant.

The Lord’s order is not only concerned with natural creation but with mankind’s spiritual welfare as well. Mankind is different from all other living creatures because all other living creatures can live only in the order in which they are created, whereas people can deviate from their order because they are free.

The short form of the order for mankind is to “love the Lord with all the heart… and thy neighbor as thyself”. Spiritually speaking, people did so until, as told in the parable of the garden of Eden, we ate of the forbidden tree. From that time we took upon ourselves the decisions for what is good and what is evil, and forgot what the Lord said. As these decisions multiplied, we turned more and more to ourselves and away from the Lord, and our heredity was passed on generation after generation, slowly getting worse. Order was replaced by disorder.

Eventually our heredity was turned upside down so that the order of our lives in our heredity was completely backwards, and we are now born with the will to love ourselves rather than the Lord and our neighbor. However, because we have rational minds, we can be taught and trained to turn our minds right side up again, putting a love to the Lord and the neighbor ahead of loves of self and the world.

A written Word or Sacred Scripture was, in time, given to guide us. The Lord is also always sending love and wisdom into all of us, to influence and help us, but we are all free to reject that help if we choose. People who read the Word, listen to its teaching, and accept the Lord’s help, are trying to live according to Divine order.

http://newchristianbiblestudy.org/

(References: Arcana Coelestia 1055, 1475, 8513, 9736; Arcana Coelestia 10659 [4]; Arcana Coelestia 4839 [2]; Brief Exposition of Doctrine 52; Divine Providence 279 [5]; Heaven and Hell 315, 523; True Christian Religion 53, 54)

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