I want to talk to you about a subject that is near and dear to my heart. It is also at the heart Christian belief.
Though it is delivered in the form of an article, you can think of it as my personal testimony.
Why am I a Christian? Given that I think of myself as a reasonably scientific and rational person, how can I possibly believe that a historical, flesh-and-blood human being named Jesus actually was God with us (Matthew 1:23)? How can any logical, rational, and scientific person believe such an illogical, unscientific, and preposterous thing?
The answer lies in a higher logic: the logic of love. In a previous article, I said that “God is Love . . . And That Makes All the Difference in the World.” Believing that God became Jesus, who is God with us, flows logically from the simple statement, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16).
But before we flesh that out, let’s look at things from the perspective of the skeptics.
The unscientific idea of God
From a skeptical perspective the first question is, “How could any rational, scientific person believe in God?”
There is not a shred of scientific evidence for the existence of God. You can’t see God with your eyes or hear God with your ears. You can’t smell, taste, or touch God. Based on the physical senses, there is no good reason to believe that there is any such thing as God.
Science deals with things that can be perceived with the physical senses, either directly or through various extensions such as microscopes and telescopes. And since God is generally posited as a non-material being, this means that God is beyond the scope of science.
Therefore materialists of all stripes deny that there is a God.
The rallying cry of atheists and skeptics everywhere is, “Where is the evidence of God?” Without evidence, they say—scientific evidence, evidence that can be perceived with the physical senses—it is baseless and irrational to believe in God.
The crazy idea of Jesus
Many skeptics and atheists have a general disdain for people who believe in God. They think of religious people as ignorant and unsophisticated, or at least as blind and stupid when it comes to their religious beliefs.
However, they often have a special disdain for Christians.
Why?
Because not only do Christians believe that there is some imaginary God in the sky, they actually believe all those fables in the Bible about a virgin birth, and some old guy named Jesus being God.
Obviously that is the craziest and most irrational idea ever. It goes against every principle of biology and genetics. If the idea of God has no evidence to support it, the idea that Jesus was God, born of a virgin courtesy of the Holy Spirit, is just plain loopy.
Clearly, anyone who believes in such silly, unscientific fairy tales must have a few screws loose.
The literature is full of satire and attack against the crazy, unscientific, childish, and naïve notion that Jesus is God. There’s no need for me to detail the many scandalous (to Christians) suggestions about how Mary really got pregnant, and so on. I’m sure you’ve run into them yourself by now. The more hard core of the skeptics and atheists are not shy when it comes to expressing their scorn and derision for the central belief of Christianity.
Evidence for God?
This is not the time or place to mount a full-scale defense of the existence of God. For one thing, since you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance that you already believe in God, and there’s no need for me to convince you.
However, here’s the short version:
There is plenty of evidence for the existence of God. It’s just that none of it is scientific evidence. Though the evidence for God may come to us by way of our physical senses, the evidence itself is not physical. Since God is non-material, we should expect that the evidence for God would come through non-material channels.
And that is exactly what we find.
Throughout history, in every culture and region around the world, God has reached out to the minds of many people, who have, in turn, provided both oral and written testimony to the existence and reality of God and spirit. That testimony is then passed down through the generations.
The world is awash in testimony to the existence of God. It comes in the many sacred texts of humanity, each of which records the ways in which God has touched humans on earth from within. Surrounding those sacred texts is a vast literature of spiritual experience and interpretation, as well as religious instruction and practical guides to spiritual living. In the West, the very first substantial book to be printed with movable type was the Bible. And if the entire body of religious literature, including books, sermons, and articles, were put together, it would be a healthy percentage of the total literary output of humankind.
If anything, when it comes to knowledge and information about God and spirit we have an embarrassment of riches. How do we sort it all out?
For anyone who wishes to believe in God, and is willing to accept sources of information other than the physical senses, there is a massive amount of evidence for the existence of God distributed throughout all the peoples and cultures of the world. True, none of it is scientific evidence. But all of it is human evidence.
It would be more realistic to say that the issue is not whether there’s evidence. It’s what sort of evidence we are willing to accept.
- If we are willing to accept only the evidence of the physical senses, we will most likely reject the idea of God and become atheists.
- But if we are willing to accept evidence that comes from within, from the realm of human experience in the mind and heart, we will find plenty of reason to believe in God and spirit.
What about Jesus?
All of that may be well and good.
But even if there is such a vast amount of human literature and experience pointing to the existence of God, how could we possibly believe that God actually became human in the person of Jesus Christ? After all, many religions believe in God, but only one religion, Christianity, believes that Jesus Christ is the unique human expression of God.
How can we make that leap from a Creator God above all things to Jesus Christ, a human being, as God living among us? Even if we do believe in God, isn’t believing in Jesus as God still illogical and irrational? Can we really believe that stuff about a virgin birth? After all, there have been stories of virgin births in other religions and cultures as well. And even Christians don’t accept those virgin births as anything more than myths.
Why should we accept that in the case of Jesus, it really happened?
Spectacular real virgin births!
Strange but true: virgin births occur in nature quite regularly. As detailed in a recent BBC article, “Spectacular real virgin births,” it is now well-established, both scientifically and from common experience, that the females of many species of animals have the ability to reproduce asexually, without the benefit of a male.
Granted, this capability seems to be limited to non-mammals such as reptiles, amphibians, fish, and birds. However, in 2004 scientists successfully produced genetically engineered mice that could produce baby mice by parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. And not only that, their babies could have babies, too.
So perhaps a human virgin birth isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility even from a scientific point of view.
But it still strains credulity. Humans are a lot more complex than mice. And how could such a far-fetched idea be central to one of the major religions of humanity? Isn’t that still pretty illogical?
The logic of love
The answer lies in a higher form of logic: the logic of love.
If, as the Bible says, God is love, and if, as Christians believe, God is all-powerful, and if, as the famous verse from the Gospel of John says, “God so loved the world . . .” (John 3:16), doesn’t that throw a whole new light on the subject?
The Bible says, “all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). If there is something God wants to do out of infinite, tender love for humanity, won’t God find—or make—a way to do it?
What would you do?
Let’s put it in terms of a human example. Put yourself in this situation:
You are the parent of a twelve-year-old boy. Naturally, you love him, and you want the best for him.
Unfortunately, he’s recently attached himself to the neighborhood bully. That kid is a couple years older than your son, so your son looks up to him. The older boy walks around the neighborhood with a swagger. Everyone is afraid of him and keeps out of his way. To your son’s pre-adolescent mind, he looks like the coolest kid around.
You’ve warned your son about him. “He’s no good,” you’ve told him. “He’ll just get you into trouble,” you’ve said. “And if you ever cross him, he’ll turn on you, too.”
But your son won’t listen. And he is starting to get in trouble. It’s breaking your heart.
One day you hear some shouting in your back yard. You look out the window and see your son flat on his back with the bully kid on top of him, punching out his lights. You see your son’s head jerking back and forth with each punch, and blood all over his face.
What do you do next?
Do you let the bully beat your son senseless to teach him a lesson?
Do you yell out the window and tell the bully to stop?
Do you call 911 and wait for the police to arrive?
No.
I’ll tell you what you’ll do.
You’ll race out to the back yard, drag that kid off your son by the nape of his neck, and if he’s lucky and you’re not totally steamed, he’ll get away with dire threats of what you’ll do to him if he ever so much as touches a hair of your son’s head again.
Then you’ll take your son inside, clean him up, and tend to his wounds. And you might even tell him you love him.
That’s what any good parent would do.
God, our loving parent
According to the Bible, God is the ultimate parent. God created us. God loves us deeply. God wants the best for us eternally.
So wouldn’t God be at least as good a parent as we are?
Two thousand years ago, when God looked out of the window into the ol’ back yard here on earth, what did God see?
God saw a world in the grip of the ultimate bully. The Bible calls that bully “the Devil.” What that really means is the full force of human evil, which we also call “hell.”
What God saw was a world in the grip of evil. Violence covered the earth. Nations and empires arose and oppressed the people. Human life was cheap and expendable. People were dying like flies. Life was short and brutish—and it was getting worse, not better. Kings oppressed men, men oppressed women, men and women oppressed children.
In short, the world of human society was lying flat on its back, getting its lights punched out by the vast bully of the combined force of human selfishness, greed, and grasping for wealth and power.
God had warned us about this many times. God had sent priests and prophets to teach us, to preach to us about how foolish and dangerous a course we were on.
But we wouldn’t listen.
And now we were flat on our back, pinned down under the weight of all that evil and oppression, having our life, both physical and spiritual, squeezed and pounded out of us.
If you were God, what would you do?
Why God became Jesus
That’s why God became Jesus.
It wasn’t because God was angry at us or desired to punish us for our sins. No, it was because God so loved us that God could not bear to stand by and watch from heaven as we were bloodied and broken in body and spirit.
God had to come to us. God had to come personally to face evil, the Devil, and hell straight on. God had to pull that bully off of us—God’s beloved child—and send hell packing with its tail between its legs. And then God had to carry us home, clean us up, tend to our wounds, and bring us back to life and health, both physically and spiritually.
So yes, from the perspective of skeptical materialism, the idea that God became Jesus is the most unscientific, irrational, and illogical idea ever.
But God is not bound by our human, materialistic logic.
God follows a higher logic.
God’s logic is the logic of love.
That’s why I believe and know in my heart that God became Jesus. The logic of love says that a God who loves us as an infinitely loving parent could do nothing else.
For further reading:
- God is Love . . . And That Makes All the Difference in the World
- Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?
- If God is Love, Why all the Pain and Suffering?
- How do I Love God with my Whole Heart?
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Excellent article, Lee, very well written and makes perfect sense.
Thanks Walt – as always!
The Incarnation, more than any other event in Christianity, holds a deeply personal, meaningful, and real place within. I dare say, it is even more personally meaningful than His crucifixion (whilst fundamentalists hiss and scream Heresy!!!) I suppose this is so because of a genuine “rebirth experience” many years ago in John’s gospel at a time when I was earnestly searching for God in “all the wrong places.” Jesus reached out and pulled me to Him through John’s gospel. Aside from that, I suppose birth and incarnation are much easier to meditate on than death and torture.
Yes Lee. Christianity has been so screwed with through the ages that it has become inaccessible to so many people. His basic message of love has been tortured and transformed into something unrecognizable, as He was. It’s sad.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your testimony, and for your thoughts, which I very much agree with. Restoring the real Christianity, and the real Jesus, to this world is a mission dear to my heart. It saddens me greatly to see God pictured as angry, condemning, punishing, and requiring blood to satisfy his wrath, when the truth is just the opposite. Still, people see God as they need to see God at their particular place on their spiritual journey. As people’s hearts are softened and warmed by the stronger presence of God in the world, I believe those old, harsh theologies will gradually fall away, and be replaced by a knowledge and experience of the true, infinitely loving nature of the Lord our God.
Amen.
Hello Lee, You say “That’s why I believe and know in my heart that God became Jesus.”.
The Bible makes it clear that Jesus was not created. It was God, then Jesus was made, or God turned into Jesus. Saying that “God became Jesus” makes it sound as if there is only one ‘being’ who has changed Himself from one ‘thing’ to another, not that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit exists at the same time as one.
In the Bible (John 1:1-3) it says… “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made: without him nothing was made that has been made.”
It says a little later in the chapter…(John 1:14)…”The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”. We know that Jesus is the Word. So the Word became flesh, meaning that Jesus changed into flesh; which is different from saying that God became Jesus. God did not become Jesus, jesus just became flesh. God was still God and the Holy Spirit was still the Holy Spirit.
Hi Donna,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
I am aware that Catholic and Protestant doctrine holds that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existed from eternity, and that the Son was “born from eternity.” However, those beliefs are based on various Christian councils, starting with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and not on the Bible itself. In the Bible itself, there is absolutely no support for a Son born from eternity, nor for a Holy Spirit from eternity.
The language I used in this article, that “God became Jesus,” draws directly on the passage you quote from John 1:14, which says “the Word became flesh.” So I am saying the same thing that the Bible says. The Word was not only with God, but “the Word was God.” So when the Word became flesh, that is the same thing as God becoming Jesus. Jesus, the Son, is the Word made flesh.
There was also no Holy Spirit from eternity. The Holy Spirit came into being with Jesus. The Bible says, “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet; because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). The word “given” (after “yet”), which is put in italics in the King James Version, is not in the Greek manuscript–though some manuscripts do read differently. This passage links the Holy Spirit to the glorification of Jesus. Before that point, the Holy Spirit, though it began to be present with the conception of Jesus, had not fully come into its own, and was not yet present in the world.
The idea that there was a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before the birth of Jesus has no support in the Bible. Instead, the Bible says that the Word became flesh, and lived among us. That is why I say that God became Jesus. It is straight out of the Bible, not from the human councils and creeds that invented the non-Biblical doctrine of a trinity of persons from eternity.
For more on God and the Trinity, please see my article “Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?”
For a historical and Biblical view, see: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Hi Donna,
About your other recent comment, I have deleted it. For the reason why, please see our Comments Policy. If you have sincere questions about my beliefs and their Biblical basis, I will be happy to answer them.
Hi Lee,
I really like what you wrote here about scientific versus historical evidence. One of my skeptical friends is frequently saying “There is no evidence for God” when what he is really saying is “There is no *scientific* evidence for God.” I think I need to get him to realize that historical testimony IS evidence. It may not be conclusive proof, but one cannot say that there is NO evidence.
I also appreciate your bully analogy for understanding the Christus Victor view of atonement. I’m still a bit confused on how Jesus’s life and death saved us from the powers of evil, but I will have to do more reading.
How does Swedenborg deal with John 3:36? It is true that John 3:16 talks about how God sent his Son because He loves us, but John 3:36 says that God’s wrath remains on anyone who does not believe in the Son. I’m guessing you would dispute the translation of this phrase from the original Greek?
David
Hi David,
Yes, these days many people equate “evidence” with “scientific evidence,” as if science is the sole method for obtaining any kind of reliable knowledge. And yet, much of our knowledge comes from other sources besides science.
About Jesus saving us from the power of evil, it’s necessary to understand that most of what he accomplished while on earth was invisible to us. He was fighting spiritual battles within himself against evil and hell. In the Gospels we get only brief glimpses of these battles, such as his temptation in the desert after his baptism and his temptation in Gethsemane before his crucifixion.
Humanity had become so mired in evil in the times leading up to the Incarnation that it was threatening to overwhelm us spiritually, and take away our freedom to choose God and goodness. This is exemplified in the Gospels by the many demon-possessed people out of whom Jesus cast demons. Evil had become so powerful in the spiritual world that even innocent people were being overwhelmed, and no human being could overcome that great buildup of spiritual evil.
By fighting against it with divine power throughout his entire life, Jesus brought evil, hell, and the Devil (which are really just different words for the same thing) under control, and restored the balance between good and evil so that all people would once again be free to choose the good over the evil during their lifetimes on earth.
I don’t know if this is precisely the Christus Victor view, but I believe Swedenborg’s teachings about salvation are at least fairly compatible with Christus Victor.
Hi David,
About John 3:36, Swedenborg quotes it many times to illustrate that Christians should believe in Jesus Christ, who is their God, and that if they don’t, they can’t go to heaven. Non-Christians, he says, must believe in God as their religion teaches them about God. And if they do, his general teaching is that after death they will be taught that the Lord (Jesus) is God, and they will accept the Lord then. This does not seem to be a hard-and-fast rule though, since Swedenborg does describe some low-level heavens in which the inhabitants don’t worship Jesus directly as God.
About the wrath of God, Swedenborg has several teachings. They all depend on understanding that the Bible is written to reach fallen human beings, which often means speaking in human terms and even human appearances.
The wrath of God is one of those human appearances.
First, some people at low levels of spiritual development need to believe that God is angry with them and will punish them if they do wrong. This very literal fear of God is a powerful motivator for low-level materialistic and self-centered people to desist from doing evil things, and do good instead. They’re afraid that if they do the things they crave to do but that are forbidden by God, God will punish them with disaster either here on earth or in the afterlife, or both. So God lets them believe in a literal “wrath of God” to induce them to “cease to do evil and learn to do well” (Isaiah 1:16-17).
Related to this, Swedenborg also mentions several times that for some people who are attracted to evil things and impressed by the seeming power of evil, if they didn’t believe God did evil things such as slaughtering his enemies, they would think of God as a weak God, and would neither respect nor listen to God.
Looking deeper, Swedenborg speaks of the “wrath of God” as the way God looks to those who are themselves angry at God and in opposition to God because they see God as someone who condemns their evil actions and destroys their pleasures by punishing them when they do evil. The reality, though, is that the evil itself is what brings the punishment upon them. Isaiah 55:1-2 says:
Or put very simply:
However, evil people think that their evil is good, so when they receive the inevitable pain and punishment, they get angry at God, and see their pain and punishment as “the wrath of God.”
Looking even deeper, “the wrath of God” is the effect of God’s love on those who are opposed to it. Love nullifies anger, hatred, evil, selfishness, and greed. So to an evil person, whose life is all about those thingts, love looks like a terrible, destructive power. The example I like to use is that for a snowman, the warmth of the sun is a terrible, destructive power. And yet, that warmth is what gives us life.
To pull it all together, “the wrath of God” is what those who have set themselves in opposition to God by living evil lives, and clinging to false beliefs that justify their evil, feel when they are in the presence of God’s love. To them God looks like an angry, wrathful, and destructive being. But in fact, it is their own evil motives and actions that brings destruction upon themselves.
I hope this helps.
Hi Lee,
Pertaining to “the wrath of God” being only that which we perceive and bring upon ourselves through our own thoughts and behaviors, how does this translate into the biblical references of God’s wrath, particularly those of Egypt’s supposed ten plagues which occurred seemingly on-demand due to God being angry with the pharaoh in the stories of Moses and the Israelites?
Hi Rich,
Good question! But I’m going to hold off on answering it for now because I’ve received a spiritual conundrum on this very subject, and plan to write and post a response to it this month. Don’t miss our next exciting episode! (Or the one after that . . . .)
Meanwhile, here’s a teaser:
The Bible is written according to the spiritual state of the human cultures in which it was written. Many things in the Bible are expressed in the way they appeared to the human beings who received the revelation rather than how they truly are from the perspective of God and the angels.
Hi Lee, I’m glad I stumbled on your website. Very interesting stuff! I found it through Garret’s YT channel, JourneyOfDesire, which I also find to be quite compelling. I’ve watched probably 1,000 or so NDE’s myself over the past several years.
I have a question. You say that God came to earth (as Jesus) to directly confront the “evil” being perpetrated by man. That makes sense to me. But what about the “stories” in the Bible, where it is God, himself, who is the one perpetrating brutal acts upon us, his beloved children? What do you make of that? Like sending 2 she bears to maul 42 children for mere name-calling? Or drowning every man, woman and child on the planet, save one family, to hopefully build a new, more noble society of people (which doesn’t seem to have worked, anyway). Or ordering his precious children, whom he supposedly loves, to execute one another for a wide variety of offenses, some rather trivial.
Apparently Jesus was also horrified by these capital punishment practices of the day and endeavored to stop them with his admonition: “He is without sin; cast the first stone.” I would be even more impressed if he would have said something along the lines of: “And I want you all to stop this barbarism immediately. All this killing in my father’s name was a tragic mistake. Stop killing your friends, neighbors and even family members because my father and I are only about love, not viciousness and bloodshed. The Scriptures are wrong on this! So we do not want you to do this any more. As I told you, I want you to learn to love everyone, even your enemies.”
So do you think all of this wrath of God stuff in the Scriptures is basically the fear-driven fantasies of ancient, “primitive” peoples? That’s what it seems like to me. Thanks, Lee.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you’re enjoying the site! And Garret does have some fantastic videos about near-death experiences on his YouTube channel.
About your questions, I invite you to read these three articles here:
These should at least get you started on some understanding and answers to your questions.
One thing I haven’t yet covered in the articles here is the spiritual meaning of the violent episodes in the Bible.
Though it might be nice just to cut that stuff out of the Bible altogether, doing so would paper over much of the gritty reality of human life. The Bible covers both the highs and the lows of humanity.
But more than that, at a deeper level all of the wars, conflicts, and violent episodes in the Bible provide an outward image of the spiritual wars, conflicts, and jarring events that take place in our own minds and hearts.
That’s why even though there is much bronze-age barbarity in the Bible, it remains relevant even to us more “enlightened” people of today.
I plan to cover that subject in more depth in future articles. The second article linked above was getting too long, and I had to leave it out.
If, after reading these articles, you still have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks!
Hi Lee,
Just wondering, why do you believe that the Bible was sent by God – is it just blind faith?
What if God never sent any “revelation” and that people made them up? Wouldn’t this be an insult to God? We are attributing many absurdities and evil things to God because they are written in some “holy book” like the Bible and the Qur’an. Perhaps one day God will punish us for lying about Him and deceiving people.
Hi Özcan,
Thanks for your comment. I believe that the Bible, and other holy books, were sent by God because we humans have largely closed off our spiritual minds, and we therefore need externalized, written sources of spiritual understanding and inspiration in order to guide us toward God and spirit.
Yes, there’s a lot of stuff in these holy books that we know not to be true historically and scientifically. And there’s a lot of material that represents a rather crude and old-fashioned conception of morality and human life.
However, God must speak to us in language that we’ll understand. And God must speak not only to the great philosophers and mystics, but to ordinary, earth-bound, materialistic, self-centered human beings—who seem to make up the majority of the earth’s population even today, let alone many centuries ago when most of our holy books were originally composed and written.
So although these books may seem outdated and in some ways even absurd to educated people today, they were written that way in order to reach people of all types, both educated and uneducated, both spiritual and materialistic.
If you were tasked with writing a book explaining nuclear physics to everyone from Maori tribesmen to MIT physicists, and everything in between, how would you go about doing it? That task would be child’s play compared to God’s task in reaching the massive variety of humans on this earth with a message about God, spirit, and the purpose of our life here on earth.
I could go on, but instead I’ll refer you to a few articles that might be helpful:
If, after reading these articles, you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
The answer is, simply, “42”. ;-p
Hi Rich,
Well, thanks . . . I think.
Let me know when you get back, and say hi to Zaphod Beeblebrox for me while you’re out there.
Happy Hitchhiking!
Hahaha! Actually, I think the concept of infinite improbability might be one you could use to your advantage if applied properly toward helping rationalize, to those of us who are struggling over-thinkers, that which is ineffable … 🙂
Hi Lee,
Thank you for your response, that does make sense to me. Your understanding of religion would never harm society and wouldn’t cause divisions and hatred among people of different religions. I’m not sure whether God sent any revelation, but I don’t think it’s that important to be honest… Because He gave us a conscience and reason, which I think can solve all our problems if we use them sincerely and correctly….
I agree with Dalai Lama;
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
– Dalai Lama
Hi Özcan,
That’s a very good definition of religion. It’s the same thing Jesus was getting at when he said that all the Law and the Prophets depend upon loving God above all, and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40). Swedenborg, too, said, “All religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good” (Doctrine of Life #1).
Hi Lee,
I apologize, I forgot to add one more thing that you might find interesting.
Al-Razi, a famous medieval Iranian polymath harshly criticized religions.
He asked :
“On what ground do you deem it necessary that God should single out certain individuals [by giving them prophecy], that he should set them up above other people, that he should appoint them to be the people’s guides, and make people dependent upon them?”
Concerning the link between violence and religion, Razi expressed that God must have known, considering the many disagreements between different religions, that “there would be a universal disaster and they would perish in the mutual hostilities and fighting. Indeed, many people have perished in this way, as we can see.”
Isn’t this a valid criticism of religion? Interestingly, this was said centuries before the European enlightenment… maybe even more interesting is that he wasn’t killed..
Hi Özcan,
Islam hasn’t always been as harsh and fundamentalist as much of it is today. For several centuries while the Christian world was mired in the Dark Ages, there was a great flourishing of scholarship and knowledge in the Islamic world (see: Islamic Golden Age at Wikipedia). Al-Razi lived during that time period, which may explain why he wasn’t executed.
But to these statements of his, and your question about them:
Although it may not be good for people to become dependent upon certain individuals, the reality is that some individuals are more willing than others to listen to God’s message and guidance and convey it to others. Those who are especially willing become God’s messengers and prophets. In many ways, it’s simply a matter of division of labor. People tend to gravitate toward the type of work they’re best suited for. And for some people, spiritual work is what they’re best suited for. Nothing wrong with that. Most people are too busy doing other things to spend a lot of time studying the Scriptures and listening for God’s voice. Having some people in society who focus on that and provide spiritual guidance and leadership to the rest is, I believe, part of God’s plan. Yes, religious leaders can become corrupt, and mislead and abuse the people. But the fact that something can be corrupted does not mean that it is wrong or evil in itself.
I do not believe there is any such thing as a “religious war.” Rather, there are wars over power, territory, and wealth in which religion is used as an excuse and a rallying cry. This is a misuse of religion, for sure. But the motives behind the various wars of humankind have to do with money and power, not with religion.
Hi Özcan,
This is a very good question and point, given the quoted source and his conviction in presenting the query.
Hi Richard,
He also said this about the Qur’an;
“You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: “Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one.” Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter.
By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: “Produce something like it?!”
And about devout Muslims’ behavior, he said;
“If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.”
He was obviously very intelligent and had high morals….
Hi Lee,
Thank you so much for the wonderfully written article. I do have a question for you though – something I’ve been struggling with for quite a while. If god is Jesus incarnate, why did god “have” to become jesus. Why is jesus necessary? If god is jesus, and exists above all, can he not forgive us of our own sins if we come to believe in him and ask for forgiveness?
Thank you so much and I look forward to hearing your response
– Ian
Hi Ian,
Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you enjoyed the article!
Your question is an excellent one.
To understand the answer, you must first rid your mind of a number of false and non-biblical dogmas that have taken hold of the traditional Christian Church—especially Western Christianity—over the past thousand years and more. To help in this process, I recommend that you read my eight part series on “The Faulty Foundations of Faith Alone,” starting here.
Meanwhile, here is a somewhat shorter version:
The bulk of Western Christianity now teaches that we are saved because Jesus satisfied God’s justice by dying instead of us (Catholicism) or appeased God’s wrath by paying the penalty for our sins (Protestantism). The idea is that when we have faith in Jesus, this satisfaction and appeasement of God the Father by God the Son is applied to us (“imputed” to us, in traditional theological language), so that God the Father will forgive us instead of sending us to hell.
There’s only one problem:
The Bible doesn’t teach any of these things.
These and many other false doctrines that now pass as “Christian beliefs” were made up by human beings such as Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin 1,000 to 1,500 years after the Bible was written.
I invite you to read the Bible for yourself and see if you can find any of these teachings stated there. For over twenty years I’ve been challenging Protestants to do so. And not a single person has ever been able to show me a single verse from the Bible that says any of these things.
That’s because they’re all false, non-Christian doctrines.
Jesus did not die to satisfy God’s justice or turn away God’s wrath. Rather, Jesus lived and died to fight a battle against the sum total of human evil—called “the Devil” and “Satan” in the Bible—because we were losing that battle. The power and weight of evil was enslaving us, and we had neither the will nor the strength to resist it. That’s why God himself had to fight the battle for us, win for us, and free us from our slavery to evil.
For a somewhat longer explanation of this, please see the article, “Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?” starting with the section titled, “What is Redemption?”
There was no need for Jesus to die so that God could forgive us. God already loves us with a love that passes all understanding, and forgives all of our sins before we even commit them.
The problem isn’t on God’s side. It’s on our side.
As long as we continue sinning (living an evil, selfish, greedy, and power-hungry life—or just a lazy, shiftless, useless one), we reject God’s forgiveness. We can’t accept God’s forgiveness when we’re still sinning and don’t even believe we’re doing anything wrong. So as much as God forgives us, it has no effect upon us as long as we continue to live an evil, selfish, and destructive life.
That’s why the entire Bible, from beginning to end, tells us that in order to be saved, we must repent from our sins and live a good life of love and service to our fellow human beings instead. When we do this, we can finally accept God’s forgiveness because we are no longer actively engaged in an evil and sinful life. No, we’ll never be perfect. (And the Bible never says that God will reject us if we’re not perfect.) But once we’ve turned around and started moving toward God, goodness, and love instead of away from them, we are no longer headed toward hell, destruction, and eternal death.
That’s why John the Baptist, Jesus, and Jesus’ disciples all preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In fact, in the Gospel of Luke this is a primary point in Jesus’ final message to his disciples after his resurrection:
If all we have to do is believe in Jesus and we are automatically saved and our sins forgiven, why is repentance so important that it is preached and taught throughout the entire Bible as the key to forgiveness of sins?
Jesus didn’t gain forgiveness for us by satisfying God’s justice or wrath. Rather, he made it possible for us to repent from our sins and live a good life by fighting against and overcoming the power of the Devil (evil in general) that had gotten so strong that we were no longer able to resist its power to drag us down into hell. In other words, by “overcoming the world” (meaning the worldly power of evil), Jesus made it possible for us to repent, believe in God, and turn our lives toward good instead of evil—and in this way accept the love and forgiveness that God is always extending to us.
And while he was fighting that victorious battle, he also gave us “the words of eternal life,” teaching us about repenting from our sins, loving God above all, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
There’s a lot more I could say, but I’ll stop here for now. I hope this helps to answer your question. If you have further thoughts or questions, feel free to comment again.
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
Do you have to earn God’s love? And/or CAN you earn it?
Or does He want us to earn it?
Hi James,
Good question!
And the answer is that we neither have to earn God’s love nor can we earn God’s love, because God already loves us fully and infinitely. In fact, there is nothing we can do to make God stop loving us:
The issue is not earning God’s love. Rather, it is accepting God’s love instead of rejecting it.
Accepting God’s love means loving other people at least as much as we love ourselves, because that’s what God’s love is like. If we love only ourselves and our own pleasure, possessions, and power, and don’t care about anyone else, we will reject God’s love because what we want is directly opposed to God’s love.
So no, we don’t have to earn God’s love. But if we want to experience God’s love in our life, we do need to follow the two Great Commandments given by Jesus:
Of course, we’ll never reach perfection in doing this. But as long as it is our daily intention and effort to actively love God and our fellow human beings, we are accepting God’s love into our heart, mind, and life.
For a related article, see:
How do I Love God with my Whole Heart?
Hi Lee I have been reading Swedenborg for 10 years or so and am part way through “Delights of Wisdom…” So far so good. I was a prison visitor for 13 years taking God’s love into the unloveables. One Evening as I was leaving God suddenly said to me “Gerald I do not want you to be my child, I want you to be my lover”. I was shocked and said that it was hard for me to think of Him in that way and would need help to do so. It came I could send you something of what that was. Swedenborg talked about regeneration in a series of steps.I know what they are. Hope to hear from you and I send my love to you and your wife.
Hi Gerald,
Thanks for stopping by and telling your story. Glad to hear you’re gaining both delight and wisdom from reading Swedenborg. About what God said to you, I doubt that was meant to be taken literally. Probably more like the church being the bride and wife of the Lord in a relationship of mutual love. Though we are always children of God, as adults we can also move into a more mature relationship with God in which we seek to give back to God as much as we can of what God has given to us, largely by showing love to all of the people and other beings God has created all around us. For some of my thoughts on what it means to love God, see:
How do I Love God with my Whole Heart?
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
Hi Lee i know your views on biblical literalism and after researching it more, its really refreshing to see millions of scholars, Christians and non christians See that biblical literism is not true chrisitanty as the many contradictions and Faults that its creates have and continue to make boundarys between alternative spirituality, atheists and christians.
My question though is why is it that the media and fundamental Christians always say that the literal view is correct even though with little research that view can start to fall apart ?
Its nice to see more and more Christians, atheists and alt spiritualists see that the when read Metaphorically and allegorical that non only is the bible compatible with science but also agrees with the lessons taught in NDEs as well.
Hi AJ749,
The short answer to your question is that people who are fundamentalists are fundamentalists because they can think only literally and physically, not metaphorically and spiritually. They are Christian materialists—which is really a contradiction in terms. Because they are not able to think spiritually, they read everything in the Bible in a literal and physical way. For a related article, please see:
Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood
One more factoid on virgin birth: my biology prof. said the human child (and it has happened) would have to be female.
Hi Evelyn,
Yes, biologically that would be the case. However, as presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ birth was not purely biological. The main point of including the part about “spectacular real virgin births” in the article was to show that the idea of a virgin birth is not quite as outlandish as people often think it is.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the article.
We know that the word “love” has multiple meanings. Contemporary or old Greek or Latin dictionaries have many definitions for “love”. For us it is important to know what the word “love” means in the New Testament. And in my humble opinion meaning of “love” in the New Testament differs from contemporary meaning of “love”. At least, we think that “love” is an emotion or affection, but imho in the New Testament love is not an affection, but a relation.
Things became more complex if we consider Swedenborg’s writings about love. He wrote in “Divine Love and Wisdom” (#1): “Man knows that there is such a thing as love, but he does not know what love is. … although the word love is so universally used, hardly anybody knows what love is.” And later (#40): “The idea of men in general about love and about wisdom is that they are like something hovering and floating in thin air or ether or like what exhales from something of this kind. Scarcely any one believes that they are really and actually substance and form.”
In my opinion it would be good if you give a definition – what the word “love” means in the article: affection, relation, warm, wish to be good (to give away all you have) or something else.
Thank you,
Vitaly
Hi Vitaly,
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. Instead of writing some lengthy reply, I’ll refer you to an article in which I do delve into what “love” means, and is:
How do I Love God with my Whole Heart?
It even links to Divine Love and Wisdom #1!
Thank you Lee, Great article!
Maybe you’ve written something about what is Good (Lat. Bonum)?
Hi Vitaly,
You know, even though Swedenborg uses the word bonum all the time, he never really defines it, though he does describe it in different ways, such as saying that whatever we love we call good. He also doesn’t define verum, “truth,” all that clearly. Apparently he thought the meanings of these common words were so obvious that it wasn’t even necessary to define them.
And in a way, they are.
Good is . . . something good. We also use that word all the time to describe things we like or love—just as Swedenborg says. Good and love are inextricably bound together. Anything that feeds and delights our love is good. If our love is a good one, then its good is truly good. But if our love is a bad one, then what we call “good” is actually evil. For example, food that is healthful is good, and if we enjoy healthful living, then we call it good. But if we live only to eat and please our palate, we will eat all sorts of food that we call “good,” but that is actually bad for us, and is therefore bad food, not good food.
And truth is . . . something true. If what we think and say matches reality, then it is true. If it doesn’t, it is false. If we look up in the middle of a sunny day and say, “The sky is blue,” then we have spoken a truth. But if we say, “The sky is yellow,” we have spoken an untruth because the sky is blue, not yellow. So at the most basic level, truth is an accurate picture of reality, and falsity is an inaccurate and distorted picture of reality.
Something to know about the Latin words bonum and verum is that they are not actually nouns. Technically, they shouldn’t be translated “good” and “truth.” Rather, they are substantive adjectives. Adjectives describe nouns, such as “a good souffle” or “a true statement.” Adjectives used as substantives (very common in Latin) don’t actually mean “good,” “truth,” and so on, but “something good,” “something true,” and so on. The only way to make them non-abstract is to think of some actual good thing. To use more physical examples: “A good massage.” “A true picture of the scene.”
When reading Swedenborg, if we don’t want to stay stuck in abstractions—which the human mind doesn’t picture and understand all that well—we can consider in our mind some particular good or true thing when he talks about “good” (bonum) and “truth” (verum). Then it will become clearer what he means by these words.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the answer.
But I cannot agree with you that those definitions are natural and obvious. Specifically, with Tarsky-style definition of truth. IMHO in Swedenborg’s work “truth” is related not to statements but to commandments/commands/advices/hopes etc. “Truth” is an advice that leads to good, while “false” is an advice that leads to evil. We can see that in Psalms, e.g. “The war horse is a false hope for salvation” etc. Concerning “bonum”, we can trace its meaning starting from Origen “De Principiis. Book II. Chapter 5. On Justice and Goodness (Lat. De iusto et bono)”: “… the leaders of that heresy (of which we have been speaking) think they have established a kind of division, according to which they have declared that justice is one thing and goodness another…”. But it is just my private opinion 🙂
Hi Vitaly,
Here is a typical example of Swedenborg not defining “good” and “truth” even though he says it is very important to know what they are:
And yet, while the rest of the chapter makes all sorts of statements about goodness and truth, and how they relate to each other, it never provides a definition of what they are.
So . . . what are they? To my knowledge, Swedenborg doesn’t actually tell us. He just says a huge volume of things about them. We are left to define them for ourselves.
So . . . if you are able to come up with a definition of them in Swedenborg’s writings, there will be a whole bunch of people on the editorial staff of the New Century Edition of Swedenborg’s works jumping up and down with excitement!
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the explanation.
And the last my question. Did nobody try to create a dictionary with explanations and history of terms that Swedenborg used in his works?
Hi Vitaly,
There have been several such dictionaries written and published, though they are mostly out of print. Here is one of the more recent ones, published in 1985, which you might still be able to get a copy of:
Words in Swedenborg, and their meanings in modern English, by Frank S. Rose
The link is to its page on Amazon. There is a free web version available here.
Previous to that there was Our New Church Vocabulary, by the Rev. W. Cairns Henderson, published in booklet form in 1966. It is available as a free PDF here.
A still older one is:
Glossary, Or The Meaning of Specific Terms and Phrases Used by Swedenborg in his Theological Writings, by John Stuart Bogg
The link is to a facsimile reprint edition on Amazon. It was originally published in 1915. There is a free web version available here.
Useful information. Thank you, Lee!
Hi Vitaly,
On to the substance of your comment:
At minimum, there are various levels of truth. I was sticking to a rather external and prosaic form of truth just because it’s easier to think about.
Also, in Swedenborg’s usage of good and truth, they ultimately cannot be separated from one another, or neither one is real.
I say “ultimately” because in this life, there is such a thing as “falsity not of evil.” An example of this is someone who believes things that are false, such as that God is a Trinity of Persons, but has a good heart, and therefore that religious falsity not only does not come from evil, but is not “married” to evil, and therefore is not damning. After death, such a person will accept the truth that goes with the person’s good heart. Ultimately, good and truth will go together, but here on earth good may be unequally yoked with falsity.
Ultimately, good and truth must be together to be anything because good is the substance of truth, and truth is the form of good, and for anything to exist in reality, it must have both substance and form.
This suggests that it may be a little too simplistic to say that something such as a commandment is “true” or “truth.” Since a commandment necessarily enjoins action, which has an element of good in it, it seems more likely that a commandment would have elements of both good and truth in it, and not be simply “truth.”
Hi Lee,
When I think of Good and Truth, from my limited understanding of Swedenborg, I think ultimately of the two fundamental aspects of the Divine that can not be separated, as in the marriage of Good and Truth. Or, The marriage of Love and Wisdom. What we know, as mere mortals about the Divine is like a drop in the Ocean. For the seeker, it is encountering the Divine that both humbles us and causes us to wish for a deeper and fuller relationship with Divine Love and Light / Goodness and Truth
I don’t know Latin, yet in a human sense individuals seem to define for themselves what is good, or pleasing; and what is true for them may either be the various things that pleasure a person or the various arguments that sound sensible / agreeable to a person.
Am I wrong then, in suggesting that Swedenborg at least explains Divine Love and Wisdom / Good and Truth in such detail as to essentially define their meaning by extrapolation, if by no other means? Then, as for individuals are we not left in freedom to define what is good and true according to our own individual freewill? A freewill that may or may not have subjugated itself to The Leading, or the Guidance of the Divine?
I apologize in advance if my phrasing is not clear. While I was born into and English language speaking speaking family, English, I have come to realize, is not my Native Language. 🙂
Hi Chris,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your good thoughts and questions. There is a lot here—more than I can do justice to in a comment. But here are a few thought in response.
Love and wisdom form the core being of God, as the substance and form of God, from which all of God’s words and actions flow. Since they are infinite in God, it is hard for us to define them, because they will always go beyond our definitions. But yes, we can gain a sense of them by extrapolation from everything Swedenborg, the Bible, and other sacred literature says about them.
Because they are the substance and form of God, and we are made in the image and likeness of God, love and wisdom, or good and truth, are also our substance and form as human beings. They are what make us who and what we are. Each of us has a unique “ruling” or primary love, and each of us draws to us the wisdom that goes with that love and expresses it.
Unlike God, our love and wisdom are finite, not infinite. “Limited” also means “defined.” There are boundaries around our love and wisdom, which give them a specific character. That is the sense in which we define good and truth for ourselves. We decide what our love and our good is going to be, and we draw to us the wisdom and the truth that support them and give them form and expression.
It is not wrong to define our good and truth. In fact, that’s what we are put here on earth to do. People who live a good, heaven-bound life, whether they understand what they are doing or not, are choosing what particular part of the divine love and wisdom they will express. This is the good sense in which we “define our own good and truth.”
However, it becomes evil when instead of choosing to define ourselves as the expression of some aspect of divine good and truth, we choose to define ourselves in opposition to divine good and truth. This happens when we put material things ahead of other people in our mind life, and our own self and our own pleasure and power ahead of God in our mind and life. When we define our good and truth in opposition to divine love and wisdom in this way, we are creating a life of hell for ourselves, and that is where we will go, of our own free will, after death.
However, as long as we define our good and truth in a way that makes it a particular, finite expression of some part of the infinite divine love and wisdom, then it is a good thing. It makes us the unique individuals we are, and forms us into a citizen of the community of heaven, which is God’s kingdom in the spiritual world.
Hi Lee,
Sorry, what is “substance”? Is it modern word or Aristotelian-scholastic word? The same with “form”.
Hi Vitaly,
Yes, those are philosophical terms. But the meaning is not that complicated. Substance is the stuff something is made of. Form is its structure, shape, appearance, and such.
The substance of a chair is the wood, metal, fabric, and whatever else it is made of. The form is its shape and structure: legs, seat, back, and so on that cause it to be a chair, and not a table or a door.
The substance of God is love. The form of God is wisdom.
Thank you for your beautiful reply, Lee!
When someone has lead a self-absorbed life due to whatever circumstances – A childhood trauma, PTSD, an inward-turned intellect, or perhaps the lack of paternal love. Patterns develop. Let’s say that the person in question follows self-absorbed patterns most of their life, but without the social skills needed to interact well with others they find that when they become vulnerable and step out of their shell that human contact and human interaction all goes awry. They are frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted by others leading to a sense of colossal failure, heartbreak and abject loneliness.
Can you speak to how Divine Mercy / Grace might help the one who feels lost in the patterns of their own making but wishes to break free? What are the assurances that we are held in the arms of LOVE even when we are unable to feel it? And lastly how can we bring that love into our hearts in order that we might actually feel in and truly live?
Thank you, in advance for your answers.
Lee,
You wrote: “The form of God is wisdom”. Why not: “form of God is Human form”? Form of love is wisdom – ok.
Hi Vitaly,
“The form of God is wisdom” is the abstract principle. In concrete terms, yes, God’s form is a human form.
We are human, not because we have a human-shaped body, but because we have a human mind. And our mind is formed of love and wisdom, or in somewhat more current psychological terms, will (motivation) and understanding (a thinking mind). That, together with free will, is what makes us human. Everything we say and do as human beings comes from our will and understanding.
The same is true of God, who is human in form not because God has arms, legs, and so on (which the Bible does attribute to God), but because God has love for others outside of God’s self, and wisdom to create and maintain a universe in which those beings can live their lives and either return or not return God’s love, depending upon their own freely made choices. This, of course, refers to the human beings God has made.
Hi Christopher,
You don’t ask any small questions, do you! But that’s what we’re here for.
The first thing to know is that no genetic or outside influences that have affected us and constrained us as a person are held against us spiritually. It is only the choices we make out of our own free will as self-responsible adults within the field of possible choices that become part of our spiritual “account,” so to speak.
This is not to say that we aren’t affected by circumstances that come from the outside, such as childhood trauma, PTSD, having a naturally introverted personality, lack of paternal love, and so on. Clearly these have a major influence on the course of a person’s life. However, these are not things that people choose; they are things that happen to people outside of their choice and control. Therefore they are “canceled out of the equation” when we enter the spiritual world and begin our journey toward our final home in heaven or in hell. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that they are taken into account as forces beyond our control, which are not held against us.
The second thing to know is that we aren’t judged by whether we are “nice” to people, or good at social interaction, or a “well-adjusted person,” or any of those things. Rather, the focus will be on whether, with our life, we did something for people other than ourselves because we care about people, and not only about ourselves. Practically speaking, did we work a job, or jobs, that benefited other people? And when we worked those jobs, did we do our best to do a good job for people because we wanted to make their lives better, or at least not as bad?
In short, it’s what we do with our lives, in practical terms, that matters, not how socially adept or awkward we are when we do it.
The third thing to know is that for people who are so badly damaged by genetic, childhood, and/or environmental circumstances that they never really have a chance to live a useful life of service, those limiting circumstances will be removed or healed in the spiritual world sufficiently for the person to grow into a healthy and working adulthood in the spiritual world. It will be as if they died as a child or teen—which in many ways they are inwardly—and grew up from there in heaven.
And the fourth thing to know is that heaven, not hell, is the default option for everyone from birth. If a person has not reached self-responsible adulthood, or due to circumstances beyond his or her control did not have the opportunity to live a reasonably sound adult life, that person will always end out in heaven, not in hell. No one goes to hell by accident or due to outward circumstances. Only by persistently and stubbornly choosing to live out of selfishness and greed when he or she was perfectly capable of making the other choice.
For people who are contending with major hurtful influences on their life, especially if those influences were in place all the way from childhood, it can be very hard to feel that there are any arms of love holding them. Some may have to move on to the spiritual world before realizing that God was there all the time, carrying them through and preparing a place for them in heaven.
Meanwhile, the work we have to do here is to find some way that we can be useful to others, and do that work. Even if it is small and seemingly insignificant, the fact that we made the effort and did the work to provide at least some small service to other people here on earth will lay the foundation for great joy and satisfaction in heaven. For extreme introverts, this may not involve face-to-face interactions with people. But there are still plenty of things we can do that don’t involve personal interactions—especially in this electronic and Internet age.
No one promised that life here on this earth would be easy. For many people, it is excruciatingly difficult. All that’s required of us is that we keep putting one foot in front of the other, and search for ways we can be of use to our fellow human beings because we believe they are worthy of our help and support. As the parable says, if we are faithful in very little, God will multiply that greatly when it comes our time to enter the spiritual world and begin our life in heaven.
Tears. Thank you so much Lee, for your beautiful response.
Beautiful response indeed please.
Light has come to south Africa!! (Or was it not said please, that Mr Lee and his family moved down there?). South Africans better take absolute advantage of the light whilst it endures with them, lest they make no effect out of time and heaven approaching earth.
Be that as it verily may sir, I am only quite inclined to relay on behalf of a good number, our tremendous appreciation for your ever-enthusiastic effort over time in kingdom building and burden easening.
It is simply evident the good seeds sown(in your articles) keep generating interminably, fruits of beneficial as well as intellectual contentions, enquiries and pure addons, reciprocated by your ever accurate and divine replies. Would we talk about your exquisite and essential sense of humor, your experienced teaching methodology with excellent & relatable anologies or perhaps, your presumably big-hearted approach to our spiritual plight in this life.. We certainly cannot thank you enough sir.
Please suffice me to thusly supplicate that, may consistent grace, protection & blessings ever abound over you and the family sir.
Please well done with all sir.
Hi Toba,
Thank you so much for your beautiful and kind words. Just reading them lifts my spirit. God puts us where we are needed. Here in Africa we can do God’s work in the beautiful culture and among the beautiful people here. We receive many more blessings than we give.
Hi Lee. So, did Jesus come to save people from Hell in the afterlife, or did he come to save people from Hell on Earth now? And if he did come to save people from Hell on Earth, how? Also, why did he have to die as a result?
Hi Ray,
These are very big questions! Primarily Jesus came to save people’s souls from hell. He was not so focused on the physical and political situation here on earth. He said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). This does not mean God doesn’t care about our physical suffering and about political oppression in this world. But it does mean that God’s primary focus is on giving us spiritual life.
As for why the Lord had to die, that also is a huge question! There are many good answers. For now, I will just point out Jesus’ own words before his death: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Being willing to die for us demonstrates that Jesus has the greatest possible love for us—infinite love, in fact.
So, he didn’t have to die to fulfill some prophecy of Salvation, but chose to die to show how much God loves us.
Hi Ray,
Nothing Jesus did was merely to fulfill prophecy, even if it may sometimes seem that way from the wording of the Gospels. Everything he did was for a deeper purpose. The prophecies were also about that deeper purpose, even though they are commonly worded in physical terms. Everything in the Bible, both Old Testament and New, points to deeper spiritual realities.
Consider that God is not limited by time and space. When God inspired the human writers of the Old Testament, God also saw what to them was a future event, but what to God is a present event: God’s own birth and life as a human being here on earth. The story of Jesus’ inner life during his lifetime on earth was already embedded in the narratives and prophecies of the Old Testament. This may seem impossible to believe, but it is true. (For a little more on this, please see: “Does God Change?” and “If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?”)
The Gospels speak of various prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. Most of them are fairly external and physical in nature. That’s not because the prophecies themselves are about physical things, but to lead physical-minded people to understand and believe that Jesus was the One of whom the Old Testament prophets spoke.
Back to your main question, Jesus’ death accomplished many things. Showing God’s great love for us was one of them. Another was showing that God can overcome even death. Jesus did not stay in the grave. He rose again, showing us physical-minded people that death is not the end. Another is that Jesus’ passion on the Cross was his final battle against, and victory over, the powers of evil and hell, as demonstrated by the resurrection. But this would take too long to cover in a comment.
Hi Lee!
I watch a lot of apologetics videos on YouTube and the last one i watched used an analogy that remembered me so much of your article!
The important part is near the end, but for all the context you can watch the entire video if you want 🙂
Also, i download the Swedenborg Reader App you recommended, it is amazing to find so much content in my language! Blessings!
Hi caionsouza,
Glad you’ll be able to enjoy Swedenborg in Portuguese! I’m away from home for a few days. I’ll watch that video when I get home.
Hi Lee! No prob 🙂
Just a small suggestion, you can call me just Caio, that is my first name!
Hi Caio,
Nice video. Thanks.
If one finds it hard to relate to people for whatever reason (especially if one is on the so-called autism spectrum) and prefers to relate to God as an incomprehensible Father rather than a Divine Human Son, can that cause any serious spiritual issues or easily lead to a lower part of Heaven than one would otherwise go to (assuming one is Heaven-bound in first place)?
PS: By which I mean God being Christ is not that important (though not necessarily rejected), and the preferred image of God is a transcendent Power beyond space, time, and form (rather than a being of flesh or the Divine equivalent)?
Hi K,
I think that having a personal relationship with God can carry a person farther along the path of regeneration than having no personal relationship with God. Still, regeneration is not a contest to see who wins. However far we go, the heaven we go to will be the happiest and most perfect place we can imagine. That is just as true for people in the lowest heaven as it is for people in the highest heaven.
But is preferring to relate to God as the Father rather than in human form (the Son) detrimental spiritually?
And of course, where one goes in Heaven is not a contest, but it is better for oneself to be closer than further.
Hi K,
I wouldn’t say it’s detrimental. It’s just, in a sense, an earlier stage of spiritual life. Also, if people at least think of God as a human figure, even if as a distant human figure, then there is some element of the interpersonal in the relationship, and it can move their spiritual life forward in a way that isn’t so possible if God is seen as being impersonal, as some sort of “force,” etc.
Hi K,
I should add that although being able to picture God as a human being is best, second best is at least attributing human mental and emotional characteristics to God such as love, understanding, compassion, mercy, patience, and so on.
So if one prefers to think of and relate to God as being a sapient being, yet beyond form (body), that should not be spiritually detrimental? Especially if one also acknowledges that He has a bodily manifestation (the Son)?
PS: In other words, viewing God sort of like how Muslims view Allah, but especially when also acknowledging God can manifest in a body as Christ.
Hi K,
I understand. Again, I wouldn’t say it’s detrimental. Just limiting.
Years ago, my wife and I rented a truck to move our belongings across the country. The truck worked just fine. But once it hit 65 mph, it wouldn’t go any faster. There was a governor on it to cap the speed. On the highway I could keep the pedal on the floor, and it would just cruise along at 65.
That’s a crude analogy for relating to God as a sapient being, yet beyond bodily form. Everything will work fine, but there’s a limit on how fast and far a person can go. Recognizing that God can manifest in a body as Christ helps, but if there’s no personal relationship with God as Christ, the limits are still there.
The reason for this is that our relationship with God colors our relationship with our fellow human beings. However we conceptualize and approach God, that will heavily influence, if not determine, how we conceptualize and approach other people. If we have a distant, impersonal relationship with God, we’ll tend to keep an emotional, and even physical, distance between ourselves and other people, limiting how far (in this case how close) our relationships with them can go.
And since loving God and loving our neighbor is the core of religion, if we’re limited in how close we can get to God and the neighbor in love, we’re limited in how far we can travel along the path of regeneration.
It’s not that we can’t regenerate, go to heaven, and live a very happy life. It’s just that, like the truck with the governor, there will be limits imposed by the impersonal nature of our relationship with God and with other people.
Perhaps the bigger issue here is one of fairness. We want everyone to be able to regenerate to the highest level. That seems fair. But the reality is that life is not fair, especially here on earth, and the unfairness and inequality does impose limits on how far individual people can go spiritually, just as it imposes limits on how far individual people can go socially, financially, intellectually, and so on.
But our concept of fairness is not the same as God’s concept of fairness.
Also, for the most part, we are the ones who impose the limitations on ourselves as a race. Most of the poverty and disease in the world is human-caused, even if it isn’t all caused by the individuals who suffer from it.
God’s concept of fairness is that God gives everyone an opportunity to go to heaven, not to hell, and that if anyone does not go to heaven, it is the person’s own fault due to their bad choices when he or she was perfectly capable of choosing good instead. And God’s concept of fairness is that those who do choose good will, when they arrive in heaven, be able to live the happiest life they can imagine.
The reason God’s concept of fairness is not providing the same outcome for everyone (life in the highest heaven) is that this would violate our freedom and destroy our humanity.
It would be perfectly possible theoretically for God to elevate everyone up to the highest heaven. But doing so would mean God would override our own life, choices, desires, and actions, and impose God’s will on us instead. We would therefore no longer be in freely and rationally chosen relationships with God and with our fellow human beings, but would become programmed robots. As a result, none of our relationships would be real, and our life would not be our own life, but someone else’s (God’s).
Further, since we are social beings who live in community, not isolated individuals, our choices for good or evil affect not only ourselves, but a widening circle of people all around us. If a mother is drug-addicted while carrying a baby, the baby is going to be affected. If a father is abusive, the children are going to be affected. If powerful people grind poor people under their ambitions, poor people are going to be affected. And all of this will affect these people spiritually as well as physically.
What it won’t do is block anyone from going to heaven. God’s fairness is providing a pathway to heaven for everyone, no matter what their physical or social or political or financial circumstances might be. But what it will do is put limits (like a governor) on how far people can go in their path of regeneration.
Some extraordinary individuals will break free from that governor, and go far beyond where they “should” be able to go. But most people will live within the constraints imposed upon them from the outside. If they are good-hearted and make good choices, they will live the best life they can within those constraints.
And once again, everyone who chooses good over evil within his or her particular constraints will spend eternity living a life that is as happy as he or she can imagine. No one will worry about whether s/he could have been happier, or in a higher heaven. That’s because each person will be living his or her own perfect life.
And in the big picture, heaven needs people on all levels. If everyone went to the highest heaven, who would do the intellectual heavy-lifting (spiritual heaven) and the blue collar work (earthly heaven)? It would be like having a whole society full of therapists and charity workers, and no one to design, build, and maintain the houses, cars, and other infrastructure that they use every day to accomplish their tasks.
Soon after moving to Paraguay, I bought a gas trimmer (popularly known as a weedeater) to mow our small lawn. It’s had a lot of problems, mostly because the extreme heat here causes stored gasoline to go bad very quickly. An older neighbor of mine brought me to a friend of his who runs a small engine repair service. This man is also elderly, somewhat stooped over, and so on. And he’s a whiz at fixing small engines. He has a young guy working for him. The young guy regularly turns to him for help with this or that problem on a chainsaw or whatever.
While he’s working, the old man talks, jokes, and laughs with my neighbor. (I don’t speak the language yet, so he can’t talk with me much.) The place is a complete mess. Old broken machines are piled up all over the place. There are parts scattered around here and there. And the guy is in his heaven. He enjoys his work and he’s good at it. He enjoys the flow of people coming in and out to get their machines fixed.
Would he want my job, writing and editing religious texts? Not at all! If you set him in front of a computer and told him to research some theological term in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, he would be profoundly uncomfortable. He has no interest whatsoever in doing my work. It’s my work, not his. Put him back in a messy small engine repair shop and give him some tools and some chainsaws and trimmers to fix, and he’ll be happy as a clam.
That’s how it is for people in the lower heavens. They’re not pining away, wishing they had regenerated farther so that they could be in the highest heaven. They’re in their own heaven right now—and they’re enjoying it to the fullest.
And that’s a good thing, or my lawn would never get mowed!
So someone who prefers to relate to God as a person yet beyond body (like Muslims with Allah, more or less) but acknowledges He can manifest in a body can completely regenerate or go higher after death, but it’s not a sure thing?
And in any case, to see if I have this right, God the Father is sorta like Allah of Islam in that He is beyond form yet sapient, but God the Son is the bodily form He is in so humanity can approach Him?
Hi K,
Nothing is beyond form. For anything to exist, including God, it must have both substance and form. This is a fundamental of reality. That’s because God is substance and form, aka love and wisdom. Love is God’s substance. Wisdom is God’s form. Without wisdom, which is the form of God, there is no God, and there is nothing at all.
Also, there is no such thing as “God the Father and God the Son.” The New Testament never uses the term “God the Son.” Only “God the Father.” The term “God the Son” came into use later among lapsed Christians who had divided God into three gods.
The term that the Bible uses is “the Son of God,” which is not the same as “God the Son.” Jesus was literally the son of God during his earthly lifetime, since he had an earthly mother and a divine father (God). But Jesus no longer is the son of God. He is simply God. For us now, “the Son of God” is simply the human expression of God. It is now purely metaphorical, not literal as it was during Jesus’ lifetime on earth. There is no “Son of God” if this is thought of as an entity distinct from God. And there is no “God the Son,” period.
It is true that before the Incarnation, God did not have a body in the usual sense. Before the incarnation, God took visible form and appeared to people by “borrowing” the body of an angel, so to speak, and filling it with God’s presence so that God could appear to people and speak to people on earth.
However, now that the Incarnation has happened, God does have a body. It is made of divine substance rather than of physical matter like our physical body, or even of spiritual substance like our spiritual body. God’s body, like all of God, is entirely divine.
And God’s body cannot be separated from God. We can’t say, “There’s God, and then there’s God’s body.” God’s body is God. God’s body is part of God. This means that when anyone, Christian or non-Christian, approaches God, s/he is approaching all of God, including God’s body. In fact, s/he is approaching God through God’s body, even if s/he doesn’t believe that God has a body. This is what Jesus meant when he said:
He didn’t say, “No Christian comes to the Father except through me.” He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” This means that Muslims and Jews come to the Father through him just as Christians do, even if they don’t believe it. There is no other way to approach the Father, meaning God. This is why the Gospel of John says:
And Jesus makes it clear that “God” here means the same thing as “the Father”:
What all of this means is that everyone approaches “the Father” through “the Son.” This includes lapsed Christians who pray directly to the Father, contrary to Jesus’ own words. It includes Muslims who pray to Allah. It includes Jews who pray to Elohim. It includes Native Americans who pray to the Great Spirit. And so on.
The only question is whether people are aware that in reality, their prayers are going to “the Father” through “the Son.” I.e., whether they’re aware that their prayers are going to God’s soul via God’s body. Just as we cannot approach another person’s mind directly, but only through his or her body, so we cannot approach the Father directly, but only through the Son.
To get closer to answering your actual questions, it’s not that God can manifest in a body. It’s that God has manifested in a body, and is manifest in a body. Recognizing that God can do this, but not that God has and is doing this, is having a mistaken understanding of God, aka a false picture of God. And falsity does cause damage to our spiritual life, even if we hold to it innocently.
This is why I say that not approaching God as a human being, complete with a body, puts limits on how far we can go in our regeneration process. It cuts us off from the highest levels of regeneration, which involve having a direct, personal relationship with God. It is an interpersonal relationship of mutual love. Without this, we cannot have the type of loving relationships with our fellow human beings that the highest angels have with their fellow angels—and really, with everyone, though it is not always mutual when the highest angels are engaging with lower angels, or with evil spirits.
What can ameliorate this is at least thinking of God as a human being, and picturing God in human form. If God is seen, for example, as a human being sitting high up on a throne in heaven beyond our reach, but still human, and still looking down on us with human thoughts and feelings, this can move people farther along on the path of regeneration than thinking of God as some disembodied and formless being. Even seeing God as a spiritual sun (which is an “orb of light”) that has a human face can be enough to minimally personalize God for us, so that God is no longer a formless and impersonal being in our mind and heart.
In other words, someone who relates to God as a person, but without a body, can progress farther than someone who relates to God as an entirely formless and impersonal being. But this type of semi-personal relationship with God will not have the spiritual power to carry a person all the way to the final stages of the regeneration process.
The “temptations,” or spiritual trials, that a person goes through in the later stages of regeneration require a human and personal relationship with God. In biblical terms, they require us to think of God as a Father, meaning someone who is a human being and loves us as a father loves his child. Otherwise we will simply not have the emotional strength and support to make it through those trials. As a result, God will not allow us to face them, because God knows that if we did, we would fail. Even Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prayed to God as a father:
Without this sense of God as a father, as a human being who is with him personally and loves him with a deep and human love, Jesus would not have been able to endure the spiritual trial he was about to go through on the Cross.
Similarly, without the sense of God as a personal and human being who is with us, cares for us, and loves us with a deeply human love, we cannot make it through the deepest trials and temptations that we must go through to reach the seventh day of rest, which is the final stage of regeneration, and which is living in the third or highest heaven.
For a related article, please see:
Is it Right to Call Jesus “Father”?
I thought the way it worked in New Church belief is that the Father aspect of God is incomprehensible: omnipresent and thus beyond form, while the Son aspect is His bodily manifestation (like an avatar), and the Holy Spirit aspect is His action. Is that pretty much how it is?
If God is only God as His body, then He cannot be omnipresent, even in the spiritual realm, as He would appear in only one place there (or one state which place corresponds to). But if His body is like an avatar of Him, then He can be omnipresent while also manifesting in a state (place) in the spiritual realm. Or during the Incarnation, be in a body in this world while also omnipresent and managing the entire universe and beyond.
At any rate, as long as one believes God is a sapient being (rather than an impersonal force) and also has a body, that should not be detrimental or limiting spiritually, even if one focuses more on God as a transcendent omnipresent Being (that manifests as that body)?
Hi K,
I would suggest not worrying so much about whether current beliefs or mindset or physical/mental issues may be a limitation on spiritual progress. Each one of us has our own path. The main thing is to walk that path, choosing the good over the evil all along the way. Beyond that, it’s in God’s hands. If we do our part, God will do God’s part.
Speaking for myself, I don’t have any expectation that I will be regenerated to the highest level of heaven. I suspect that, assuming I get into heaven at all, the middle, or spiritual, heaven is as far as I’ll get. Am I worried about that? No. Because whatever heaven I’m in, it will be the right one for me. I’m pretty much an intellectual. I’m not a heart-centered person like the people in the highest heaven, and I don’t think I ever will be. So I just focus on doing the work God has put in front of me, and I leave the rest to God. Heaven needs all kinds of people.
But about your actual questions:
Again, God is one being, not three. There is not one being that is the Father, another that is the Son, and a third that is the Holy Spirit. In the Christian Trinity the Son is the form of the Father, and the Father is the substance of the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the action that flows from that union of substance and form, meaning of love and wisdom. There is not a “Father-aspect” as if that is something separate from a “Son-aspect.” The two are inseparably one.
Even before the Incarnation, God was not formless. There was still a “trine” in God, to use the old translation, consisting of love, wisdom, and action. Love was (and still is) the substance, wisdom was (and still is) the form, and everything God said and did was (and still is) the action. There simply isn’t any formless aspect of God. Again, nothing can exist—not even God—without both substance and form.
We can’t know the Father directly because the core being of God is beyond our comprehension. It’s not that it’s formless. It’s that it has infinite form, which is beyond the capability of our finite minds to grasp.
Also, it is God’s soul, and we can’t even approach or know another human being’s soul directly. We can know another person only by means of that person’s expression in and through his or her body. Even if we were to get to know someone purely through ESP, that would still be the person’s spiritual mind—i.e., thinking part, or form—reaching out to us, not that person’s soul, or inner love part contacting us directly. It is not possible for us to know the inmost heart and soul even of another person directly, let alone knowing God’s inmost heart and soul directly.
That’s why God is embodied: so that we can know God through the outward expressions of God’s inmost self. It’s not that we can’t know the Father. It’s that we can know the Father only through the Son, meaning we can know God’s soul, which is divine love, only through God’s body, which is divine wisdom.
About God’s body, since it, too, is made of divine substance, it is not subject to or limited by time and space. Like all of God, it is all space and all time without being spatial or temporal. It can therefore appear anywhere God wants it to, even in more than one place simultaneously, just as God is present everywhere, in all time and space, to all people everywhere and in all eras. It is not an avatar. It is God’s own personal presence. But it is divine, not physical or spiritual.
This is not easy for us to comprehend or conceptualize, because we created humans have only a material and a spiritual level, which are limited by time and space and by their spiritual analogs, respectively. We can think about a completely timeless and spaceless entity abstractly, but actually comprehending it so that it fully makes sense to us and we can wrap our head around it is beyond our capabilities. We just have to understand that God, including God’s body, is not in any way, shape, or form limited by time and space as we are.
Oh, and it’s not that “God is only God as His body.” It’s that all of God is now embodied. God is more than a body. But God has a body, and all of God is present in that body. It’s the same as it is for us. We are not just a body. But everything of us is present in our body, and expresses itself through our body. There is no part of us that is not embodied, because our body—especially our spiritual body—expresses our entire being, right down to its smallest details.
Back to your final question: Believe in God, follow the truth, do good, and let God worry about the rest. By worrying we can’t add an inch to our height, nor can we add a single mile to our journey of regeneration. Walk the walk. Follow the path. That’s all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands.
PS: If someone has an aversion to God having a human body from mental disability, that aversion goes away after death and does not inhibit that person from going where they otherwise would have gone had they not had mental disability?
Hi K,
Our physical, mental, social, and financial circumstances here on earth do affect our spiritual path. It’s not a level playing field except in the general sense that we all have an equal opportunity to go to heaven rather than to hell. As for the currently popular, but unattainable, equality of outcomes, that’s just not realistic. Some people are going to go farther than others. And that is greatly affected by circumstances beyond our control, such as mental health issues that we didn’t bring upon themselves by, say, doing lots of drugs or consistently avoiding making the required choices and taking the required steps to move our life forward, resulting in personal collapse.
People can scream “Unfair!” all they want. But reality keeps right on lumbering along. The reality is that we live in a world and a universe in which some people just aren’t going to do as well as others. Perhaps that offends some people and turns them against God if they think that God is the cause of it. But that, too is futile. We can question God if we want, but God is going to keep right on operating by God’s rules, not by our rules.
And once again, the fact is that much of the damage that prevents many people from reaching their full potential is caused by us. We’ve done far more damage to ourselves, and killed and maimed far more people, than all the natural disasters in history combined. Before we shake our fist at God, it would be a good idea to get our own house in order, and stop doing all the stupid, greedy, and destructive things that are causing people to have all the physical and mental conditions that limit their ability to reach their full potential.
Meanwhile, God takes the mess we’ve made of things, and brings the best possible outcome from it given all the limitations we’ve put on ourselves. Even someone who becomes only “a doorkeeper in the house of my God” (Psalm 84:10) is happier in heaven than most people on earth can possibly imagine being. I.e., even someone who barely makes it into heaven will still live a very, very happy life.
As I’ve said many times before, in the afterlife our mental disabilities will be taken away, and we will be able to live a fully normal human life. But the past cannot be undone. If physical or mental issues or limitations (“handicaps” in the old terminology) have limited our spiritual progress, that’s just the reality of the situation. We will still be an integral part of heaven, there will still be work to do that only we can do, and we will still live the happiest life we can imagine.
Once again, I recommend not worrying about this. God takes the mess we’ve made of things and brings the best possible outcome from it given the circumstances. The real solution is for all of us to do the work of regeneration so that we stop hurting and destroying each other and ourselves. Then maybe our children and grandchildren can make it farther than we did, and our labors will not have been in vain.
But no one with mental disability is bound for hell, even if they have disability that impairs empathy? Just like that article you wrote about gang members being able to make it into Heaven?
Hi K,
Right. No mental disability, or anything else outside a person’s control, can cause a person to go to hell. People are judged within the capabilities they have available to them. Someone who has a mental disability that impairs empathy, but who still endeavors to live a good life as he or she is able, will go to heaven, not to hell. Even someone who lacks empathy can intellectually affirm that s/he must treat people decently, engage in some sort of service that is of use to other other people, and so on, and live that way based on principle.
PPS: What are the spiritual trials that a person goes through in the final stages of regeneration that require a human and personal relationship with God?
Hi K,
In general, just as we each have three parts to us, popularly known as heart, head, and hands, so there are three types of temptations:
Temptations in behavior are the usual sort that everyone faces. “I know it’s wrong to steal, but that candy sure looks good, and I don’t have any money in my pocket.” And so on. These are temptations to do something that we know is wrong, but that we really want to do because of the pleasure or advantage it will give us.
Before we can make it any farther on the path of regeneration, we must beat back these basic temptations toward bad behavior. As long as we are doing what is wrong with our hands, feet, and mouth, we are stuck on the lowest tier. Getting our behavior in check so that we are not breaking the basic rules of the Ten Commandments is the first step of regeneration.
What we will next face is temptations in the realm of ideas. We’ve gotten our behavior in check so that we’re decent, respectable people. We’ve got a job, and we do a good job of it because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Everything seems fine.
And then a midlife crisis hits. We wonder why we’re even doing all this. Maybe, by keeping our nose clean and being a good dooby, we’re just missing all the fun and excitement of life. Maybe I could have so much more! And what, really, is the purpose of life? What’s the point of it all? There is a battle of ideas and perspectives in our mind. Different philosophies of life vie for our attention. Some say we’re like gods! We should be the rulers, not the ruled! Others say that if we follow certain secret techniques that nobody knows, all the things we desire will fall into our lap. And so on.
Once again, it is a battle of good vs. evil, of selfishness vs. selflessness, but now it is a battle of the mind, to see what belief or philosophy will control us, so that we will live by it. The choice we make this time will also affect our behavior, like the earlier choices when we were on the behavioral level of temptation, but now it is a battle for control of our thinking mind, which will then direct our hands, feet, and mouth to do its bidding, whether good or bad.
Let’s say we’re victorious in this battle. We vanquish the appealing-sounding philosophies that are really all about how I’m better than they are, deserve more, can get more, and so on, if I just follow this little-known secret path . . . or if I’m just plain Machiavellian in my plans and machinations. We’ve chosen instead to follow the high road of loving our neighbor as ourselves, and directing our life by a philosophy of doing what is good for everyone, not just what’s good for ourselves.
This brings us to the next level spiritually, which is the level Swedenborg calls “spiritual,” in contrast to the “natural/earthly” level below it (the behavioral level), and the “heavenly/celestial” level above it. If we progress to this second stage of regeneration, we will live in the middle or spiritual heaven, whereas if we remain on the level of “good behavior because that’s what God commands me to do,” then we’ll live in the lowest or natural/earthly heaven.
But this level of choosing to live by right principles for the good of other people and society is still not the final stage. And as hard as the intellectual battle to overcome all those competing, but essentially self-centered and worldly, philosophies of life was, what’s still ahead of us, if we continue on the path, is far deeper, more difficult, and more painful.
That’s because what’s left is the temptations of the heart and soul. These are not about doing good vs. doing evil, as in the first stage in this three-stage version of the steps of regeneration. They’re not even about getting our head on straight and living from good, correct, and spiritual principles. No, these temptations are about our fundamental character and motives.
My late uncle, the Rev. Dr. George F. Dole, used to tell a story from his years as a Pastor. One day one of the quintessential sweet old ladies of the church came to him after the service. Heaving a heavy sigh, she said, “You know, Rev. Dole, I’ve come to realize that I’m really not a very good person.”
That’s where people get when they are engaging with the deepest and most difficult of temptations, which are temptations of the heart. After having lived a life of putting their behavioral house in order, living by right principles, and devoting themselves to loving their neighbor as themselves, the final level of their own evil is opened up. That is the natural and fundamental self-centeredness of the human heart. Underneath it all, we want something for ourselves. We fight the good fight because we expect a reward in heaven.
When we realize that underneath it all, we’re still just miserable, selfish people, then come the deepest temptations that involve, not an intellectual battle, but a sense of despair right at the core of our being. Not despair about losing worldly goods or reputation or anything like that. Despair over our own basic salvageability. Perhaps we’re just too rotten to the core even to have a hope of being, or having, anything good. Perhaps there is no hope for us. Perhaps we’re just doomed despite all our efforts.
We cannot win these temptations on our own. The whole point of these temptations is to bring us to the point of letting go of control of our own life, and handing it over to God. And a distant, unknowable, impersonal God just won’t do. If we’re going to hand our life over to God at this level, we must know God as a personal and very present friend and a strong shoulder to lean on. In Christian terms, we must know, not just “God,” but the Lord Jesus, who is “God with us.”
Only when we are ready to let go of our own life and hand it over to the Lord can we be victorious in these temptations. And we’re not even the ones who are victorious. It’s the Lord fighting for us and giving us the victory.
In earlier temptations, we thought of it as our own accomplishment. Through the power of our will we beat that bad habit. We used the power of our mind to grasp, hold onto, and follow a good and right philosophy of life.
In these temptations of the heart and soul, we recognize the truth, which is that on our own, we are nothing but evil, miserable, selfish, greedy creatures. We recognize that only God is good, and that we are good only if the Lord is working in us, giving us every bit of love and understanding and compassion that we have. None of it is our own. All of it is the Lord’s.
In these temptations, we reach the point of despair. It feels to us like everything is lost. If, at that point, we do what Job’s wife urged him to do, “curse God and die” (Job 2:9), then we have been defeated, and our life will be very bleak indeed. But if even when it seems that all is lost, and there is nothing good left for us, we still refuse to get angry and lash out at people and at God, but continue to live from love and understanding when there’s nothing left in it for us, then we have overcome, not by our own power, but by the Lord’s power working in us.
On the cross, Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). This is the same feeling of despair that we reach in our final and deepest temptations.
He was, of course, quoting the first line of Psalm 22. And that Psalm correspondentially tells the story of these deepest temptations, and of victory in them through the Lord’s power. But Jesus was also feeling the sense of hopelessness and abandonment expressed in the first line of that Psalm. And in his despair of whether he would be able to achieve his mission of saving the human race, he reached out to God. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” he said (Luke 23:46). Only by completely giving his will over to the will of the Father, which was his own inner divine soul, could he be victorious in his final and greatest temptation.
Most people on this earth simply will not be prepared to let go of their control of their own life in this way. They will hold onto some sense of ego and personal goodness and rightness. They will feel that if they let go of that, there will be nothing left of them, and nothing left of life. And so they will progress no farther than the middle, spiritual level. They will be good principled people. But there will still be some element of ego in it. Taking the final step of “commending their spirit into God’s hands” they just can’t do.
That involves a loss of personal control, which we greatly fear. But on the other side, it is also the beginning of true heavenly innocence. It is an innocence in which we are willing to be led by the Lord like sheep, or like little children. This is how the angels of the highest heaven live. They do not attribute anything to themselves. They don’t put on any airs or think they are good. They know in their gut that only God is good, and that they are in heaven only by the grace and mercy of God.
This childlike innocence is why, from a distance, angels of the highest heaven look like little children, even though up close they look like adults. They have the innocence of being willing to be led by the Lord every day, and every moment. This also gives them the innocence of being the most “harmless” of angels in the sense that they never do any harm to anyone. But they are also the most powerful of the angels, because they are the ones who are closest to God. They are also the ones who put up the least internal resistance to God’s power flowing into them and through them.
People, and angels, who have regenerated to this level can be in the midst of the worst human pain and misery, and be nothing but a good and healing presence. They can be in the presence of the worst, most selfish, destructive, and criminal person, and feel no hate or anger, but only love for that person. Not that they are deceived about his or her nature, its destructiveness, and the need to restrain that person. But they know that “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” They’ve seen into their own heart of evil. They have no illusions but that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). And like God, they have nothing but compassion and love for every living being—even the worst demons in the lowest levels of hell.
Very few people will attain this level of deep and heartfelt love and compassion for all beings, both good and evil. Arriving there requires going through all three levels of regeneration, and reaching the point where God is everything, and we ourselves are nothing. It requires facing the despair of seeing the true nature of the human heart, of our own heart, releasing control of it, and giving our life over entirely to God.
These are the deepest temptations we face, in the final stages of regeneration. Most people would simply fold if they were faced with these depths of evil and despair within their own heart. This is why the Lord doesn’t even open it up for them, and does not allow them to face this kind of harrowing of the soul. It is possible only after we have gone through the earlier two stages of getting our behavior and then our principles of life in order.
Many people will stop at that point, and go no further. Only those who continue on, and walk through the valley of the shadow of death, putting their life into the hands of the Lord as their Shepherd, will emerge on the other side, and be lifted by the Lord up into the heaven of innocence, which is the highest and inmost heaven.
P.S. I will be turning this comment, also, into a post. But not today.
Do people going through the final level of regeneration have to endure abnormal physical hardship every time? Or can they live, physically or outwardly speaking, normal or even easy lives, while still facing those final mental battles?
Like not everyone who completes regeneration has to go to a concentration camp or gulag, nor lose their homes and fall very ill like Job?
Hi K,
These deepest, heart-centered temptations are specifically not about physical pain, hardship, and loss. They are entirely about inner spiritual things having to do with love and understanding. For some people they may also be accompanied by physical and earthly pain and suffering. For others, they will take place within a life that outwardly looks comfortable and peaceful.
Even though the book of Job is not part of Swedenborg’s canon of the Bible, and doesn’t have a continuous, connected spiritual meaning like the books that are part of his canon, Swedenborg says that Job has spiritual meanings in it. The whole book was clearly written as a fictional morality play intended to convey a message. This is not the place to delve into its intended message, but if we think of all Job’s troubles as representing spiritual struggles instead of material ones, then the book takes on a whole new meaning.
PS: LDS (AKA “Mormons”) believe that among adults, only those who are LDS (that is, those who have done all the ordinances) can make it to the highest Heaven as they believe it: the Celestial Kingdom. Everyone else goes to the Terrestrial or Telestial, or even Outer Darkness (the latter of which is only for those who know for certain there is a god and then deny).
Does New Church have a similar belief: that among adults, only those with New Church beliefs can make it to the highest or innermost, or can people of other faiths who have a personal relationship with God make it there as well?
Hi K,
There are no special rules or privileges for New Church people. Anyone who has a personal relationship with God and is willing and able to do the required hard spiritual labor throughout his or her lifetime on earth can follow life’s journey all the way to the highest heaven.