The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. (Matthew 20:1)
Readings
Psalm 103:8–14
The Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
Nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve,
Nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is his love for those who fear him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far he removes our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
For he knows how we are formed,
He remembers that we are dust.
Matthew 20:1–16
The parable of the workers in the vineyard
The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day, and sent them into his vineyard.
About the third hour he went out and saw others standing idle in the marketplace. He told them, “You also go into my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went.
He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour, he went out and found still others standing idle. He asked them, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?”
They answered, “Because no one has hired us.”
He said to them, “You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.”
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last and going to the first.”
The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came, and each received a denarius. So when the ones who were hired first came, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the householder, saying, “These who were hired last worked only one hour, yet you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.”
But he answered one of them, “My friend, I am not treating you unjustly. Didn’t you agree with me for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Isn’t it legal for me to do what I want with my property? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
So the last will be first, and the first will be last; for many are called, but few are chosen.
Arcana Coelestia #9180
Working to deserve heaven
There are people who learn and absorb true ideas from the Bible, or from the teachings of the Church, or from various other people, or even from themselves by drawing their own conclusions—but they do it for the sake of personal gain. In other words, they do it to earn important positions, to gain wealth, or so that they will deserve heaven. In the deeper meaning these are symbolized by “hired servants who will come for their pay”—that is, who must submit themselves and serve.
For religious people, personal gain should be the last priority, not the first. When it is the last priority, it is a servant; but if it is the first priority, it is the master. People who consider personal gain to be the first priority are upside-down people. In the next life, they appear upside-down, with their head in hell. But people who see kindness and faith, and therefore the Lord and the neighbor, as the first priority are right-side-up people. In the next life, they appear upright, with their head in heaven.
Reflection
The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. (Matthew 20:1)
Here we are, still talking about money!
The previous parable of the kingdom of heaven was about the great debt we owe to the Lord, which we can never repay, but which the Lord forgives if we do our best to use what we have been given in acts of mercy and kindness toward our fellow human beings. In our parable for this chapter—the parable of the workers in the vineyard—we have gotten to work doing just that. We have allowed the Lord, who is the “householder” in the parable, to hire us to work in the vineyard of spiritual life. The hook embedded in the parable is about the payment we will receive for our labors—and our attitude both toward the rewards and toward the labor itself.
The most obvious zinger of the parable is that Jesus, in telling it as he does, blatantly flouts the laws of fair wages and equitable hiring practices. Obviously, those who work more should get paid more, and those who work less should get paid less. It’s only fair. And for the Lord to construct a story in which people who have worked just one hour, in the cool part of the day just before sunset, are paid the same as those who have worked twelve back-breaking hours through the heat of the day . . . well, how else can we say it? This guy would have the labor unions picketing his house in short order!
That was exactly the effect that the Lord intended the parable to have on his listeners—and on us today. Parables are not meant to soothe us and confirm us in the things we already “know” and believe. Instead, they are meant to jar our sensibilities, to shake us up, to get us moving beyond the boundaries of our habitual ways of thinking, to expand our level of love and compassion beyond their current smallness. The parables are meant to be subversive. They are intended to break up all our comfortable, habitual, worldly patterns of life.
If this parable annoys you; if it causes you to protest, to inwardly shout, “That’s not fair!” . . . wonderful! It has done its job! It has gotten your attention. It has found a chink in your armor, and is worming its way into your psyche to turn things upside-down there.
The ways of the Lord are radical and revolutionary. They are in direct opposition to many of our most ingrained attitudes and beliefs. They run counter to the world’s values. And the point of this particular parable is that the attitudes common to this world will end out last and lowest, while the spiritual principles that “practical” people see as impractical, if not downright unjust, will be first and highest in the end.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8–9)
Let’s get specific. The “common sense” attitude of the world is, as I mentioned before, that the more we work, the more we get paid. We earn our money through the work we do. And it is obvious to us that if we do more work, we deserve to get paid more.
That is what those workers who were the first to be hired thought. Notice that it says, “He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day.” This implies that there was some bargaining, and he agreed to the rate of pay that the workers bargained for. For those hired later in the day, the householder simply told them, “I will pay you whatever is right.” There was no bargaining. They simply went and did the work, trusting that they would receive just compensation. But not the first ones to be hired; they had to make a deal, assert their rights, get the promise of a specific rate of pay from the householder before doing a lick of work.
That is where we are when we first start out on our spiritual life. Up to that point, we have been living and working for what we can get out of life. For our earlier, materialistic self, the main focus is the reward, the pleasure, the money, the power that we will get if we expend our energy and do some work. The work itself is just a means to that goal. And our goal is satisfied every payday, when we get our wages and can enjoy the fruits of our labor for ourselves and for our family and friends.
When this is our mindset, the most important thing is that we get paid as much as possible for the work we do. We will take a higher paying job even if we don’t like the work as well because more money is obviously better! And like the laborers who were hired first, we will be very jealous of our right to receive what we consider to be just compensation for our work.
Spiritually speaking, this means that as we start out on our course toward heaven, we are focused primarily on heavenly (and material) reward for ourselves. And if we can get some immediate benefits and satisfactions, so much the better! The main idea for us at that time of our lives is that if we are going to go through all the trouble of living according to God’s rules instead of our own, we had certainly better get handsomely rewarded for it!
We speak of “having our priorities backwards,” but in Swedenborg’s colorful language, this attitude describes a person who is “upside-down.” Our feet are where our head should be, and our head is where our feet should be. In other words, we put our own happiness and well-being—which, for truly spiritual people, is at the low end of the priority scale—right up at the top of our priority list.
And what should be at the head of our priority list? We can all answer in unison: loving the Lord and loving our neighbor. Jesus himself said that these are the most important of all the commandments. This means that we are not fully reborn—not fully angels—until our primary goal in life is to love the Lord by loving and serving our fellow human beings, and putting their happiness before our own.
When we are still materialistic in our thinking and motives, this looks completely naïve and ridiculous. In fact, we think it would lead to great injustice and harm if we were to adopt it. But the main harm we are worried about is harm to ourselves. “If I don’t stick up for myself, who will?” That’s how the reasoning goes. As long as we are in the grip of this mindset, we continue to agitate for our own rights, privileges, comforts, and happiness, thinking we are just being “fair,” and doing what “anyone would do.”
But notice that the Lord calls us to work in his vineyard anyway!
When those morning workers bargained with the householder, he didn’t say to them, “Well, if that’s your attitude, I don’t want you working in my vineyard anyway.” No! He went ahead and hired them. And in exactly the same way, the Lord “hires” us to work in his spiritual vineyard even if we start out with many faulty attitudes. The point is to get us moving, get us working toward spiritual life—and let the rest sort itself out along the way.
Now let’s consider the workers who were hired during the day. In those times, the work day was twelve variable hours, reaching from dawn to dusk. In the summer, the hours would be longer, and in winter they would be shorter, in order to fill the day. The grape harvest in Palestine begins in August, the hottest month of the year, and reaches into October. So it spans the fall equinox, when days and nights are of equal length.
Roughly speaking, then, the workers we have been focusing on so far—those hired at the beginning of the day—started at our six o’clock am, and worked until six o’clock pm, a full twelve hours that stretched through some of the hottest days of the year. More were hired at the third hour, our nine o’clock am; the sixth hour, our twelve o’clock noon; the ninth hour, our three o’clock pm; and finally the eleventh hour, our five o’clock pm, just an hour before the workday ended.
And not only were they all paid the same wage that the twelve-hour workers received, but the last hires got their wages first, and those who had started first had to wait until last!
From a material world perspective, this is all wrong. But it begins to make sense when we think of each crop of workers as a new development in our spiritual life and growth. As I already mentioned, those hired at the beginning of the day represent the beginnings of our spiritual life, when we are still thinking, “What’s in it for me?” We bargain with God, trying to get the best eternal deal for ourselves. As we start out on our spiritual path, we are still thinking of ourselves first, and of God and other people afterwards.
Notice that these workers later complain that they “have borne the burden and the heat of the day.” When we are in our natural state, and thinking of ourselves first, spiritual growth is, indeed, hard, hot labor! We face many struggles in overcoming our natural selfishness and our societally approved materialism. It is a burden for us not to think of our own advantage first, but to give others equal consideration. We get hot under the collar at the thought that others might get spiritual benefits without all the struggles we have to face in order to “get paid.”
To put it another way, we must face the heat of our desires for lower things—physical pleasures, money, and personal power—in order to make it through to the point where we are focused on higher things: God’s love in our hearts, leading us to love and care for the people around us.
The workers hired at the various hours represent our progress from our upside-down spiritual beginnings. Each of the hours mentioned is a multiple of three. And three represents a state of completeness, when our heart, head, and hands—or our love, understanding, and actions—are working together. Each time we complete a phase in our spiritual development, we metaphorically hire a new crop of workers within ourselves, appropriate to our new phase.
As far as I know, Swedenborg does not give a specific meaning for each set of workers. He simply says (in Apocalypse Explained #194) that three, six, and twelve have a similar meaning. But the meaning he is referring to is the general meaning of completeness.
However, based on the general stages of spiritual development we go through, we could assign these meanings to the three sets of hires:
- Those hired at the third hour could be seen as the time when we willingly obey the Lord’s commandments, whether or not we understand them.
- Those hired at the sixth hour could be seen as the time when, through working in the vineyard of learning from the Lord and the Bible, and making what we have learned a part of ourselves, we follow the Lord’s commandments based on an intelligent understanding and appreciation of them.
- Those hired at the ninth hour could be seen as the time when we begin to follow the Lord’s commandments not from mere obedience, nor even from mere understanding, but because we are beginning to love doing what the Lord leads us to do.
In the story, none of these bargained for their wages. In each of these states—acting from obedience, from understanding, and finally from love—we are not so concerned about what we will get out of doing the right thing. Instead, we are concerned to do the right thing. The work itself, and serving the Lord and our neighbor, begins to be our first priority. In Swedenborg’s words, we are turning right-side-up by getting our priorities straight.
Finally, we hire our spiritual “eleventh hour workers” when at last we realize that in ourselves we are nothing, and the Lord is everything. We are nearing the end of our spiritual work day when we are willing to simply listen to the Lord, and humbly and innocently be led where the Lord wants us to go. Then our work is light; we work one short hour, and immediately get our spiritual reward.
At that point in our lives, we are no longer trying to buy our way into heaven. Instead, we are allowing the Lord to spiritually buy our life from us, so that it is the Lord’s and not ours. And the beautiful thing is that once he has bought our life, he gives it back to us with rewards richer than we could ever have imagined.
(This post is the ninth chapter in my book, On Earth as it is In Heaven, originally published in 2005. For a description and Table of Contents, please click here. This material is copyright 2005 by Lee Woofenden.)
To review or purchase On Earth as it is In Heaven in paperback on Amazon, click here.
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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 
Hi Lee,
This article you wrote got me thinking of a local “leadership program” based on the Bible. The leader/creator of this organization she says that if you’re rich than you’re basically on Gods “good side” so you’re being rewarded or that God’s able to trust you to take on more “responsibility” so those we are rich are doing something that God approves of. But if you’re poor and things are going well then you’re doing something that God doesn’t approve of so if you see a homeless person they are basically on God’s “bad list”. And of course her and her husband are rich and flying around the world preaching this and getting more and more members to join while putting more money in their pockets since they have to “show you the way”. And it doesn’t surprise me of them taking the flood literally so I assume they take the rest of the Bible literally as well. Which is exactly like what you talked about in Arcana Coelestia #9180.
But what are your thoughts on this stuff regarding wealth, power, status as signs you’re on God “good side”?
Thank you Lee
Hi Sam,
It’s not completely wrong. But it’s very materialistic and Old Testament.
In the Old Testament, the rewards for obeying the commandments and the Law of Moses are all material, and they are bestowed upon good people and their families in this world. Similarly, the punishments for disobedience and rebellion against the Lord are all material, and they are visited upon bad people and their families in this world.
You can read it for yourself in many places in the Old Testament. Good and righteous people will be healthy and wealthy. They will be blessed with many children, fertile flocks and herds, and abundant crops. They will wear fine robes and will be respected by everyone in the community. As a nation, they will be powerful and victorious over their enemies. They will rule over all the surrounding nations, whose people will bow down to them, serve them, and bring them taxes and tribute.
Bad and disobedient people, on the other hand, will have nothing but poverty and disease. They will bear only a few children who will die young or be taken captive, leaving them without heirs. Their flocks and herds will be infertile, their crops will fail, and they will suffer famine and hunger. They will beg in the streets wearing nothing but rags. As a nation, their enemies will conquer them, loot their houses, and march them off naked and in chains to be sold as slaves in a distant land.
It is very stark, and very material. For one example, see Deuteronomy 28. There are many more, especially in the Prophets.
So there is a basis in the Bible for the idea that God blesses the good with material wealth and success, and curses the evil with material poverty and humiliation.
And as I said, this is not entirely wrong. People who are honest, fair, and diligent in their work do tend to fare better materially and socially. People who are dishonest cheating slackers tend to get fired from any job they manage to get, and end out living in poverty.
But not always. The world is full of bad people who are living the high life, and good people who are barely getting by. This world is not a fair place.
And when Jesus came along, he turned on its head that whole Old Testament paradigm of material rewards and punishments, and the concomitant idea that the rich have been blessed by God for good behavior whereas the poor have been cursed by God for bad behavior. Jesus even said, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). Jesus did speak about money and material success a lot, but mostly in the form of parables, or else in the course of lambasting wealthy people who thought they were blessed by God and better than everyone else because of their wealth and high position in society.
So it’s not that the leader of that organization is exactly wrong. It’s just that this is a very materialistic, Old Testament style of religion. It runs counter to the religion taught and founded by Jesus Christ, which is a spiritual religion, not a materialistic one.
Plus, most of these prosperity gospel preachers are just plain shysters. See:
Prosperity Gospel is Spiritually Bankrupt
I should add that for people who read the Bible spiritually rather than literally, all those promises of material wealth and success for the good and warnings of material poverty and shame for the evil are symbolic of spiritual wealth in goodness, truth, and mutual love, and on the other hand spiritual poverty in evil, falsity, and conflict. And while God does bless us with all the good promises, we bring the evil curses upon ourselves by our own attitudes and actions—they do not come from God.
Can spirits who go to the innermost heaven still have moments where they battle temptation and evil, but just not as much as anyone going to the more outer heavens?
PS: I meant spirits in this life who go to the innermost heaven after death, that is.
And does battling evil end for all angels once they reach Heaven?
Hi K,
Spiritual angels, meaning angels of the middle heaven, still do battle evil, but they are always victorious. I presume the same will be true for people in the lowest heaven. These are not life-or-death struggles as they are here on earth. They are more like mop-up operations. After the war has been won, there are still pockets of resistance here and there that must be dealt with. That’s my sense of it, anyway.
Hi K,
My sense is that angels of the innermost / highest heaven no longer have temptation battles because evil has no appeal to them whatsoever, but that there are still shadows of their old self around the edges, and they still go through cycles of more or less love and enlightenment.
So if I get this right, outermost heaven is “have to”, intermediate is “want to”, and innermost is “love to” with doing good in this life?
Hi K,
Not quite. It isn’t “have to” for any angels at all. There is no compulsion in heaven. Everyone acts out of his or her own free will. It’s “want to” from bottom to top.
The difference is that in the lowest heaven, the general attitude is “I want to obey God’s laws and do what’s good and right.” In the middle heaven it is, “I want to understand and follow the truth.” In the highest heaven it is “I want to love everyone and do good for everyone.”
In other words, even the “obedience-based” angels of the lowest heaven are obedient because that’s how they want and love to live. Think of a blue collar worker such as a welder who works for a boss. The boss gives him the day’s tasks, and he willingly does them. He’s not particularly interested in designing the building or vehicle or bridge he’s working on. But when the boss says, “Weld these seams,” he goes about the work willingly, and takes satisfaction in doing a good job and helping in the construction of something that will be of use to people.
Sure, there are some blue collar workers who drag themselves to work and are “wage slaves.” But in the best case, it’s not slavery or compulsion, but willing and cheerful execution of tasks set out for him by his boss, leading at the end of the day to a sense of satisfaction in a job well done.
A recent example of this in my own life was getting a sheet metal sleeve made for a plastic sewer standpipe in the middle of the back lawn to protect it from the trimmer. I stopped by a local sheet metal shop and described what I wanted. The guys there went to work on it. They didn’t get it right the first time, but the second try was perfectly constructed, a snug fit on the poly pipe, and perfect for what I wanted. I thanked them and paid them, and they were clearly happy to be able to provide me with the item I needed.
This was “obedience” in the sense that they were just doing what I asked them to do. But they did it willingly and happily, and took satisfaction in the job itself and in the results, not to mention the appreciation for it shown by the money I paid them for doing the job for me.
That’s how the people in the lowest heaven operate. They’re taking direction on what to do in their occupations, but they take that direction willingly and happily, enjoy the task, and are satisfied with the results. There’s no “have to” about it. It’s all “want to.”
>The difference is that in the lowest heaven, the general attitude is “I want to obey God’s laws and do what’s good and right.” In the middle heaven it is, “I want to understand and follow the truth.” In the highest heaven it is “I want to love everyone and do good for everyone.”
So in the outermost heaven, they want to obey because that is the right thing to do, the intermediate it is knowing and following truth, and in innermost it is wanting good done because loving neighbor as self then?
Hi K,
In general, yes, although the reigning love in the highest heaven is love for the Lord, whereas in the middle heaven it is love for the neighbor. The love for everyone that people in the highest heaven feel is based on loving the Lord’s presence in everyone, or more abstractly, loving the good in them.
But people who go to the innermost heaven in this life get there by loving love (God) and neighbor as self?
Hi K,
People reach the highest heaven by going through the full process of regeneration. This generally involves first forcing ourselves to stop doing the wrong things we do, then living a principled life in which we abide by an internally adopted code of right vs. wrong, and finally acting out of heartfelt love for all the people around us, inspired inwardly by God’s love for all of humanity.
Does this full regeneration process _have_ to involve being Christian? Could atheists or agnostics who at least see love and truth itself as God (even if only as abstract concepts) undergo it, at least if they hope there is an afterlife beyond the physical?
Also, thanks for the replies.
Hi K,
You’re welcome.
Swedenborg does talk in terms of regeneration being limited to Christians. However, I think he’s taking Christianity as a stand-in for being religious, since practically everyone in his world was Christian. To not be Christian was to be irreligious. And the full course of regeneration, at least, requires a belief in God. And yet, there is something in true Christianity that’s not present in other religions, and certainly not in secular beliefs.
Atheists and agnostics can go through a certain amount of self-reformation, and become better people. They can even go to heaven. But to face the really deep “evils,” or wrongs, within our own psyche requires a spiritual awareness, and ultimately a belief in a higher being that provides an ideal to strive for that is beyond mere human ideas and conceptions, and also provides the strength and power to face those deeper demons. Absent that, and there are limitations on how far we can even conceive of going in our spiritual reformation and regeneration process, let alone having the ability to actually go there.
I do think that atheists, agnostics, and non-Christians can go a certain distance on the path of regeneration. But going the full distance requires a full grasp of the nature of God and spirit, which does not exist outside of true Christianity (as compared to today’s false “Christianity.”) There are some reasonable approximations in the mystical end of other religions. But even they generally think of God as entirely transcendent and as impersonal. Only Christianity has a fully personal God who is also transcendent at the same time.
I know it’s not politically correct to say that Christians have something that people of other religions, and of no religion at all, don’t have. But the reality is that genuine Christianity does have something that other religions, and non-religions, don’t have. That something is a God who is human and personally present with us. Having such a God allows people to go much farther on the path of spiritual rebirth than any unknowable and impersonal God does.
PS: This also assumes that they do good not because of fear of laws or social consequences.
Hi K,
Right. They would have to do good simply because it is the right thing to do, or because they love doing good for its own sake.
People who do good only to avoid the legal and social consequences, and not because it’s the right thing to do, will have those legal and social consequences removed in the other life, and will engage in whatever bad behavior they desire. (Of course, there will be consequences, but those consequences will no longer restrain selfish and greedy people from acting on their desires as much as they can.)
Could someone like me who believed in New Church and then had doubts still do full regeneration, even if they stop believing and become atheist or agnostic in intellectual beliefs, but essentially remain New Church morality-wise?
Hi K,
As I said before, I believe that atheists and agnostics can go through the earlier stages of regeneration, but not the later ones, which require a belief in and relationship with God.
For one thing, full regeneration to the heavenly (traditionally “celestial”) level requires us to reach a point of full innocence and trust in God, in which we are willing to let go of our own desires and sense of self-mastery and autonomy and recognize that everything good and true in us, and everything good we do, is not ours, but is God’s in us. Angels of the highest, heavenly heaven feel this way completely. They trust in God, and not in themselves. (But God gives them a “heavenly sense of self” so that they still feel like themselves, and are still unique individuals.)
Without a belief in God, obviously it is not possible to turn our life over to God and say, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done,” as Jesus did just before his crucifixion. We will continue to believe that we are the master of our own life—and there will be a level of ego in this that would make it impossible for us to rise to the highest heaven, which is where people go when they have gone through the full course of regeneration during their lifetime on earth. The best possibility would be to reach the spiritual heaven—and even that, I think, would be difficult for someone who doesn’t believe that God and spirit exist.
PS: What are the really deep evils you mentioned?
(and thanks again for replies)
Hi K,
Drawing on my previous reply, one of them is the belief that we are in control of our own life, and the ego that goes with that belief. In a sense we are in control of our own life, but as long as we hold onto that sense of autonomy, we will never reach the full truth and enlightenment and humility and innocence of heart that comes only from fully trusting in God to lead us day in and day out, and moment-to-moment.
As I said in my previous reply, this is impossible without a belief in God. The belief that we control our own life is very deep-seated in us. It is not something that a secular person can dislodge, because a secular person cannot look to a conscious “higher power” (God), who would become the one who is in control of his/her life.
Again, this doesn’t mean we lose our humanity or individuality. It means that we trust God to lead us on the path that is truest to our own God-given character.
The simplest version of the stages of regeneration is:
(These are my names for these stages, not Swedenborg’s, but they are based on Swedenborg’s teachings about regeneration. Swedenborg more commonly presents a seven-stage course based on the seven days of creation first Creation story.)
In the stage of obedience we do the right thing based on the laws and instructions given to us by parents, teachers, and government and religious figures, not to mention religious texts such as the Bible. Stated another way, this is the stage in which we stop engaging in wrong outward behavior such as lying, stealing, illicit sex, and so on.
In the stage of understanding we internalize those laws by gaining an understanding of why it is wrong to do evil things, and right to do good things. If the first stage is about reforming our behavior, the second stage is about reforming our attitudes and beliefs. The focus in this stage is on learning and gaining right principles of living, and living by them because we know it is the right way to live.
In the stage of love, we get to the point where we no longer have any desire to think about and engage in wrong and evil ideas and behavior. It has no more appeal to us because we are motivated by love for God and the neighbor, and doing any of those things would cause both God and our neighbor pain and anguish, which would feel terrible to us. While the second stage is about reforming our thinking according to the truth, the third stage is about changing our heart so that we no longer even desire wrong things, but from the heart love to do what is good and loving for other people.
In each stage, there are evil and false things that oppose our attainment of that stage.
In the stage of obedience, our enjoyment of bad behaviors such as lying, stealing, engaging in promiscuous and even adulterous sex, fighting, boozing it up and doing drugs, and so on, stands in the way of reforming our behavior. Wrong behavior has pleasures associated with it, and also an addictive quality that makes it difficult for us to give them up.
In the stage of understanding, it is largely false ideas and systems of thinking that stand in our way. Our attraction to them comes from our intellectual ego, which is our desire to be smarter and better than other people. Spiritual or religious truth is seen as simplistic and unsophisticated. Fancy human theologies and psychologies seem much “sexier” to us. We want to be among the “enlightened” ones who are smarter than everyone else because we understand “complicated” things that other people don’t understand. Our battles are those of humbling our ego and accepting that God’s truth is actual truth, whereas human theories are fallacious and do not lead to good results. This is why I say that I think it would be difficult for atheists and agnostics to regenerate to this level. By definition, they don’t believe in God, or they think God is uncertain and perhaps irrelevant, so it would be difficult to give up their intellectual ego and trust in God’s truth and teaching instead.
To arrive at the stage of love, we must face our deepest evils, which are the self-absorption and greed of the human heart. It’s not enough just to recognize intellectually that these things are wrong, and not engage in them on principle. In this stage, even the desire to be better or higher or smarter than others must be killed off in us so that true love for God and the neighbor can take their place. And the reality is that our self-absorption, greed, and ego are very deeply seated in the human heart. Without a belief in God, I think very few people would even attempt to change their heart. They would just figure that that’s what the human heart is like, and that it’s enough to restrain oneself from acting on the darker impulses of the heart.
Besides, facing those deeper impulses is scary and disheartening. It calls into question our goodness and decency as human beings. We resist looking at them because we don’t want to recognize what darkness there is within us. When we begin to look that deep within ourselves, what we find chills us to the bone. We’re just not prepared to deal with it, so we step back from that precipice.
I do not believe it is possible to face the deep evils of the human heart without the strength and power of God working within us. And if we don’t believe in God, we will not accept God’s power. People who don’t believe in God and don’t have genuine spiritual truth will therefore step back from confronting the deep-seated evil in their own heart, and will simply not deal with it. The best they can do is to restrain themselves from acting on those evil impulses, either because they are willing to obey the authorities or because they recognize intellectually that this is the right thing to do.
To sum it up, our really deep evils are not evil behavior or even wrong attitudes and faulty ideas and beliefs that justify bad behavior. Our really deep evils are the desires in our heart from which both our wrong thinking and our wrong behavior flow. And I do not believe it is possible to overcome those desires without a conscious belief in God and trust in God’s truth and power. I don’t think it’s possible without an explicit understanding of human nature as created by God, and of the process and goal of regeneration. We can’t even aspire to a state that we know nothing about. And the only way we would know anything about the state of no longer harboring evil desires in our heart is through spiritual teachings that come from religious belief, and ultimately from God.
Perhaps there is some edge case of a highly mystical Buddhist who doesn’t have a conscious belief in God but does have a belief in a pathway that leads to the changing of the human heart. But even in that case, ultimately it is religious belief that makes it possible for this Buddhist to walk that path in the first place. Further, whether or not Buddhism has an explicit belief in God, God is still the source of any truth in it. Buddhism wouldn’t exist if God had not been previously active in Hinduism and in the life of Gautama Buddha.
Although it might be possible to think up theoretical scenarios in which an atheist would regenerate to the heavenly (love) level, in reality, I don’t think it would ever happen. The atheist just wouldn’t have the required awareness and specific knowledge of how and why to go through that process. The best s/he is likely to achieve is a life directed by principles of right and wrong. And that represents only the second of the three stages of regeneration outlined above. More than that, the atheist would not be able to tap into God’s power, which is the only power capable of banishing the deepest evils of the human heart. Those evils would remain in the atheist’s heart, but the atheist would suppress them as a matter of principle. This, again, is only the spiritual level, not the heavenly level that we reach by completing the full course of regeneration.
Can people in the love stage still slip up and do evils in this life now and then, but of course they don’t like it?
Also are angels in the outer 2 heavens stuck wearing clothes all the time?
Finally, what if an atheist still follows good as a God?
Hi K,
People in the love stage on this earth can still slip up and do wrong occasionally because they are still engaged in regeneration, which means they are still digging up wrong and faulty parts of themselves and overcoming them. However, when they recognize that they have done wrong, and have hurt someone, they will feel terrible about it, and will do everything they can to make it right, not so much because of a feeling of guilt but because they hate the idea of hurting anyone. It hurts their heart.
When these people reach their eternal home in the highest heaven, their journey of regeneration will be over, and they will have “rest from their labors” (Revelation 14:13). This does not mean they will not engage in any more work, but that they will no longer have any internal struggle between good and evil because they have already fought the good fight. While they are still not perfect, and will still continue to learn and grow, the highest angels feel God’s presence, love, and wisdom within and around themselves all the time, which makes doing anything evil a thing of the past for them. At most they may not always do the absolute best possible. In that case they will want to improve themselves, but what they did will still be good, not evil.
Even angels of the lower heavens don’t do anything that’s blatantly evil. But they are more likely to slip up from time to time and require a bout of self-correction. However, unlike on earth, there is no possibility that they wouldn’t correct themselves and move on to do better the next time. They have also already fought the battle and made their choice on earth, and that cannot change after death. This is also part of the “rest from labors” that God gives to every angel. There is no more fear that they might fall off the wagon and plunge back into their old evil ways.
Moving on, once again, no one in heaven is “stuck” doing anything. Please get that idea out of you head!
Everyone in heaven lives exactly as he or she wants to live. God does not force anyone to do anything, and neither do their fellow angels. There is not even any external pressure from their environment to do something contrary to their own wishes because their environment itself expresses their own thoughts and desires.
There is absolutely nothing in heaven to force anyone to do anything he or she doesn’t want to, or not to do something he or she wants to. Nobody is “stuck” in anything.
Angels of the inmost heavens wear no clothes when they are among themselves in their own communities because that expresses their childlike innocence and openness. In some instances Swedenborg says that they wear loincloths, but that may simply be because Swedenborg and his entourage were visiting them. However, it does illustrate that people wear what they want to wear, when they want to wear it. Nobody in the heavenly heaven is stuck being naked. When, as occasionally happens, they leave their own community for some visiting or business, they wear clothes just like the other people in the areas they are visiting. Even in heaven, it’s a case of “When in Rome, do what the Romans do.” (But they will also be recognized from their faces and clothing as angels of a different, and higher, heaven.)
Angels of the lower heavens wear clothes because they don’t have the level of innocence and openness that the highest angels do. Also, their clothes express and represent their thinking mind, meaning their beliefs and ideas, which “cover over” any remaining personal faults that they did not fully overcome because they didn’t go through the full course of regeneration.
But of course, even these angels will be perfectly comfortable being naked with their partner in marriage when they are feeling close to them and engaging in intimacy with them. They are not stuck wearing clothing. They wear clothing when out and about, and likely also around the house most of the time, because that expresses the character of their mind. In situations where they are comfortable being naked, they will be naked. But out in public is not one of those situations.
Another way of saying this is that there are no public indecency laws in heaven. Angels do or don’t wear clothes based on their own desire or lack thereof to wear clothes. And just like on earth, that changes in different places and situations. Angels are always thinking of the comfort and well-being of those around them. If they sense that being naked or underdressed in a particular place or situation would bring about discomfort or distress in the people there, they will willingly and happily clothe themselves appropriately.
For example, I presume that people who are lifelong, comfortable nudists on earth will continue to be nudists in heaven, even if they haven’t regenerated to the heavenly level. But as on earth, they won’t walk around naked among people who aren’t nudists. That will not be because there are laws against it, but because they care about their fellow angels and don’t want to cause discomfort and offense for those who are not comfortable with public nudity. But in their own homes and areas, they will be perfectly free to go naked, just as they do on earth. No one will come along and tell them that they have to cover up.
Once again, no one is “stuck” in anything in heaven. Everyone acts from his or her own internal will and understanding, aka love and belief.
About your final question, please see:
Do Atheists Go to Heaven?
PS: Speaking of atheists, there is a stereotype of atheists being autistics. What about people on the so-called autism spectrum who go atheist because of their autism? If they were cured of their autism in any afterlife, what would become of them?
(Of course not all autistic people are atheist).
Also, if someone who has doubts on religion but does not fully let go of religion, could they be fully regenerated? I think I may be in this boat.
Hi K,
I am far from an expert on autism and the spectrum. But on the severe end I suspect that it becomes difficult to focus on higher and broader things, which would include God and spirit. Those limitations will indeed be removed in the afterlife.
About your other question, you seem to be in the same boat as the man who said to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). I would suggest that you continue on the path, keep asking questions, and do your own reading, especially in the Bible and Swedenborg’s writings. Over time you can overcome your doubts if you keep at it.
The positive function of doubt is to spur people to search and study more deeply, and come to a more full-bodied and fleshed-out understanding of the truth as a result. A strong faith must be able to resist false ideas, not to mention loss of hope, through a clear understanding of the fallacy of those false ideas, and the full system of the truth. This comes about only over time, through dedicated searching, reading, listening, and learning. Jesus said, “Seek, and you will find.”
What also comes to mind is the scene of the woman and the dragon in Revelation 12. The woman’s newborn male child, Swedenborg says, represents the teachings of the new church. The dragon represents the beliefs of the old Christian church, especially Protestant faith-alone beliefs, that want to destroy the new Christian teachings (which are really just genuine Christian truth) the moment they are born. That doesn’t happen, but the child is carried up to heaven, and the woman flees to the desert.
The dragon, in Swedenborg’s explanation, is the resistance and attacks from all the old, false, corrupt Christian doctrine. Those false beliefs still have considerable influence on the culture and its people. They are driving people away from Christianity in droves. Even for people who are aware of the new church and its teachings, infection from the old beliefs is always creeping in. I see tinges of it even in the writings of some heavy-duty New Church scholars, not to mention in the thinking of quite a few laypeople who follow Swedenborg’s teachings.
I suspect that the shadow of the old Christian falsities is chipping away at your mind also, attempting to get you to throw out the baby with the bathwater. This is why a thorough understanding of Swedenborg’s teachings, and a thorough rejection of the old Christian falsities, from the Trinity of Persons all the way down, is critical to having a clear mind and a firm Christian belief that can survive in a thinking, caring person in today’s world.
PPS: I can see the no concept of God or anything afterlife could inhibit regeneration though.
Thanks for the reply.
And this may be TMI, but I like to forego clothes when I am home alone. If I go to one of the lower 2 levels of Heaven after I pass away someday (hopefully not before I am ready), I can continue that there.
And hopefully that inhabitants of the lower heavens can also enjoy foregoing clothes in certain outside situations, like Japan-style onsen, nude beaches, etc. Of course there would not be any sexual immorality there, because it is Heaven.
Also, hopefully any autistics who are impaired in the ability to have spiritual beliefs from the autism will not always go to a lower heaven (or worse) than they otherwise would have, had they not been autistic. Even the ones with more mild autism.
Hi K,
If you can do it on earth, you can do it in heaven. If you like to forego clothing in your house here on earth, there’s no reason you can’t do the same in heaven. If someone comes to the door you can throw on some clothes before answering it, just as you presumably do here on earth.
I also see no reason why certain cultural situations here on earth where nudity is acceptable won’t continue in the spiritual world. It’s not a good idea to get too fundamentalist about Swedenborg’s descriptions of the spiritual world and the correspondences by which it operates. People who are comfortable with group nudity and even intersex group nudity in certain social situations here on earth will presumably continue to be comfortable with it in those same social situations in heaven. Whatever correspondences this involves, those correspondences are also operational here on earth.
In heaven, nudists are not going to be told that they can no longer visit and enjoy nudist resorts and beaches, even if they’re not in the highest heaven. What they won’t do is walk around naked outdoors all the time if they live in a part of heaven where that isn’t socially acceptable. In the highest and inmost heavens, though, people do walk around naked outdoors all the time. They put on clothing only when they’re in the presence of outsiders whose minds are not so innocent and pure.
In short, private or specifically acceptable social nudity will likely function pretty much the same in heaven as it does here. There’s no legal authority imposing public nudity statutes on the communities of heaven. People wear more, less, or no clothing in various places and situations based on their own personality and the character of their own social circles. The people in heaven are all the same people who have been living on earth. As I say quite often, the only parts that are missing are the bad parts. And there is nothing intrinsically bad about nudity.
About severely impaired autistics, if anything the opposite will be the case. The less able they are to function in regular society, the more inwardly innocent they will be, and therefore the higher heaven they will go to. Infants and toddlers all go to the highest heaven after they die because of their state of innocence. Older children and teens go to correspondingly lower heavens depending upon the state of mind they were in at the time they died. The more of their innocence they have lost, the lower heaven they’ll be in. The same goes for people who have severe mental disabilities. The younger their mental age, the higher the heaven they’ll be in after they die.
PS: Not sure if autistics are really impaired from spiritual belief by autism, but asking just in case that is the case.
Hi K,
I don’t know enough about autism to say anything definite based on experience. But in general, anything that impairs a person’s ability to make free and rational decisions between good and evil in their own lives will impair their ability to regenerate.
The saving grace is that the default destination is always heaven, and never hell. Only people who have achieved adult-level rationality and moral freedom have any possibility of going to hell. And that happens only if they use that rationality and freedom to choose hell, when they were perfectly capable of choosing heaven.
I’ll also reiterate that no matter what heaven people settle in after death, they will be as happy as they can possibly imagine being. Nobody in the lower heavens is pining away, wishing they were in the higher heavens. None of them want to live any other way than they are living. They’re all living their ideal lives.
>But in general, anything that impairs a person’s ability to make free and rational decisions between good and evil in their own lives will impair their ability to regenerate.
And I take it that after death in the New Church afterlife, any such impairments are removed and do not count against them, that is, push one further away from God then one would otherwise be?
Also, even if someone lost innocence due to aging, anyone still has the potential to go to any of the 3 Heavens, be it higher or lower than the usual?
Hi K,
In spiritual justice, nothing is held against us that is or was outside of our control. Outside compulsions and impairments (including physical impairments) are removed. Our freedom is restored to live as a free and rational human being. If we have been unable to make a moral choice between good and evil due to severe mental impairment, then as I said before, our default and definite destination will be heaven, not hell.
Of course, we will live a different life than we would have if we had been born and grew up and lived our adult life without that physical impairment and the resulting mental impairment. But the life we do live in heaven will be a good and happy one—as good and happy as we can imagine.
About losing our innocence, according to Swedenborg there are two kinds of innocence:
The innocence of ignorance is the kind of innocence children and severely mentally impaired people have. It is the innocence of not intending to do any evil because we don’t have the knowledge or capacity to choose evil. In infants, it is also being too small and weak to do any real damage.
The innocence of wisdom comes only with age, and only for those who go through the full process of regeneration. This is the innocence of not intending or doing any evil because we have fought against and overcome our evil tendencies and desires, and have chosen to live a good life of love from the heart—love for God and love for the neighbor.
People who develop the innocence of wisdom have long since lost the innocence of ignorance that they started out with as infants and young children. They have seen the world and its evils. They have struggled with those evils, and have chosen not to be a part of them, or to contribute to them. This is a stronger and deeper type of innocence than the innocence of ignorance that we have when young, before this rough world beats it out of us. It is an innocence that has faced the beatings that the world deals us, and has transcended all that.
So yes, even after losing our initial innocence, anyone still has the potential to go to any of the three heavens, including the highest heaven, which is the heaven of innocence.
Thanks for reply.
If someone with autism or other disability makes moral progress or improves the motive for doing good, can that stay after death once they lose autism and possibly revert in mental age because an amount of their thinking comes from the disability?
PS: What I meant was, if someone makes moral progress or improves their motive for doing good, but they have a disability that makes up an amount of their thinking, can such progress or improvement stay even if that thinking is gone (and there’s a reversion in mental age as a result) in any afterlife?
Hi K,
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: There isn’t a “reversion of mental age” in the spiritual world. Rather, people who have mental disabilities start out in the spiritual world at whatever mental age they were when they died. If, for example, someone in an adult body has a mental age if six, that’s where they’ll start out mentally in the other life, and then grow to adulthood mentally from there, without their previous mental disability. (But I think they’ll retain their adult body, because that’s what they had and were used to on earth.)
If someone with autism or other disability makes moral progress or improves their motives for doing good during their lifetime on earth, that means they had some level of adult mental functioning such that they were able to make moral choices for themselves, not to mention examining their own motives and exchanging them for better ones. In the afterlife they will retain all of their moral progress and improvement of motives. No moral and spiritual progress that we make during our lifetime on earth, and stay steady in until we die, is lost.
I assumed that people who have mental disability in this life would revert in age to a certain degree because they lose the parts of their minds and personalities that are based on disability, leaving only that which was developed naturally.
Also, I think if someone with a mental age of a youth were to be in the afterlife, he could initially have a spirit body resembling their physical body, but once that initial state after death is done, any spirit body could be a reflection of mental state, and thus the body of a youth. So people who got their youth stolen from them (so to speak) by disability (missing developmental milestones in physical life) may be able to do youth over again, and better.
Finally, can children genuinely change their motive for doing good for the better?
Hi K,
I tend to think that the disability will be taken away, but no parts of the person’s personality that were developed even during the time s/he had the disability will be lost. But it’s an interesting question. At minimum, there will be no backwards reversion in mental age.
Physically I think it would be possible for the body to revert to a state matching that of the mind, but that’s another interesting question. At any rate, people’s eternal body is the equivalent of the peak of young adulthood, so it’s not as though anyone would miss being young and strong. That’s how people live to eternity. But if someone who missed living through normal teenage years, and was of a mental age younger than or at that of a teenager, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to live through that time while finishing the maturation process in the spiritual world.
On your final question, in general, it’s not until people reach adult rationality and self-responsibility that they are able to make the kind of moral decisions that would change their motives. However, I think some people do reach that capability during their older teenage years. Younger than that and children are mostly acting from their inborn motives and reacting to the direction and discipline of parents and teachers. This is about children on earth.
Children who grow up in heaven do set aside their inborn self-absorption and grow to love God and the neighbor above all. But once again, this would take place as they approach adulthood even when they grow up in the spiritual world.