Love, Mercy, and Evil

Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? (Genesis 18:23)

In the previous article in our series on the inner life of Jesus, we followed the story of Abraham having a meal with three visitors, who predicted Isaac’s birth. That was the second prediction of the birth, and it was made in person by three angels who were filled with God’s presence. That story, in the first half of Genesis 18, relates to Jesus’ deep sense of connection with the Divine within. The previous article talked about communion: about communing with God. Eating a meal with God is sharing God’s love and feeling a sense of closeness to God in our hearts.

This relates to our human feelings of closeness to God, and to a period in Jesus’ life when he was feeling close to the Divine within. “The Father” is another name for the divine nature within Jesus, or the soul of the Lord from which Jesus came. The story in the first half of Genesis 18 is about a sense of closeness to God. It speaks of our feeling that God is right there present with us, and that everything is good because of God’s presence.

As we head into the second half of Genesis 18—specifically, Genesis 18:16–33, which I invite you to read at the link—we get a rude awakening from that wonderful reverie with God. Right after the deep connection with God comes the story of Sodom, which continues through chapter 19.

Back to human reality

Jesus had been communing with God. He had been feeling a sense of closeness to the Divine in prayer. Think of the many times Jesus went by himself to pray, away from the crowds, so that he could be alone with his Father—alone with his own inner soul. He had those times of wonderful connection, just as we at times feel very close to God.

But when he came back, he found that humanity was just as big of a mess as it had been when he left. Mark 1:40–45 tells the story of Jesus healing a man with leprosy:

Jesus Healing the Blind at Jericho, by Nicolas Poussin 1594–1665

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus was filled with compassion. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed.

Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

Instead, he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.

This was the state of humanity. We were in a state of spiritual leprosy: a state of spiritual disease. It was a disease of thinking of ourselves first, and others afterwards.

Everywhere Jesus looked, he saw this in people. And his heart went out to them. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd; as people who were rushing towards pain and destruction. And as with the man who had leprosy, he had mercy on them. Having experienced a deep connection with God, he wanted to heal people, to give people spiritual wholeness, to give peace and happiness and joy to the people of this world. He wanted to give these blessings to all the people he saw around him, who were chasing so many false idols.

Ideal vs. reality

In our lives also, after we have had an experience of close connection with God, there comes the realization that in our real life we are very far from that connection. So many of the things we do and experience every day are nothing like what we experience in our times of closeness to God—those times when we go within and realize that God is with us, and that life has a higher meaning. From these times we go back out into our everyday relationships, to our struggles with our partners, and with our brothers and sisters and parents and children and friends, and we go back to our problems at work. It feels like such a let-down after our beautiful experience when we were by ourselves, communing with God.

This is how our life goes. We have a wonderful sense of connection followed by a rude awakening. And this is what happens in Genesis 18.

Is God mad at us for our failings?

Let’s look at how God deals with the fact that we humans are so far away from what God created us for; how God deals with the fact that so much of this world is chasing after money, after power, after all the things that in the end don’t matter at all; how God feels about the reality that so many people are not following the way of the heart, the way of truth. How does God deal with this?

In much of traditional Christianity, the belief is that because humanity has fallen, God is angry with us. God is wrathful and wants to punish us. And God will punish us if something doesn’t intervene to prevent it. In this view, the whole purpose of Jesus’ coming was to be crucified and take upon himself the punishment from God that we deserve—to deflect it from us so that we wouldn’t have to be subject to God’s wrath and anger.

Hundreds of millions of Christians struggle under the weight of the idea that God is terribly angry with us if we commit even one little sin, and is all ready to punish us and send us to eternal hell. This is the general view in the Protestant churches. And the Catholic Church has its own version based more on God’s “justice” than on God’s wrath. The theological name for this doctrine is the satisfaction theory of atonement, and in Protestantism, penal substitution.

No, God is merciful to us in our failings

In Emanuel Swedenborg’s day, it was very radical to say that this is not God’s character at all. It was very radical to say that the statements in the Bible about God’s anger and wrath were an adaptation to our human perspective—since we think of things that way—but that in truth, there is no wrath and no anger in God. Swedenborg said that God is pure love and pure compassion, and is never angry, and never wishes to punish us.

However, this wasn’t the first time that message had been delivered. If we look at the story in the second half of Genesis 18, way back near the beginning of the Bible, we see the mercy of God in the face of human evil jumping right off the page! The story of Abraham pleading for Sodom is so touching when we really think about what it is saying. Here is a city full of people who are bent upon selfishness and evil. Abraham is standing between them and God saying, “You don’t really have to destroy them, do you?”

In the spiritual meaning, Abraham represents Jesus’ own mercy and compassion for humanity. He represents the human side of Jesus hoping that there does not have to be destruction. And he pleads for the city; he pleads for the people. He says: Maybe there is some good left. Maybe this destruction doesn’t have to happen.

As for the destruction itself, we’ll deal with that in the next article in this series. That’s a whole different story. Today we will look at Abraham pleading for Sodom, and what it says about God’s attitude not only toward humanity as a whole, but toward each one of us.

By the numbers

To do that, we will play what my late father liked to call “the Swedenborgian numbers game.” There is a whole series of numbers here, and Swedenborg tells us that each one of them has a special meaning. I won’t go into all the reasons why each number means what it does. For those who want to delve into that, it’s all laid out in the volume of Swedenborg’s massive work Secrets of Heaven where he explains this chapter. Based on his explanations there, I will lay out what these numbers mean for us in human terms.

What does it mean, “fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten”? It just sounds like a string of numbers. But every one of them has a specific meaning.

Fifty

The first number is when everything is just fine. “Fifty,” Swedenborg says, represents people who have goodness in their heart and truth in their mind. It represents people who are “married” within themselves: who love God and the neighbor and who have also learned the truth of how to go about serving them.

Obviously, God is not going to destroy us if we have love in our hearts, truth in our minds, and we live by them. This is a person who has reached a spiritual plateau: who is living a good life, feeling God within, and expressing it outwardly. That last point is critical. It’s not just a matter of feeling it inside, but of showing it in our lives through kindness and service to other people. This is the person represented by “fifty.” We can all aspire to the “fifty” state.

Forty-five

But some of us are perfectionists who never quite reach perfection. That’s where forty-five comes in. Forty-five is the number for all you perfectionists out there who think you have to be perfect, or God is not going to accept you. “Forty-five” says that’s not true.

Notice that Abraham doesn’t say, “What if there are forty-five?” He says, “What if five are missing?” In other words, what if there is just a little bit missing? We know that we could be better. We know that we are not quite there. Is God going to condemn us for falling short?

The Lord says no: “If I find forty-five there, I will not destroy it.” The Bible does say, “Be perfect” (Matthew 5:48), and that is our aspiration. But if we’re not quite there yet, God says: I recognize that you are trying, and doing your best. Even if you don’t make it to perfection, you will find your way into my kingdom.

So forty-five is for all you worried perfectionists out there.

Forty

On the other hand, forty is for those of us who have gone through difficult struggles. In the Bible, “forty” represents a state of trial and temptation. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert. Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days. “Forty” is those of us who have struggled in life, and have managed, with God’s help, to overcome, and move forward in our lives. If we have struggled; if we have worked against the evil within ourselves and against the evil around us, and we are continuing to move forward with God, then God will save us. We will find our way into the heavenly kingdom.

Thirty

What about those of us who struggle and struggle, and just can’t seem to get out the other end? Sometimes life feels like a continual struggle—and it doesn’t feel like we are winning. That is what thirty is for. “Thirty” is when we are still engaged in the struggle. Even if we go out kicking and screaming; even if we go through life and we are still fighting to the bitter end, God says: As long as you are working at it; as long as you are sincerely trying to overcome the wrong within yourself; as long as you are fighting the good fight, that is acceptable to me. Even if you haven’t won yet. Even if you are still engaged in the struggle.

Twenty

When we get down to twenty and ten, there’s not an awful lot to work with. And these are the numbers where God’s great mercy comes out most strongly.

Twenty says that even if we haven’t really struggled; even if we have coasted along in life, and have not done the hard work of spiritual rebirth—even then, if we have some level of goodness in our heart, if we have some desire to do what is good and right, God will accept us. As long as we are generally headed toward the good, even if we haven’t fought very hard, the Lord will accept us. It’s like those “eleventh-hour laborers” (Matthew 20:1–16) who only did an hour of work, but got the same reward as the ones who had worked all day.

Those who have struggled hard and done all the painful spiritual work might say, “That’s not fair! I fought hard for this! I should get more than they do!” But God’s mercy is the kind that want to bless all of us if there is any possibility at all. If God can possibly give us happiness, if God can find anything in us that provides a handle to lift us into heaven, God will bless us. God wants to give us as much happiness as possible, even if there is not much to work with.

Ten

That’s where ten comes in.

In this context, as the smallest number, “Ten” is when there is just a tiny bit of goodness left in us. Ten is when we haven’t totally destroyed ourselves. We may be very rough around the edges. We may not have lived in a spiritual way at all. Yet within us there is a sense of goodness. There is something left of what people call a “heart of gold”—even if it is deeply buried under a very crusty outward life. If there is even a small remnant left of good intentions, if we haven’t destroyed every single good thing in ourselves, God wants to reach out to that place of goodness inside us. And God will reach out to it, and give us salvation.

God’s compassion for us

These are the numbers all the way from fifty—people who have done the work, engaged in the struggle, and are fully in tune with God—down to ten, representing people who have only a tiny remnant of goodness left in them. And God is reaching out to all of them. To all of us.

This was the feeling Jesus had toward the people around him. In the Gospels we see him interacting with the people, many of whom had ulterior motives. The fellow who had leprosy just wanted to feel better! And Jesus healed him. Then he warned him not tell anyone about it. But the first thing the man did was to go out and tell everyone all about it! Because of this, Jesus was getting mobbed, so he had to withdraw from the towns to unpopulated places.

Jesus saw all the people, and he knew that they didn’t understand things very well; he knew that they didn’t know where to go; he knew that they were doing many evil and destructive things. Yet we see him continually reaching out to them, through gentle words or harsh ones, trying to get through to the place in them that was open to the truth and love of God.

Our attitude toward people

This also says something to us about how we are meant to deal with the people around us. The people we are angry with. The people who wear our patience thin. The family members we are struggling with. The co-workers we have a hard time getting along with. This attitude of Jesus toward human folly should make an impression on us.

What are we here for? Are we here to get our own way? Are we here to feel good? To acquire happiness for ourselves? If that is our purpose, then we will find ourselves in conflict with everyone around us. We will find ourselves struggling and fighting—and in the end, not winning.

Looking for the good in people

God tells us that there is a different way. When we see evil in the world, we are to look for whatever good we can draw out, and to do our best to work with that. This can be very hard when someone is so exasperating, and makes us so angry. In this story, God tells us to look for the one little bit of good we can find in that person, and focus on it. God tells us to do our best to bring that out, instead of focusing on the person’s faults.

That is the beautiful message this story. It focuses on the question, “What if there is some good we can find? What if there is something good in the other person we can work with?” This is what God asks us to do. This is the way God treats us. It is also the way God asks us to treat the people around us.

Think of this story: the fifty, the forty-five, the forty, the thirty, the twenty, even the ten. If we can just find that “ten” in someone; if we can find that “ten” within ourselves to reach out from, then God will be with us, and will bless us with life.

(Note: This post is a revised version of a talk originally delivered on May 2, 2004. To start at the beginning of the series, please go to the article, “What Child Is This?”)

Here is a shorter video version of this article:

For further reading:

• God is Love . . . And That Makes All the Difference in the World
• Why Is Life So Hard? Why are there So Many Struggles?
• If God is Love, Why all the Pain and Suffering?
• Kindness and Caring in Business
• Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth