God, Forgiveness, Freedom, and Hell – Part 1

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Lee — 4 Comments

(Note: This article is the first of a four-part series. The first three parts are edited versions of a series of questions by a reader named Rami, and my answers. The original versions appear in the comments section of the recent article, “What is the Unpardonable Sin? Am I Doomed?” The fourth part will be a response to a related Spiritual Conundrum submitted earlier by Rami.)

In a recent comment, a reader named Rami said:

Hi Lee, sorry if you’ve dealt with this in the article, but could you elaborate a bit on the relationship between Divine forgiveness and freely insisting upon hell because of the hellish life we’ve led? What does it mean to be pardoned if hell is something we choose ourselves? It would seem to me that the idea of God’s forgiveness for our sins characterizes our afterlife as something determined by whether or not we repent and receive it, and condemnation to hell as not only an inner condition we burden upon ourselves. Have I misunderstood Swedenborg in this regard?

Here is my response, originally made in this comment:

Hi Rami,

Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and questions. I’m a little unclear about what you mean by, “and condemnation to hell as not only an inner condition we burden upon ourselves.” Is that what you meant to write? If so, what, exactly, do you mean?

However, I’ll take a stab at what I think you’re asking.

(Warning! Mind-bending material ahead!)

Here are two general principles Swedenborg offers in relation to your question:

God’s will is for all people to go to heaven, and God never condemns anyone to hell.
However, God will not override and nullify our freely made choice to go to hell rather than to heaven.

For more on God, forgiveness, freedom, and hell, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Christianity, Emanuel Swedenborg, evil, forgiveness, freedom, God, hell, salvation, spirituality, Swedenborg
Posted in All About God, Spiritual Growth

What is the Meaning of the Hyssop Used to Help Satisfy Jesus’ Thirst on the Cross?

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Lee — 14 Comments

Good Friday

Good Friday is the day Christians traditionally commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion is told in all four Gospels, each offering its own variation on the main theme.

In narrating the event of Jesus’ death, three of the four Gospels mention that bystanders soaked a sponge in wine vinegar and held it up to him on a stick. For the first two, see Matthew 27:45–50 and Mark 15:33–37. (Luke 23:36–37 says only that the soldiers who crucified him offered him wine vinegar.)

The Gospel of John, however, offers a tantalizing detail about that stick:

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28–30, italics added)

A casual reader might skip right by John’s statement that the stick on which the sponge was lifted up to Jesus’ lips was a stalk of the hyssop plant. But for anyone well-versed in the Hebrew Bible (commonly known to Christians as the Old Testament), that little detail jumps right off the page. In the Hebrew Bible, hyssop branches are used in various rituals of cleansing. And they play a critical role in the story of the Israelites’ Exodus from slavery in Egypt, marking who would be saved from the death that struck the firstborn of the Egyptians.

In saying that the stick used to help satisfy Jesus’ thirst when he was on the cross was a hyssop branch, John is invoking the symbolism associated with it. The symbolism of hyssop says something about the thirst of Jesus—and about how we humans, who commemorate Jesus’ death on this day, can help to satisfy that thirst.

And according to Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) in the very act of satisfying Jesus’ thirst through doing what is symbolized by offering Jesus wine vinegar on a stalk of hyssop, we ourselves are transformed in mind and heart.

What is the significance of the stalk of hyssop? What does it mean that Jesus was thirsty? And what is the meaning of bystanders satisfying Jesus’ thirst in the particular way they did?

Let’s take a closer look.

For more on the meaning of hyssop, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Christianity, crucifixion, Emanuel Swedenborg, evangelization, Good Friday, hyssop, Jesus Christ, salvation, Swedenborg, the Bible
Posted in All About God, The Bible Re-Viewed

What is a Parent’s Role in the Spiritual Life of Adult Children?

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Lee — 6 Comments

Parents with adult children

A couple decades ago the miracle of birth ushered your child into the world. Perhaps you experienced that miracle more than once, and you have several children. You loved them and cared for them through infancy, childhood, and teenage years.

At every new stage of their lives, your relationship with them changed. But now comes the biggest change of all. They are on the cusp of adulthood, about to leave the nest. Your years of intensive parenting are over. For better or for worse, your child is now heading out into the world to make his or her own way as an adult. You’re excited, proud, and just a little bit nervous. And they’re probably experiencing some of the same emotions!

And you wonder: Have I done enough? Did I give them the foundation they need to make their way in the world?

If you search your soul, you may find an even deeper question: Have I given them the spiritual foundation they need to live for eternal life?

This was the question raised by a reader named Brian in a comment on my recently posted article, “How Can I Raise My Children from a Spiritual Perspective?” I responded here.

It is an issue close to my heart. As I write this, my own daughter is 26, and well into living her adult life. My two sons, at 20 and 19, are just entering into adulthood. In this article I’ll offer a fuller and more general response to Brian’s question about parents’ relationship with their children who are now becoming adults, and especially their influence on their adult children’s spiritual life.

For more on parents’ relationship with adult children, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: adult children, adulthood, children, discipline, love, parenting, relationships, religion, spirituality, teaching
Posted in Sex Marriage Relationships, Spiritual Growth

A Test for Religious Groups: How do they Treat Women?

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Lee — 9 Comments

Renee Rabinowitz

Renee Rabinowitz, a retired lawyer whose family fled Nazi-occupied Belgium when she was a child, was settled into her aisle seat on an El Al flight from the U.S. to Israel, her adopted country, after visiting family members in New York.

Soon her assigned seatmate, a middle-aged Hasidic Jew, showed up. He had a brief conversation with the flight attendant in Hebrew, whereupon the flight attendant offered Ms. Rabinowitz a “better” seat farther forward in the cabin. She reluctantly agreed to move.

But when the flight attendant affirmed that the request to move was because the Hasidic man had requested it, she was disturbed. Why should she be asked to move because it was against the religious scruples of some man to sit next to her? You can read the whole story here: “She Was Asked to Switch Seats. Now She’s Charging El Al With Sexism.”

Being asked to switch seats on an airplane may seem like a minor thing. But the question remains: Why should she, a woman, be asked to move to satisfy the religious beliefs of a man? If his beliefs forbid him from having contact with a woman, isn’t it up to him to take responsibility for the consequences of those beliefs? Shouldn’t he be the one to move, or to forego the flight altogether if no one else wants to move to accommodate his strict—and rather rigid—religious beliefs?

Are women really second-class citizens in the eyes of God, so that they must always yield to men when there is a conflict of convenience or of religious principles? After all, Ms. Rabinowitz was an observant Jew herself. In fact, she was the widow of a Rabbi. But she did not interpret the Torah in such a strictly literal way as the man who insisted that the Torah prohibited him from sitting next to an 81-year-old grandmother.

We could go through an extensive survey of religious maltreatment of women over the ages. But we’re not going to do that. Instead, here’s a simple principle:

One way to judge the level of spiritual development and enlightenment of a particular religious group is to look at how it treats women.

Perhaps that’s a bit provocative.

But I do believe it’s a valid test.

The lower the status of women in a particular religious group, and the worse they are treated, the less spiritual that religious group is. And the higher the status of women in a particular religious group, up to full equality with men, and the better that group treats women, the more spiritual that religious group is.

Mind you, this is not the only test of a religious group’s spiritual level. But I do believe it is a fairly accurate one.

Let’s look at it a little more closely.

For more on an alternative to inerrancy, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: El Al Airlines, gender roles, Israel, Judaism, religion, Renee Rabinowitz, sexism, spirituality, status of women, women
Posted in Current Events, Sex Marriage Relationships

What is the Unpardonable Sin? Am I Doomed?

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Lee — 30 Comments

Here is a Spiritual Conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Joe M:

Hi Lee

I’ve been a sinner all my life. I even married a woman 9 years ago and I was unfaithful to her many times. We went to church. I tried counselling and medication and prayer groups yet I kept going back to drugs and sin. Now I have been convicted and am sure that I have committed the unpardonable sin and am destined for hell.

What does it mean to blaspheme against the Spirit?

Thanks for the good question, Joe.

You are not alone in thinking that you have committed the unpardonable sin, and there is no hope for you. It breaks my heart to hear how many people believe they are already doomed to eternal hell because of what they’ve said or done.

But I am here to tell you that as long as you are still walking this earth, there is hope for you.

Heaven remains within your grasp. God very much wants you to join the heavenly community. And if you want to join that heavenly community, it remains your choice. It is not God who banishes you from heaven. Only you can banish yourself from heaven. And the key to attaining heaven is in loving God and loving your neighbor.

Achieving heaven will not be easy if you are deep into wrong and destructive ways of thinking, feeling, and living. But it is possible if you wholly commit yourself to walking the difficult and painful path out of those evil and sinful ways of life.

We’ll pick up these themes later in the article. Meanwhile, let’s take up your question.

The idea of an unpardonable, unforgivable, and eternal sin is based on these words of Jesus in the Gospels:

“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” (Mark 3:28–29)

Even most traditional Christian churches believe that the unforgivable sin involves much more than just verbally uttering blasphemies against the Holy Spirit. (See the Wikipedia article on “Eternal sin.”) It is generally interpreted to mean active resistance to God by refusing to repent from sins and continuing to live an evil and rebellious life. And I agree with that!

Before we dig deeper into this question, here’s a general principle to keep in mind:

Our sins are unpardonable only as long as we continue to commit them.

When we change our heart and our actions, pardon is there for us. That’s because we are no longer committing the unpardonable sin. God forgives the sins of our past (see Ezekiel 18:21–23). And we are not condemned for sins we are not committing.

Let’s take a closer look.

For more on the unpardonable sin, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Christianity, damnation, eternal sin, forgiveness, hell, salvation, spiritual rebirth, the Bible, the unforgivable sin, the unpardonable sin
Posted in Spiritual Growth, The Bible Re-Viewed

How Can I Raise My Children from a Spiritual Perspective?

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Lee — 4 Comments

There are hundreds, if not thousands of books and websites offering practical advice on effective parenting. What can we add here that hasn’t already been said?

A happy family

For starters, most of those books and websites are about how to bring up children to be physically healthy, well-adjusted, and successful in this world. For spiritually oriented parents, that’s not enough. It is even more important to raise our children to be good, caring, thoughtful people who put God first and the neighbor second, and take care of their own needs in order to serve God and their fellow human beings.

Unfortunately, children are not born that way. As innocent as they are, babies are completely wrapped up in their own wants and needs. As parents, our job is to train them out of that natural self-centeredness into an active concern for other people, and for following God’s will.

We can do this by our own example as spiritually growing human beings, by teaching our children spiritual knowledge and values, and by disciplining them when they persist in bad behavior. Loving our children involves not only giving them plenty of affection, but giving them the guidance they need to grow into angels.

For more on parenting for spiritual goals, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: babies, child-raising, children, family, infants, love, marriage, parenting, spiritual child-raising, spirituality, toddlers
Posted in Sex Marriage Relationships

Why Does God Require our Love, Worship, and Praise? Is God Insecure?

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Lee — 17 Comments

Here is a Spiritual Conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Cat:

I am really puzzled by why God would require that Christians must love and worship him. I understand his requirement for us to love our neighbors/fellow humans. But doesn’t the requirement to love, worship and praise God make him seem superficial, self serving and even insecure? If God would save non-Christians as long as they love their neighbors, why would Christians be subject to this additional requirement to love God?

Thanks for the great question, Cat!

The Beatific Vision, by Gustave Doré

Many Christians believe that God created the entire vast universe for his own glory. And many of the same Christians believe that after we die, we will spend all eternity praising and worshiping God in the heavenly equivalent of a vast, never-ending church service.

Is God really that vain? Did God really make us so that there would be billions of people to glorify, praise, and worship him? Is the universe all about God creating a vast crowd of sycophantic groupies?

In a word: No.

But there’s a reason God allows many of us to think so—and even says things in the Bible that make it sound as if praising and worshiping God is what life is all about.

Here’s the short version:

God wants our love, worship, and praise not because God needs anything from us, but because when we focus our hearts and minds on God instead of on ourselves, we open ourselves up to new love, light, and power from God.

In other words, God wants our love, worship, and praise so that God can more fully love us, enlighten us, and help us as we travel along our often dark and troublesome path of life.

Now for the long version.

For more on whether God created the universe for his own glory, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Christianity, Creation, Emanuel Swedenborg, glory, God, love, praise, spirituality, Swedenborg, the Bible, worship
Posted in All About God, The Bible Re-Viewed

Why Is Life So Hard? Why are there So Many Struggles?

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Lee — 29 Comments

Inner struggles are a part of our process of spiritual rebirth. There are many words used to describe these spiritual struggles: Temptation. The dark night of the soul. Spiritual anguish. Depression. The book of Revelation calls these dark and troublesome times “the hour of trial” (Revelation 3:10).

Why is all this struggle and heartbreak necessary?

Why can’t our life just be easy and happy?

Because it is the times of darkness and struggle that sift our soul.

We all have parts of ourselves that are not so good. And we cling to them. Our times of trial and suffering bring us face to face with those destructive parts of ourselves. Through these struggles, their grip on us is loosened. We gradually let go of our self-centeredness and our focus on material things, and learn compassion for others and trust in God.

Our times of depression and despair are never pleasant. Yet these are the passages that define our life. These are the moments when we choose whether to move upward or downward.

As painful as they are, our times of spiritual struggle forge us into the deeper, wiser, and more compassionate person that God created us to be.

For more on spiritual struggles and how to face them, please read on.

Tagged with: born again, depression, Emanuel Swedenborg, inner struggles, spiritual rebirth, spiritual storms, Swedenborg, temptation, the dark night of the soul
Posted in Pain and Suffering, Spiritual Growth

Evil Is Real, and it Does Harm the Innocent

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Lee — 92 Comments

Marvin Jacob Lee

There’s a New Age myth floating around that evil is not real; that evil is just an illusion; that if anything evil happens to us, it’s either karma for evil we ourselves did in a past life, or it’s something we chose to have happen to us as a learning experience.

But it’s not true.

Evil is real.

Evil is not an illusion.

And although sometimes we do bring evil upon ourselves, to say that every bad thing that happens to us is the result of our own actions or choices is the ultimate case of blaming the victim.

For those whose minds aren’t clouded by faux-spiritual mumbo jumbo, every day brings news of innocent people harmed by the machinations of evil minds, or by people whose lives have gotten seriously derailed into destructive ways of thinking, feeling, and living.

Here is one such news story from the past week:

For Jefferson Heavner, of Catawba County, NC, it was a family tradition to help motorists whose cars had slid off the road in stormy and snowy weather. Heavner’s father had died in a car accident years earlier. Helping drivers in need was one of the ways Jefferson and the rest of his family remembered and honored him.

So it was all in a day’s good deeds when he and some friends pulled over to assist Marvin Jacob Lee, whose car had slid off the road in a snowstorm.

He couldn’t have known as he pulled over that this would be his last act as a Good Samaritan on this earth.

For more on the reality of evil, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Catawba County NC, evil, Good Samaritan, Jefferson Heavner, justice, Marvin Jacob Lee, Marvin Lee, North Carolina, violence
Posted in Current Events, Pain and Suffering

What is the Relationship between Head and Heart in Swedenborg’s Theology?

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Lee — 2 Comments

According to the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the universe and everything in it is quite literally created from and built around the interplay between what is colloquially known as “head and heart,” or between love and wisdom, in the more abstract language that Swedenborg commonly uses.

This is the subject of Swedenborg’s great philosophical and cosmological work Divine Love and Wisdom, originally published in Latin, Amsterdam, 1763.

In this book, Swedenborg traces the creation of the universe to a divine “marriage” of love and wisdom in God. In God, Swedenborg says, love and wisdom are perfectly balanced. And though they can be distinguished conceptually in our minds, they are in fact inseparable from one another, and always operate together as one.

From this “divine marriage” flows all the power, or action, of God—and of course, all the words, or teachings, of God, which are part of God’s power flowing out. This power and truth of God flowing out is known in the Bible as “the Holy Spirit.”

So according to Swedenborg, God consists of:

Love
Wisdom
Action

In Swedenborg’s theology, these three are the “Trinity” in the one Divine Person of God, when the Trinity is viewed in abstract terms.

So in their origin in God, “head” and “heart” are, in Swedenborg’s words, “distinguishably one” (see Divine Love and Wisdom #14, in which Swedenborg uses the name “the Divine-Human One” for God):

Love is the reality, substance, and soul of God.
Wisdom is the manifestation, form, and body of God.

So in God, there is no separation between head and heart. In fact, they can occur only together with one another, even if we are able to distinguish them conceptually in our minds. God’s head and heart always work together as one in perfect balance.

Because the entire created universe comes from God and is an expression of God, this “distinguishable oneness” of love and wisdom, or substance and form, exists throughout the created universe as well, including in human beings, where it is especially manifested in our will and understanding—once again colloquially known as “heart” and “head.”

However, in human beings, head and heart do not always work together. In fact, common experience tells us that our head and heart are often in conflict with one another.

For more on head and heart in Swedenborg’s theology, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Emanuel Swedenborg, head and heart, head heart hands, heaven, Noah's Ark, regeneration, rest from labor, salvation, spiritual rebirth, spirituality, Swedenborg, The Great Flood
Posted in Spiritual Growth

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