This article is addressed to the common sense part of you. I believe that religious values should make sense. They aren't something you have to accept on blind faith, or that violate your sense of justice or dignity or reality. The truth should agree with your common sense.
You'll notice as you read that I have not used a lot of teachings from the Bible to support what I say. I could give all kinds of justifications from the Bible for every idea I present, but what would that prove? People can also use Scripture to "prove" the opposite point of view. God's presence within allows us to see Scripture as true. It is this perceptive quality in you that I am speaking to right now.
So as you read this, I hope you will ask yourself, "Would a loving God create a world like this?" Or, "If I could design my own religion, would it have this belief?" Or simply, "Does this make sense?"
Free will and rationality make us human. Because we have the gift of free will, we can choose to become good or evil, strong or weak, mature or immature, and anything in between. The New Church teaches that God guards our freedom, "as the apple of His eye."* Our freedom is this important to God because He wants to love and give happiness to independent, free people. God would rather have us freely reject Him than accept Him against our will.
Rationality is the other gift that makes us human. By "rationality" I mean the ability to understand and reason. When we choose to do something that we understand, we make it part of us. When we understand, our action is not something we do because the preacher said so, or because Mom and Dad said so, or because the latest authority said so. We do it because we believe it for ourselves as mature adults. That's acting rationally.
The New Church teaches that we can never be compelled to believe. God loves our need to understand before we believe. In fact. He is more concerned with how hard we try to understand something than whether we end up with the right answer.
Belief alone without effort on our part doesn't improve our lives. When we accept something as true without acting on our conviction, we become helpless victims, waiting for change to happen, hoping God will change us miraculously. Faith is crucial to our spiritual life. But if belief were the only thing we needed to become good, we would be robots, passively waiting to be moved forward by God's power.
Trying to buy our way to heaven doesn't work either. Mindlessly saying prayers or doing good things just so God will notice and give you some credits won't change you. You can't buy goodness. It comes as a free gift from God. That's the wonder of it - God gives us a loving heart and a true perspective far beyond anything we've earned. God's love comes with our humble awareness that He is giving it to us because He loves us.
The solution is to combine good deeds and belief. Doing what is right requires activity and effort on our part. Belief requires trust and the acknowledgment that the power to do what is right comes from God.
It's a great system when you see it that way. God gets to do what only He can: give us power, desire, insight, and perspective. We get to do what only free human beings can do; choose to act the best way we can based on our understanding of what is right. This way of thinking about ourselves gives God the power that a god should have and gives us the free choice that a person should have.
The New Church teaches that Jesus Christ is the one God. He is a personal God, interested in our individual trials, joys and successes. And He is the infinite, powerful, wise God who shapes the fate of the universe. There isn't a person separate from Jesus who is "the Father," and another who is "the Holy Spirit."
How could God be more than one Being who is all powerful, all knowing, all loving? There can be only one.
To show you how the New Church understands the teachings about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Scripture, I'll use an analogy: We all have a soul, a mind, and a body. If I have a conversation with you, I talk to your mind and body, and interact with them. I can't interact with your soul directly. I do that by talking to your mind and body. The New Church teaches that Jesus is like the mind and body of God, and that the Father is like the soul. That's why Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father except through me" (i.e., no one can know what that inner "soul" of God is like except through coming to understand and love Jesus, the visible, comprehensible manifestation of God). It's also why He said, "I and the Father are one," because they are one, just like your soul and your mind and body make up one person.
The Holy Spirit is the effect that God has on us. Have you ever been in a room where the mood was kind of gloomy, and a cheerful person walked in, and things started to brighten up? Their presence affected people. Maybe you've been with a group of people when things were chaotic, and a talented leader started to get things under control. Almost like magic the whole group could settle down. That person had a "presence" which affected everybody.
God's "presence" with us is much more powerful and deep than these auras of cheerfulness or of authority. But they give you an idea of what it is: It is God acting in our lives, touching us with His love and His insight.
So God is one person who is infinitely loving, perfectly wise, and present with us every moment. In Swedenborg's writings He is called "The Lord." Swedenborg uses this name because it symbolizes all the aspects of God together in one person. It symbolizes a God whom we can respect, honor and worship, as well as a God who understands and empathizes with each of us.
Everybody who lives what he or she believes is true in the sight of God will go to heaven. You don't have to be a Christian to get to heaven. Why would a loving God create you and then say that you had to spend eternity in hell because you live in a part of the world where Christianity was not taught, or because you could not sincerely accept Christianity as it had been presented to you? What kind of a God would do that?
God is more concerned with what is going on in our hearts than what is going on in our heads. He wants us to live our lives the best way we know how. After all, when we get to heaven, He will have all the time in the world (and then some!) to teach us the truth.
God asks, "What have you done with what you knew?" Let's say you were raised with terrible values. By external standards, you may have lived an awful life. But you would go to heaven if you have made progress from your starting point. Are you trying to move closer to God or farther away? That will decide if you want heaven or hell.
There is an even easier way to think about this: Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to a place where people are always being kind to each other? Do you want to be helping out? Do you want to value others' welfare as much as your own? Do you want to honor God and submit your life to His teachings?
Or do you want to go to a place where people are looking out for themselves? Do you place your own well-being above everyone else's? Do you secretly want all power - controlling others, owning all their possessions?
We get to freely choose where we want to go. God doesn't throw us into hell. Everyone who goes to hell goes there of their own free will because that is the place they can be happiest.
When I hear people talk about heaven, a question that often comes up is, "What do you do all day?" Another is, "Doesn't it get boring after a while?" I get the sense that heaven seems unreal, and not connected to real living.
The New Church has many teachings about heaven. The main idea is that heaven is a lot more like this world than we might think. Angels weren't created as angels and don't have wings. They are normal people like you and me who once lived on earth and are now in heaven. When we get to heaven we live in houses; we are married; we spend part of each day doing a job we love and excel at; we learn and grow spiritually forever; and we are around the people we love the most.
Here is one way of thinking about heaven: Imagine what this world would be like if there were no evil. People would see and appreciate the best in each other. You wouldn't need to lock your car or house. You could trust everyone you worked with. You could be sure that you were always getting what you paid for. Governments would not spend money on armies, guns, and prisons, but would spend it on education, the arts, science, and technology.
Imagine a world where everyone had learned to deal with their tempers, their fear, their guilt, their anxiety. Imagine a world where you had friends all around you - people you trusted and could really share yourself with. Imagine a world where the person you were married to was the perfect match for you: he or she was kind, considerate, loving, passionate, safe, open, trustworthy, and wise. Imagine a world where people were so trustworthy that you didn't need to protect your feelings by hiding them or by pretending to feel something different. Imagine a world where you had a fulfilling job that you loved doing and were eager to go to every day. Imagine a world where you could understand anything you wanted, a world in which you weren't limited by whether you were born artistic, athletic, academically gifted, or socially gifted. Whatever you wanted to leam was within your grasp.
Essentially, heaven is heaven because it is a place where only good people thrive. Evil people don't want to be there (we'll get to why in a minute). All the people in heaven love to honor God and to do His will. Because of this, they also love to honor the people around them and to serve them.
So heaven is a lot like this world, except much better. It has all the best qualities, and none of the weaknesses.
And no, it doesn't get boring either. No one is perfect, even in heaven. We always need to continue growing and developing. We learn constantly, meet new people, and face different challenges about how to help people. If we are not happily married on this earth we will find our soul mate in heaven. If we are happily married, we will be reunited in heaven and continue to grow more deeply in love with that person. We will also protect and help the people who are still here on earth. (Yes, we do have guardian angels around us right now.) As long as people on earth have choices to make, life for angels will never get boring.
The same thing that makes heaven to be heaven makes hell to be hell: you are around people who are like you. Can you imagine a world where nobody cared at all about anyone else? I'm not talking about people being a little selfish, but totally selfish. Can you imagine a world where everyone wanted to back-stab, steal, murder, rape, manipulate, taunt, or torture anyone who couldn't resist? Wouldn't that be hell?
What is amazing is that God loves even evil people. Because he respects their free will, He gives them the choice of developing selflessly or selfishly. Hell is the place where selfish people are happiest, and where they can do least harm to good people.
Why choose hell? I don't know why, rationally. But choosing evil is not a rational decision. It's an insane one, only it's worse than psychological insanity because we freely give up our rationality. When I think back on the times I said something cruel, or I hurt someone deeply by what I did, I can say now, "Why did I do that? It was insane!" Yet it seemed like the appropriate thing to do at the time. Even if I knew then that it was wrong I could justify it because of my mood at the time or because that person "deserved it."
That's how evil works: It temporarily blinds us. We are allured and charmed by what seems good. We choose the present pleasure of acting out our feelings and desires, rather than the deeper more lasting pleasure of acting out only the feelings that come from God. We all make mistakes and act selfishly, of course. What sets an evil person apart is a lifelong pattern of denial and justification of wrongdoing.
We might ask, "If you get to choose heaven or hell, can't evil people choose to go to heaven?" This is true. However, evil depends on deceit to work, and you can't get away with lying to anyone in heaven. You have to pretend to be someone's friend to rob them blind or back-stab them or manipulate them. But deceit is useless because the angels see right through it. Because angels are so perceptive, devils can't outright attack them. They choose to go to hell where they can have more success.
Unfortunately, even that doesn't work. Another of God's laws is that we are not allowed to hurt people in the next life. Everything you try to do to someone else comes back on you. That makes your life a heaven or hell depending on who you choose to be. The devils are frustrated people: They can plot and plan to do all kinds of horrible things, but they can't act on them without it all coming back on them. That's the hell of it. But we can see the mercy of God even in hell: He allows devils as much delight in their evil deeds as He can without letting them hurt others. And they can fantasize all they like. It's not much, but it's the best God can offer them because it's all they will accept.
In some ways, the final test for any religion is: "Does it help me be a happier, better person today?" I believe that the New Church has a lot to offer here.
Your life can change in dramatic ways, but there is no quick-fix. Spiritual growth takes effort and attention on our part. There are definite steps we can follow to overcome any fault or shortcoming in our lives.
Let's look at one specific teaching and how it might apply to our lives. I call it "exposing the lie." Think back on the times you have felt something negative. Maybe it was anger, pride, or fear. How did you gat rid of that feeling? Sometimes it may have been easy. At other times it may have seemed impossible, especially if it was something insidious like fear or guilt which tend to gnaw at us.
The New Church offers a tool that might help you. Here's the principle behind it: Feelings are vulnerable all alone, so they use ideas as their armor.
This armor is very useful for your good feelings. For instance, you surround the feeling of love you have for someone by reasons why you love them, and by commitments you make to them. These true reasons and commitments protect that love and keep it strong.
Negative feelings, on the other hand, use lies as armor to protect themselves and to justify their existence. For example, let's say you are feeling unnecessary guilt about something. You know intellectually that you shouldn't feel guilty, but you can't shake it. Even though you aren't aware of them, there are probably lies gathered around that guilt to support it. The armor of those lies keeps your guilt safe from true ideas. One might be the lie that you are responsible for someone else's happiness; or the lie that when you displease someone you have automatically done wrong or the lie that you " should have known better" even though you didn't have enough information. If you can expose the lie - discover which unconscious belief you have accepted - you are a long way down the road toward getting rid of unhealthy guilt. All that will be left will be appropriate guilt. The next time that the unhealthy guilt comes back, you can say, "That feeling is a lie; I do not have to feel guilt." Try it.
That is just one example of the tools the New Church offers for a better, happier life. You can see from the example that you will still need to exert effort and pay attention to grow spiritually. But you will know what you are faying to fight. Instead of fighting blind, you can fight with your eyes open.
The New Church also offers another wonderful tool: it gives us the key to unlock the inner meaning of the Bible. It makes more of the Bible relevant to our own lives. A lot of the Bible is relevant - there are many beautiful, clear teachings in Scripture, and we can use them. But there are also many teachings that are unclear. Some of the laws of the Old Testament seem picky, and completely irrelevant to our lives today. Some of the prophecies don't even seem to make sense, let alone help us become better people.
The New Church teaches that the Bible has a deeper level of meaning and that the whole Bible is a parable explaining our personal spiritual development. All the stories about wars, love and hate are stories about our spiritual victories, failures, and development. The story of creation is not necessarily trying to tell us how God created the world; its true purpose is to describe how God brings our spirits to life when we follow Him. All those laws about which animals you can eat and what to do if you get a rash, are actually eternal laws about how our spirits operate and about how we can treat others.
Here is an example: Suppose someone borrows something from you, and you want something of theirs as security so they will pay you back. The Old Testament states that you are forbidden to go into the debtor's house to demand it. You have to stay outside, and they can bring it out to you. Why would the God of heaven and earth make such a law part of His revelation to humankind?
The reason is that this law describes a spiritual principle about respecting other people's right to make up their own minds about accepting what is true. You can imagine someone charging into a person's house, looking for the most valuable thing they could find to take. That way they would be sure the person would pay them back. Spiritually, this law means that you are not allowed to use your friendship or authority to force people to accept your way of seeing things. Instead, you need to stand on the outside of their "house," or mind, tell them what you believe, and let them decide for themselves.
Every story in the Word is like that law. Every detail of every story contains a level of meaning that has direct application to our lives.
The New Church is based on the Bible, and on the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg was a scientist, philosopher and theologian who lived from 1688 to 1772. We believe that he had spiritual experiences, and that the books he wrote because of those experiences are a revelation, just like the Gospels, or Genesis and Exodus. He was given this work by God, just as the prophets were in the Old Testament, and John, who wrote the book of revelation, was in the New Testament.
Swedenborg published all of his books at his own expense (thirty-two volumes). Most of them were published anonymously. He put his name on the last ones because by that time people had figured out who was writing them anyway. He was offering what he believed was revealed truth from God, and he saw himself simply as a "servant of God."
He did not start a church. Several years after his death, readers of his books founded a church. Today, New Church organizations, although small, have congregations in many cities in America, and on six continents.
Completely apart from his theological works, Swedenborg was a remarkable person. He was one of the best known scientific figures of his day. He revolutionized the smelting process in Europe (the process of purifying metal ores). He was the first to offer a thesis that there are many galaxies of stars. His discoveries founded the science of crystallography. His path breaking work on the brain was centuries ahead of its time. In his spare time he designed a glider that actually flew, and a submarine that worked. He drew on his scientific training to report on spiritual matters.
Some of the ideas you have read in this pamphlet are commonly believed today. For instance, many people accept that God is a God of pure love, and that people from many faiths can be saved if they are good people. These are common sense ideas. What is so remarkable about Swedenborg's theological writings is that he wrote them over 200 years ago. If you were to study the religious history of the 18th century, you would probably say that there was not a lot of common sense in evidence then. Swedenborg was a man well ahead of his time.
Some people have commented that Swedenborg's work has an Eastern flavor - many ideas are similar to Eastern religious thought. This is true. It is also extraordinary since no writings from Eastern thought were translated into Western languages until after Swedenborg died.
It is interesting to know something about Swedenborg. But in the final analysis, Swedenborg as a person is not important. What really matter are the ideas. Now that you have seen some of the ideas he presented you can consider what they might offer you. Can they help you become a better person?
"Swedenborg was one of the world's greatest geniuses. With his rare intellect and deep spiritual insight he has much to contribute to our modern life." Norman Vincent Peak
"For you Westerners, it is Swedenborg who is your Buddha, it is he who should be read and followed!" D. T. Suzuki
"More truths are confessed in his writings than of those of any other man." Thomas Carlyle
"To my mind, the only light that has been shed on the other life is found in Swedenborg's philosophy." Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"The most remarkable step in the religious history of recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg. One of the mastadons of literature, he is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I have come back to Swedenborg after vast studies of all religions, and after reading all the works published within the last sixty years. Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes all religions - or rather the one religion - of humanity. " Honoré de Balzac
"Swedenborg's message has meant so much to me! It has given color and reality and unity to my thought of the life to come; it has exalted my ideas of love, truth, and usefulness; it has been my strongest incitement to overcome limitations.... He is the greatest champion of genuine Christianity in twenty centuries." Helen Keller