New Church Perspective - Features and Comments

Bounce House - Clothing the Naked - essays - New Church Perspective

Bounce House — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:49:12 +0000

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iqbal - Affection for Truth - essays - New Church Perspective

iqbal — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 20:06:02 +0000

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PC Drivers - What Harmony Is (Or: If You Can Sing, You’re Way Better At Math Than You Think You Are) -

PC Drivers — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 06:48:31 +0000

Nice post.

lamzina - Why the Church of Truth? - essays - New Church Perspective

lamzina — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 08:45:56 +0000

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Courtney Love - Meditate | Mindfulness and Most Ancient Breathing - essays - New Church Perspective

Courtney Love — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 07:03:56 +0000

In addition to formal meditation, you can also cultivate mindfulness informally by focusing your attention on your moment-to-moment sensations during everyday activities. This is done by single-tasking—doing one thing at a time and giving it your full attention. As you floss your teeth, pet the dog, or eat an apple, slow down the process and be fully present as it unfolds and involves all of your senses. How to open third eye

Play's APK - A Week With the Twelve Tribes: Are we really living what we believe? (Part 1 of 2) - essays - N

Play's APK — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 04:46:50 +0000

Wonderful post. Thanks for the share.

dusty johnson - Meditate | Salty Bible, Salty Life - essays - New Church Perspective

dusty johnson — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 06:37:20 +0000

Well researched and informative article and all the information has been presented in an effective manner. Thank you for sharing this article.

New Church Perspective is taking a break...

Tue, 11 Aug 2015 12:49:14 +0000

New Church Perspective is officially taking a break. The volunteer team is moving, shifting responsibilities etc. so we've had to put the project on ice. Feel free to contact us with any thoughts for the future. In the meanwhile, you can keep reading other places, like: newchristianwoman.com, newchurchlife.org, newchurchconnection.org.

Propecia - Snippets from the Life of a Hospice Chaplain - essays - New Church Perspective

Propecia — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 08:11:25 +0000

Thank you Julie! You are doing a gread job, as there are so many people who require spiritual and emotional support.

lgnetworksinc - The Most Beautiful Thing - essays - New Church Perspective

lgnetworksinc — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 19:39:44 +0000

Great photos, Gina! You have a great, unfiltered eye for what I think is interesting about the places you see and it very much captures the feel of the locale.

Kate Rodz - Journey: Walking with the Lord in Song (Mixed Media) - essays - New Church Perspective

Kate Rodz — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 03:27:56 +0000

Sweet voice, love Nora :)

Cortland - Why the Church of Truth? - essays - New Church Perspective

Cortland — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 23:06:39 +0000

I guess I am going to have to make a stop in Louisville on my way, or returning from visiting Bryn Athyn.

Why the Church of Truth?

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 11:00:11 +0000

The Writings hold many beautiful teachings about what it is to live a happy, useful, heavenly life. But we have to live those teachings in order to feel their impact. Mary shares about a church and a pastor who have helped her to see the Writings in a new light. -Editor.

So why do you keep visiting Kentucky? An experience with a new kind of New Church.

In the past year I have traveled to Louisville, Kentucky seven times and I am heading there again for a month this summer. No I have not found a new passion for fried chicken or horse racing. I keep going back because of the Church of Truth. If you have not heard about the Church of Truth, it is located in the inner city of Louisville and lead by Brother Edward Miller. It is New Church (i.e. following the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg) but it is not under any other New Church organization (i.e. it is not part of the General Church or the Convention etc. and no other organization is funding what they are doing).

So you might say, “That’s nice but why should I care? I don’t live anywhere near Kentucky and I am perfectly happy with the church I already have.”

There is something different happening there and it is worth paying attention. The Lord teaches us throughout His Word that we are not just to study the Word but we are meant to LIVE it. As it says in Deuteronomy 8 and Jesus quotes in Matthew 4,

…man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.

So we in the New Church who believe that the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg are also the Word of God, have a lot to live up to. We also have a deeper understanding of how and why.

We study and we quote and we know all about how this or that works in heaven. The question is: do we live it? Do we study every passage with the understanding that its purpose is to teach us how to live the Commandments because they are the laws of the Lord’s kingdom? There is a battle that needs to be fought in each person so that the Lord can come forth in THIS WORLD. Heaven sure sounds good to me from what Swedenborg describes, so why aren’t we fired up to do what He says and make way for “His Kingdom to come and His will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven?” We have the vision, we have the tools and we have the resources to stand strong in this battle. Are you ready to stand?

When I went down to the Church of Truth I experienced the Teachings of the New Church coming to life off the pages and changing the world by way of people who were willing to battle with the hell they had once loved. I felt myself coming alive in the presence of the Lord. The Lord showed me that He is in His Word. He is real and present and loving me. He asked me to make room for Him so that I could be a vessel for the Master’s use. I experienced this because Brother Miller has battled to cast down anything that is from himself and to be that kind of vessel. The Lord is able to be present at the Church of Truth because He has a vessel.

This is exactly what the Teachings teach us. Look at Swedenborg’s life. He didn’t have the Teachings – he had just the Bible. He fought to live the Lord’s Commandments and the Lord was able to use him as a servant. What if rather than just studying Swedenborg like a history text book we fought to live the Truth like he did? He often mentions people becoming regenerate on earth as rare but completely possible. Why does the Lord have him tell us that if not to offer us the opportunity? Why does religion have to take a back burner to all the other cares of life? What if we treated our regeneration as the number one priority to be fought for in every area of our lives? What if each one of us made it our mission to love the Lord above all, love our neighbors as ourselves and be of useful service? What if the Lord had a servant here in the earth to help us put down our selfish loves and start a new life? What if we all had the opportunity to become that kind of servant and help others? We could experience heaven on earth.

So why do I keep going back to Kentucky? I go because the Lord is present in His Word there. There is a vessel for the Master’s use in Brother Miller and I am learning how to become a vessel too. Religion is life and life is religion. Don’t let hell convince you that your relationship with the Lord has to be a distant or part time one. He wants to be present with you in every moment and to use your life to spread His truth and touch people who need Him. So maybe the question really is, when are you coming to Kentucky?

Mary Abele

Mary is currently working as the school counselor at Bryn Athyn Elementary School. During school breaks she can often be found in Louisville, KY. She is happy to talk more with anyone who is interested in the Church of Truth. Other favorite activities include hiking, acting and cross-stitching.

wystansimons - Affection for Truth - essays - New Church Perspective

wystansimons — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 17:21:09 +0000

Joel - thanks for writing this. It feels so warm to me. And I realize that when I picture you, the writer, I see the little boy I knew long ago in the development called Pine Run Park where I lived in as a girl. So it is amazing to me to read this wise stuff , picturing that little boy. I hope we get to meet again one day. Life is good.

Affection for Truth

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 11:01:01 +0000

The Writings teach that truth on its own is not enough. This week Joel uses a few passages from the Bible as well as other ideas from the Writings to look at why we need more than truth to have a complete perspective. -Editor.

Give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil: for who is able to judge this great people of yours? ( 1 Kings 3:9)

Affection for truth makes the church. What is affection for truth? It is loving the truth for its own sake and also because it leads to the good of life. As children we are born with the potential to be truly human, to be wise and loving, but in order to become so it is a long, even a lifetime process. The first step is education: we need to learn knowledge and truth. This is why children are so receptive to soaking up new information like sponges. When we become teenagers we need to develop the rational mind, Ishmael. This first rational is harsh, untempered, but another step along the journey.

When we gain the ability to be rational around 20 years of age then the true rational mind, Isaac, can be born. In Hebrew, Isaac means “laughter.” We laugh at something because it is true. If it is from a good affection like helping people then the laughter is good laughter. If the laughter is from an evil affection like hurting people then it is bad laughter. Does this dress make me look fat? You decide.

The true rational is not truth alone. It is good conjoined to truth. It is truth in the service of good. It is using truth to help and love other people. As we go through life and the various states or days of regeneration we are constantly learning new things. Knowledge is elevated to truth after temptations and conjoined to good.

If we get far enough on the regenerative path then there is an inversion. Truth is no longer in the primary position but now good. The question we are then always asking is 'how does this, whatever the this is, help other people, truly?' At this point we cannot go back to loving truth simply as knowledge or we become like Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt (salt = the affection for truth).

The Psalmist says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart O God thou will not despise” ( Psalm 51:19). What stops us from hearing the truth? Even the deeper truths? Even the deepest truths? Why ourselves and our own evils of course: our lust, our hatred, our pettiness, our stubbornness. All the things that the ego is heir to.

It is through temptations, struggles, and vastations that our old hard self is softened. And if we endure and conquer in these temptations we are kinder out the other side and more aware of other people’s sufferings, and more desirous to help them in whatever way we can. When you see other people going through the “dark night of the soul” it can seem brutal (and it is). But if they endure out the other side there is so much joy and peace. Is there an easier way than getting this kind of a “broken heart”? No, there isn’t. And many people simply are not willing to endure the pain of this kind of growth.

In 1 Kings 3, Yahweh asks Solomon what he wants and Solomon replies that he wants wisdom in order to rule properly over the people of God. Solomon says, “Give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil: for who is able to judge this great people of yours.” The phrase here in the New King James translation is an “understanding heart.” In other translations this term is translated variously as “a discerning mind” and as “an understanding mind.” The Hebrew is לֵב שֹׁמֵעַ which literally means a “listening” or “hearing heart.” The word for “listen” or “hear” in Hebrew also sometimes carries the connotation of “obedience.”

What is this “hearing heart”? What does it mean to “listen with our heart”? It means that we are able to “listen without prejudice” to other people’s suffering and all the suffering in the world. This is the first great step if you really want to change the world (or yourself for that matter, for the ego makes us all suffer). Can you look at the homeless person on the street and really get, to really really get how hard and unfair their life is? Can you look at the power politics in the world and see the deep deep evils that people do in the world, who they really are? And believe me this kind of evil is its own suffering, for us here, but for them in hell to eternity if they don’t repent. Can you look at the world, at your spouse, at your neighbor, at your church, at your country, at everyone with long and loving eyes, but eyes that are willing to see the deeper truths in life?

This is really what makes the church the church. Affection for truth. A “listening heart.” For it is into this affection that God can flow and work miracles and motivate us to go forth and serve, to love your neighbor and forgive your enemy, and to care for the poor and the sick and the suffering. But it starts with us, with the choice to listen and to hear. And when we become broken and contrite then sometimes we are very still inside, and like children God can speak to us tenderly and tell us the truth.

Joel Brown

Joel Brown is a Christian.

Meditate | Salty Bible, Salty Life

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 09:00:26 +0000

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. —Editor

Swedenborg writes that salt is a symbol for longing (Arcana Coelestia 10300). Salt is all over the place in the Bible. In the Old Testament, priests were ordered to season the offerings with “the salt of the covenant of your God” (Leviticus 2:13). All the offerings were called a “covenant of salt forever” (Numbers 18:19). Associating salt with a covenant points to how salt on a spiritual level of meaning plays a part in the coming together of things or the longing for certain things to come together in covenant. The chemistry of salts suggests this spiritual meaning as well—they are ionic compounds that are always “longing” to be electrically neutral (apologies to any chemists out there who might be cringing at my amateur and anthropomorphized description). Personally, I just have to think of salt and my mouth starts watering.

Longing is central to our life. Ezekiel 16:4 makes reference to babies being rubbed with salt when born—a beautiful image of the way we are saturated with longing from birth. Swedenborg explains how the “salt” in us can be a longing of truth for goodness (or a longing to conjoin truth with goodness) or it can be the opposite of this when it “loses its flavor” (Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:50, Luke 14:34)—then it is “longing from some other love than genuine love” or a longing to control and posses from the love of self turned away from God (Arcana Coelestia 10300). To say that truth longs for goodness points to how truth is never really separate from love in the first place. And equally so, falsity is never separate from evil. So truth is anchored in love or has love deep within it. And the same is true when it is a longing from “some other love than genuine love;” in this case, falsity is experiencing longing and has evil deeply within it. The union and the longing for union are both constant, similar in my mind to how Swedenborg describes love and wisdom to be “distinguishably one” (Divine Love and Wisdom 34).

With these two “flavors” of longing available to us, albeit with infinite variety in each, it seems it can be very useful to get in the habit of examining the active longing in myself. In meditation, I reflect on the different longings within myself to notice the flavor. I can recognize longing from genuine love—longing for kindness, goodness, God’s perspective and will. And I can draw up the flavor of longing from the love of self for reputation and personal gain. I notice this longing has an inflated or exacerbated kind of graspingness and neediness at the cost of others’ freedom and wellbeing. Which longing will I identify with and let flow through me into my choices and actions? It is not surprising to me now after contemplating this that several of the Bible passages which have the word salt in them are about battles going on in “the Valley of Salt.” Which longing in me is going to win out in this moment?

Swedenborg explains that salt is used in the Bible sometimes in reference only to heavenly longing—in these instances the salt is used for healing because this longing unites truth with love; in others the salt is singly a reference to hellish longing, in which case it makes the earth barren when sown in the soil because this longing unites evil and falsity, which is at once the uncoupling of truth and love. From these considerations, I place the prayer from Colossians 4:6 in my heart, calling on heavenly longing to lead me in my life: “Let my speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that I may know how I ought to answer everyone.”

Chelsea Rose Odhner

Chelsea is a writer of poetry and prose, songs and social commentary, with over thirty years of experience in existing; a few of her pieces can be watched here and several can be read here. She is fascinated especially by embodied spiritual life—how we support and engage the life of the spirit through our life and experience in the physical body and world. This interest has led her through a career in massage therapy, training in and ongoing study of yoga practice and philosophy, a degree in English and Biology from Bryn Athyn College, and it sustains in her a ceaseless appetite for studying the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and the sacred texts of the world’s religions, particularly those of Christianity and Hinduism. She works part time as a social media moderator for the Swedenborg Foundation and as a freelance editor. She lives with her husband and three children in Willow Grove, PA.

The Future Part 3

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:00:49 +0000

Todd concludes his look at life prolonging technology and our desire to control the future. He looks at what could happen if we stopped fearing death, and the peace that comes with relying on God. -Editor.

The last couple weeks we've had a look mostly at Raymond Kurzweil's view of the not-too-distant future. The main theme is robots and technology becoming a part of us, and we gain the ability to escape death. Kurzweil's future isn't that far off, about 30 years or so, but what if we take a look farther into the future? Then what can we hope for? Funny you should ask, because a man named Robert Monroe, a fellow who I've referenced before in an NCP article had a out-of-body experience where he was taken into a potential future for the earth, sometime beyond the year 3000.

One of the key elements to this view of the future, which he does describe as a “potential” future, is that there is no longer a fear of death. In fact, instead of people having to remember that there is more to them than their physical bodies, people in the future have to remind themselves that there is more to them than their spiritual or energetic bodies. The changes he sees in this future as a result of this shift are dramatic.

As he flies over various places around the world he notices that balance has returned to the ecosystem. There are no buildings, roads, cars, ships, or planes... not much of anything really. Everything looks pristine. There are beautiful gardens, and while he is told there are homes for the people, where ever these homes are he cannot find them. The people for the most part live outside their physical body. They still have one though. No need for microscopic robots to enhance it either. They've figured out how to project what Monroe calls a “resonant energy balloon” that protects the body from anything: viruses, mosquitoes, bears, you name it. Not to mention we've learned how to consume such a small amount of food that the production of it is also a non-issue. The Earth is absolutely beautiful. He observes that humanity “finally got its act together.” Indeed.

So what kind of magic is this that we stop worrying about death and then all of sudden become a bunch of peace 'n love tree hugging hippies? How does that work? The way he describes the Earth is that in our current time we have a lot of interference in our spiritual atmosphere that prevents God's energy from getting to us. Where does the interference come from? Us, of course. More specifically, it's from people who have passed on from their physical existence, but haven't moved on. They're people who are so focused on their life here, or have such a love of the world that they stay connected with Earth. Because they haven't moved on, they've basically gummed up the system. However, in this potential future these bands of interference no longer exist. Instead they are replaced with a beautiful crystal ring that would look like Saturn's rings. The energy of God now gets through cleanly and clearly.

This description of people sticking around the Earth longer than they're supposed to is a common observation with others who have had psychic experiences. George Ritchie describes people who are stuck here because they refuse to look up and see God and the angels trying to raise them higher. All they do is look down and keep their base thinking, and the worries of their life: what does this person think of me, this job has to get done, there's a lot of money to be made... you know, the kind of worries we all have that basically relate to the future.

The teachings for the New Church give us a similar message and warning about worrying about the future:

Those who have worried much about the future, and more so those who have as a consequence become grasping and avaricious, appear in the region where the stomach is situated. Many have appeared to me there. The sphere of their life may be likened to a nauseating smell emitted from the stomach and also to an ache caused by indigestion. People like these remain in that region for a long time, for worries about the future, when these are compounded by the way such people act, seriously impair and slow down the inflow of spiritual life. This is because these people assign to themselves that which is the business of Divine Providence, and those who do this put a stop to that inflow and so cut themselves off from the life of goodness and truth. ( Arcana Coelestia 5177)

Do you see the similarities between this and Monroe's ideas? “People like these remain in that region for a long time,” and that seems to be what Monroe sees too. But more importantly is the line stating that worrying about the future compounded by the way they act “seriously impair[s] and slow[s] down the inflow of spiritual life.” This feels like it is exactly what Monroe is talking about. Our worrying over the future is interfering with the Lord's love and wisdom reaching us. Because we are trying to do the work of Divine Providence we are cutting ourselves off from the life of goodness and truth.

Think about all the debates that rage over the environment, wars, money, politics... they all disappear when we make the choice to stop worrying about the future, when we stop chasing the fountain of physical youth. As we stop focusing on the troubles of our life, we are able to lift our thoughts and actually receive God's love and wisdom in a purer way. We'll regain the ability to see the spiritual realm while still here and people will no longer have to hope or believe in the next life, they will know! It will take some time for us to get there, but in the grand scheme of things another 1000 years or so really isn't that long. Unfortunately you and I won't get to see it... well, unless of course you become a cyborg that is.

Todd Beiswenger

Todd is currently serving as Pastor to the Hurstville New Church, in Sydney Australia. The emphasis of his ministry has been promoting practical teachings for everyday living that combine compassion with personal responsibility to help people be at peace within their own head.

Rev. Tomassetti - An Interview with Frank Rose, Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Rev. Tomassetti — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 18:10:36 +0000

Hi Frank, I just saw this on Glenn Alden's face book. These are topics that I continue to be interested in, even though I am semi-retired now. I am glad you are still in dialog about Church Growth, Personal Growth, The Ordination of Women, Spiritual Community, Creativity and more. We have been each other's Teachers on the Journey. Let's get together and chat some more. Love to You and Louise. Love to Glenn and Mary.

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 02:14:57 +0000

Ha, not quite. Jenn would never take the pills!

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 02:12:00 +0000

You know, I really wonder what will be achievable with technology. Kurzweil's claim is that by 2050 the technological changes are going to happening so quickly that we can't comprehend what they will bring. That makes sense to me. Maybe it will take longer than he states, but that we will one day be able to be mostly machine just seems quite likely. Like you say, if you don't have faith or hope, then this could be appealing. But the final article in this series shows that there is at least a potential future in which we get this all figured out.

Stephen Muires - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Stephen Muires — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 09:24:15 +0000

The year was 2167. In the Sydney suburb of Hurstville the TR-1, or Todd Robot model one, delivered another brilliant sermon. The church was full. Many of the people in the pews were the same ones that had sat there already in 2015, the year the immortality pills first came on the market. Ironically it was the TR-1 that had needed a replacement sometime in the early 22nd century. Its plastic parts had worn out. The ritual these days was that churchgoers picked up a special New Church supplement from a bowl, right next to the collection basket. They’d swallow it during the opening hymn. Holy Suppers were no longer performed. The pills took care of it now. “By my count this is the 45th time I have heard this sermon,” whispered Fred to his wife. Both were in their 200s. “The TR-1 is good, but I sure wish Todd was here still.” His wife agreed. Fred went on, “Remember when he rolled his wheelchair up to the TR-1 after the service? And told him, ‘That was a wonderful sermon, reverend.’ It was one of his own, of course.” They both grinned at the memory. Todd had been one of the few who refused to take the immortality pill. As he grew older more and more people of his now age-stationary congregation had asked him why. He had tried to explain. “The pill makes people celestial,” he was often heard saying. This was true. It had been one of the most compelling reasons for the pill’s success. All over the world people were forever holding doors open for each other, and giving each other Bibles. “But where has the beast gone?” Todd asked. “Without access to your inner beast, how can you choose between good and evil?” His listeners would smile indulgently when he preached like this. To the end he had insisted, “I want my inner beast!” Todd’s wife Jenn had of course taken to the pills like a fish to water. Forever thirty, was her motto. Later she ran off with a beach bum from the Gold Coast. Todd spent the last years of his life smoking marihuana, legal since 2030, and listening to Metallica.

George Gantz - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

George Gantz — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 16:05:33 +0000

Sorry - I meant to say "I do not think". Natural immortality will prove to be unachievable!

George Gantz - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

George Gantz — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 15:39:33 +0000

Well said. This is an ancient story -- the bargain of Faust. Technology will satisfy our every need - except the one that really matters. I do think machine or even biologically assisted immortality will prove to be achievable - for technical (complexity) and philosophical (embodied personal identity) reasons, as well as the spiritual ones. But for those without hope and faith in the love of God, the idea is quite compelling. Cheers - George

The Future Part 2

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 11:00:57 +0000

Carrying on from last week's article about technology prolonging life, Todd ponders why humans might want to extend their time on earth. Why be afraid of moving on? Is it good to live longer or are we trying to outsmart God? -Editor.

Last week I introduced you to Raymond Kurzweil, a prominent inventor and futurist. Kurzweil believes computer intelligence is advancing so rapidly that in a couple of decades, machines will be as intelligent as humans. Soon after that they will surpass humans and start creating even smarter technology. By the middle of this century, the only way for us to keep up will be to merge with the machines so that their superior intelligence can boost our weak little brains and beef up our pitiful, illness-prone bodies. His predictions for the future are somewhat like the Borg from Star Trek, in that we will be assimilated into cyborgs, but with a more immediate timeline for these developments that is like the Terminator movies. Oh, except in Kurzweil's future the machines will be nice. Great!

For his part, Kurzweil desperately wants to be a part of this re-imagined future. To help him achieve this he takes about 150-200 pills – natural supplements - a day that are to help ensure he'll live to 2045-ish so that his body can be mechanically enhanced and live forever (and yes, if you're interested, he does sell the supplements too). He also states that one of his goals is to bring his late father back to life. He's got some DNA of his dad that he can use, and he's kept copious records of his father's life including letters written, bank statements, anything that he can feed back into the “new” dad so as to best replicate his father.

I don't know about you, but this is about the time where I start thinking ol' Kurzweil is taking some crazy pills. Even if he can recreate a near copy of his late father, doesn't this genius realize that the copy isn't actually his father? At the base of all this craziness about the future is really a fear of death, right? In one sense I really admire his dedication and discipline to his goals, and quite honestly I'm fascinated by the idea that we could live, albeit mechanically enhanced, on earth forever. Would you do it? Would you allow yourself to be mechanically enhanced?

In some ways we're already seeing the beginnings of it with hearing aids, cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs and voice boxes. Nobody is saying these are bad things. These machines are friendly. They add to our life. Do they change our outlook on death? Perhaps. A person who lost a leg in battle might wish for death initially, but with the prosthetic limb now lives a full and happy life. While arguments like that could be made, these devices don't fundamentally change the question of death to the point of making physical death a choice. That's what Kurzweil is predicting and chasing: making death a choice. So much for the inevitability of death and taxes!

I'm all for freedom, but this feels like we're missing something here. The Lord does not want us to fear death! He tells us that there is no need to fear death! Swedenborg writes:

[These spirits] instilled that calm and delight into me I felt it filling my chest and heart; at the same time those desires and anxious cares about things to come which lead to the absence of peace and joy, disturbing the mind and creating all kinds of turmoil there, were removed... Those spirits told me that their people have no fear of death, except for the little they have over the loss of husband or wife and of children. They have no fear of it because they know for certain that the death of the body is a continuation of life, and that subsequently they become all the happier... [D]ying is not called dying by them but being “heavenized.” (Arcana Coelestia 8113, 8850)

Being “heavenized” puts a different spin on it, doesn't it? This seems to me to be the way that we are to live. Not in fear of death, but rather seeing this world for what it is - a school - and seeing our departure from it as a continuation or graduation into a new and happier place. But the trouble is that so many of us just don't believe in it any more. We hope there is an afterlife, and many believe there is an afterlife, but really, we should know there is an afterlife.

A couple of years ago, when I was promoting the church at a Mind, Body and Spirit show, I was talking to a fellow exhibitor and we were observing all the people who were in line to talk with the psychics to have their future told. “A lot of scared people over there.” he said. I'd never thought of it that way before, but I've come to think he's right. A lot of those people are probably eager to have a glimpse of their future are likely worried about it. Perhaps they're looking to reconnect with a heavenized loved one, or want to know if their current relationship will last... but no matter what it is they're looking for, aren't they looking because they're hoping or believing, but not knowing? Isn't this at the core of Kurzweil's hope for the future? That he won't have to go through the indignity of death, and that nobody will ever have to feel the pain of losing somebody dear to them.

It sounds good in a way, but ultimately it is another case of us thinking we know what is better for ourselves than the Lord does. Somewhere, the devil is laughing. Just as he tricked Esau into despising and giving away his inheritance (see Genesis 25), his birthright, for some stew, he's tricking us into forgoing our birthright – an eternity of peace and happiness beyond our comprehension – for an extended stay on this crummy rock.

Now, in once sense we can say, “No big deal” if people want to live forever on earth. Kurzweil assures that the problems of climate change, overpopulation, ability to produce food, etc., will also be addressed by technology, so we don't have to worry about them either. However, I'll finish up next week with another person's view of the more distant future. He describes a potential future for humanity if we can get past the fear of death. Let's just say that things will be different... To be concluded.

Todd Beiswenger

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 1 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 12:35:36 +0000

Likewise in that I don't think you can really create machines with real consciousness. I think you can program machines to emulate it, but as we know from theology that all life comes from the Lord, it seems to be a rather simple next step to say that we cannot create life out of machines. As for immortality, that seems a stretch, but can we drastically extend our lives? Probably. Would we or should we want to? Well, that's the real question I think.

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 1 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 12:32:26 +0000

ROFL!

The Future Part 1

Fri, 29 May 2015 11:00:53 +0000

There are many ways to try and control our future life and death, and Todd starts to look at a technological one and all it's implications. -Editor.

What keeps you up at night? Is it the anticipation of another great day?! Or is it the worry of impending doom? I suspect for most of us, it is more the latter than the former. What often gives me a restless night is the worry that I'm going to oversleep and miss my flight. Hasn't happened yet, mind you, but that doesn't keep me from worrying about it. Other times it can be a concern over what is happening or not happening at work. Do I have all my work done? Have I done a good enough job? Will people appreciate what I have done? Whatever the specific nature of the concern, they all have one thing in common: they are concerns about the future.

I'm comforted to know that it isn't just me. We all worry about the future, and so we do our best to predict it, and avoid unhappy outcomes (though studies suggest we're not actually very good at that). Prediction of the future is something we humans spend a lot of time on, this despite Jesus' teachings to not worry about it. He says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own ( Matthew 6:34).” But we do worry about tomorrow. A lot. We worry about having enough money for retirement, about what the weather is going to be, about our jobs, how our kids are going to turn out, whether Disney and JJ Abrams are going to ruin Star Wars and, of course, death. That's the big one. When are we going to die? Will our loved ones die? Similarly we worry about whether death is going to come from something preventable.

Now there are plenty of people out there who have developed a plan to cheat death. For some it is being frozen, others it is a diet and/or exercise program. One fellow who has caught my attention is betting on robots to ensure his eternity on earth. His name is Raymond Kurzweil. Ever heard of him? Kurzweil was born in 1948. In 1963, at age fifteen, he wrote his first computer program. He created a pattern-recognition software program that analyzed the works of classical composers, and then synthesized its own songs in similar styles. In 1965, he was invited to appear on the CBS television program I've Got a Secret, where he performed a piano piece that was composed by a computer he also had built.

Since then he's been a leading inventor and predictor of the technological future. His predictions aren't always right of course, but often they are. In 1983 he predicted the explosive growth and impact of the internet, as well as that a computer would be able to beat the best human chess players by the year 2000. It happened in 1997. These are just a couple highlights as we don't have space for more, but suffice it to say his predictions about technological advances and invention credentials make him worth listening to.

I mention these accurate predictions though as background to this view of the future which best summarized as such:

He claims to know that 20 to 25 years from now, we will have millions of blood-cell sized devices, known as nanobots, inside our bodies fighting against diseases, improving our memory, and cognitive abilities. Kurzweil claims ... that around 2045, "the pace of change will be so astonishingly quick that we won't be able to keep up, unless we enhance our own intelligence by merging with the intelligent machines we are creating". Shortly after, Kurzweil claims to know that humans will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological intelligence that becomes increasingly dominated by its non-biological component. He stresses that "AI is not an intelligent invasion from Mars. These are brain extenders that we have created to expand our own mental reach. They are part of our civilization. They are part of who we are. So over the next few decades our human-machine civilization will become increasingly dominated by its non-biological component.

Thank you Wikipedia.

This view of the future sure puts a different spin on this quote from True Christian Religion: “at the time of the Lord's coming the scientific, the rational and the spiritual will make one, and that the scientific will then serve the rational, and both the spiritual. (True Christian Religion 200).” Somehow I don't think having a life meshed with microscopic robots in our body is what Swedenborg envisioned when he wrote that the scientific would serve the spiritual.

But that this human hybrid future could become reality doesn't feel too far fetched to me. Kurzweil states that technology advances exponentially, not linearly, so as we look into the future we have to have a mind wide open to the possibilities. How do we see such a future? Are we afraid of it? Does this add to our spiritual growth or is it just another human attempt to over-throw God? More importantly, does it eliminate the fear of death?

To be continued...

Todd Beiswenger

Utterly Enchanted

Fri, 22 May 2015 11:00:10 +0000

There are parts of the Bible that seem no longer relevant in modern life. This week Helen demonstrates a way of taking the information we have from Swedenborg's Writings and making applicable connections about those passages. -Editor.

Sometimes in his Writings, Swedenborg tells us of a person who lived in the past. It usually makes me stop and think about being alive hundreds, or maybe thousands, of years from now, like in the line from the hymn, Amazing Grace, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years…” As I turn back to the page, Swedenborg is telling me something about the state of the person from the past.

One such example is Cicero (Jan 3, 106 BC – Dec 7, 46 BC). Because he lived in ancient Rome, he would not have known about the Word unless he came in contact with some Jewish traders. He certainly learned about it when he went into the next life, though, because Swedenborg relates the following about him,

Since I knew that he was wise, we talked about wisdom, intelligence, the pattern of reality, the Word, and finally about the Lord. . . As to the Word, when I read him something from the prophets he was utterly enchanted, especially at the fact that the individual names and the individual words referred to deeper realities. He was quite astonished that modern scholars take no pleasure in this pursuit. I could sense very clearly that the deeper levels of his thought or mind were open. He said that he could not remain present because he felt something too holy for him to bear, it affected him so deeply. (Heaven and Hell 322:2)

Swedenborg was affected by this conversation with Cicero because he himself had learned that the Word “is inwardly spiritual,” having many levels of meaning to it, and the reason is because “it is Divine” (Apocalypse Explained 555a:2). An example is this dense phrase from Jeremiah:

I will scatter man and woman; I will scatter the old man and the lad; I will scatter the young man and the virgin. ( 51:22)

Swedenborg’s Writings say that if man and woman, young man and virgin meant such persons, “the Word would not be spiritual but natural” (Apocalypse Explained 555a:2). It does make sense to think that, if the Word were natural, it would be just like any other book with stories in it. But it’s not. People who are believers know that the words mean something else.

There are hardly any chapters with a greater disconnect between the words written on the page and the transcendence of their meaning than in the book of Leviticus. To read it is to enter in to a hopeless maze of natural, and sometimes silly-sounding, laws. I am reminded, though, of what linguists say is the original meaning of silly. At the start it meant holy, and through the centuries went through changes of meaning to reach the one it has today.¹

Leviticus contains instructions on animal sacrifice, but since we no longer sacrifice physical animals on an altar, the actuality of the following passage has become even more distant. But with an inkling into some meanings through the help of Swedenborg’s Writings, the passage becomes vital for our salvation.

And he brought the bull for the sin offering. (Lev 8:14) And Moses killed it. He took the blood and put some on the horns of the altar all around with his finger, and purified the altar. ( Leviticus 8:15)

This made me think of the horns of the altar as being power (Arcana Coelestia 10182:10), and the blood, truth, (Arcana Coelestia 6978) or the tremendous power truth has (Arcana Coelestia 10027) when it’s applied to a hurting part of my life, a part, perhaps, that has turned away from the Lord towards evil. How many times have I needed Moses to spread blood all around that slaughter-site? Moses doing it here in Leviticus with his finger made me think of a balm being put on a hurting part of my life. Then Moses “poured the blood at the base of the altar…” ( Leviticus 8:15). That seems silly, too, but when thinking of Moses as the law, (Arcana Coelestia 7912) then applying truth to the most fundamental thing that is wrong will get at the cause and not just be a surface application.

“…and sanctified it” ( Leviticus 8:15). For us “sanctifying” the altar (life) entails removing the evil and making our life whole and open to heaven again. This can only be done by us repenting, or turning away from the evil. A meaning of “repenting”² is changing our minds, so it seems what the Lord is really doing is looking for a change in our minds to where we choose not to do the wrong thing anymore. In that way we are able “to make atonement for it” ( Leviticus 8:15).

Nothing less is accepted by the Lord than us changing our minds and not doing the evil anymore. He is firm about that. And that seems to me why the laws in Leviticus sound so strict, and why the Israelites needed to follow them exactly. We need to follow the requirements of repentance exactly: 1. change our mind; 2. stop doing the wrong thing. Seemingly easy, actually difficult. But the Lord Jesus was here on earth; he knows how hard it is for us.

A few verses later we find Moses sacrificing a male sheep.

He cut the ram into pieces; and Moses burned the head, the pieces, and the fat.

( Leviticus 8:20)

In a book of travel I read, a woman described eating the meat from a sheep’s head in Kirghizstan, and how very delicious it was.³ She wrote, “The meat is delicious, …so tender and succulent, that even when we are full we go on energetically chewing for the pleasure of having the feel of the firm, sweet-tasting flesh in our mouths. “

Something so foreign to our culture being so delicious? I got to thinking that eating has to do with bringing good and truth down into our lives, (AC 3832:2) and doing away with the airy-fairy unreality that faith alone is acceptable to the Lord. It was enchanting to think of the innocence (sheep) within truth, and the pleasure it gives when we value it in our lives.

¹Silly – the word’s considerable sense development moved from ‘happy’ to ‘blessed’ to ‘pious’ to ‘innocent’ (c. 1200), to ‘harmless’ to ‘pitiable’ (late 13 c.), ‘weak’ (c. 1300), to ‘feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish’ (1570s) Online Etymology Dictionary.

²The Biblical word most often translated as repentance means a change of mental and spiritual attitude toward sin. [Century Dictionary] Online Etymology Dictionary

³Ella Maillart, “A Kirghiz dinner, Turkestan, 1932,” A Book of Travelers’ Tales, Eric Newby, 334.

Helen Kennedy

Helen has been writing for many years. Currently she is the editor of Theta Alpha Journal, a General Church women's journal. When not working on that, essays and fiction are her main focus. She finds the material in Swedenborg’s Writings packed with unique and interesting ideas, and has developed a real affection for them.

Gender and the Priesthood: An Alternative Perspective

Fri, 15 May 2015 09:00:18 +0000

This week Chelsea offers a different angle from which to view gender in relation to the priesthood and marriage. Looking at what is unique about men and women in addition to what they have in common and examining how the marriage of love and wisdom is at work on multiple levels, Chelsea provides a thought-provoking discussion. -Editor

I just have to start by saying that here I am expounding on the doctrines of marriage and I can’t talk about it without acknowledging that it is through my experience of marriage that I am totally humbled in every regard. All of us can write about marriage like we know what we’re talking about. We can read Conjugial Love and put to memory its teachings. But when it comes to the day to day of being married to another human being, I can at least speak for myself and say it confronts me and my fallibility at every turn. I find it especially and acutely true with regard to marriage that what I know is minuscule compared to what I don’t know. Before I push off into the teachings of marriage, I have to acknowledge that the waters are deep and full of creatures of extensive variety; “with marriages…there are infinite variations among partners who are in a state of conjugial love” (Conjugial Love 324).

As long as the idea of women serving as priests is considered not only to be doctrinally unfounded but even a threat or opposed to the very marriage of good and truth, it is easily dismissed. The teachings on marriage are central to the New Church and so it is understandable that they also come up centrally in the discourse of whether it is orderly for a woman to serve as an ordained minister in the General Church. As I mentioned, these teachings are dense and deserve ample consideration; I in no way can claim exhaustive knowledge on the subject or that this is a thorough study of it, but having given it some careful thought I thought it would be useful to share what understanding I do have of these teachings as an alternative perspective to the one referred to in Tomoya Okubo’s recent article here on NewChurchPerspective. I want especially to be clear at the outset that I do not equate gender equality with sameness; perhaps this will be made plain as I explain how I see that women serving as priests is not opposed to the teachings of how a man and woman are united in marriage.

The marriage of love and wisdom, will and intellect, happens within an individual, whether male or female. Within a marriage, there is a dynamic in which the love in a woman (the wife) unites with the wisdom in a man (her husband). At the community level, the marriage of love and wisdom is happening in the individuals, in many ways—within individual priests in the priesthood and within individuals in the congregation, and of course within the individual marriages in the community between husbands and wives. Could it not be that the union of will and intellect in a priest is leading the union of will and intellect in a lay person, whether either is male or female, married or unmarried? (As for my thoughts on how this is possible without rejecting the teachings of how a woman’s will is to unite with her husband’s understanding in marriage, I will delve into them in a moment.) It is important first to show that the will and intellect of a priest each play a critical role in the priest’s work, which is made clear in True Christianity 155:

It was shown above, in point 3 of this part of the chapter [146], that the divine effects (which are meant by the actions of the Holy Spirit) that specifically apply to the clergy are the processes of enlightening and teaching them. There are, however, two intermediate processes to add to the two just mentioned: their perceiving and shaping [what they are learning]. For the clergy, then, there are four processes that follow in sequence: becoming enlightened; perceiving; shaping; and being instructed.

The enlightening is done by the Lord.

The process of perceiving takes place in the individuals. It is affected by the quality of mind they have developed as a result of doctrinal teachings. If these doctrinal teachings are true, the light that enlightens them clarifies their perception. If these doctrinal teachings are false, their perception becomes obscured. It may still seem clear [to the ministers], however, because of other teachings that lend confirmation. The apparent clarity is caused by a faint, deceptive light that to mere earthly vision seems clear.

The process of shaping depends on the type of love that exists in the minister’s will. The enjoyment related to that love actually does the shaping. If the minister has enjoyment in an evil love and the false perspective that goes with it, that enjoyment generates a passion that is outwardly rough, prickly, intense, and fire-belching; inside the passion there is anger, rage, and lack of compassion. If, however, the minister has enjoyment in a good love and the truth that goes with it, the passion is outwardly even, smooth, thundering, and blazing; inside the passion there is goodwill, grace, and compassion.

The process of being instructed follows as an effect from the other three processes as causes. Therefore the enlightening that comes from the Lord is turned into different types of light and heat in individual ministers depending on the quality of each individual's mind.

The main points I draw from this passage are that,

The enlightening from the Lord that takes place in a priest affects both the priest’s will and intellect. Perceiving is an intellect aspect and shaping is a will aspect.
It is the doctrinal teachings that matter, not the gender of the minister, that guides perception.
The shaping depends on the love in the minister’s will. The minister’s will is an integral part of his or her process as a minister. The love a minister has shapes his or her enlightenment.
The Lord’s enlightening in those who are ordained as ministers (or those who receive instruction and training) flows into the will and intellect and is turned into different types of light and heat.

This passage makes it clear that the work of a priest has a balance of both the will and the intellect, of love and wisdom. I see a parallel in this with what it means to be a priest in the order of Melchizedek, who served both bread and wine, who was both king and priest. A priest, and collectively the priesthood, is meant to serve as an image of the Lord, especially his love for the salvation of the entire human race (Arcana Coelestia 9809, 10152). The Lord is the marriage of love and wisdom; to my understanding, the priesthood would be a more complete expression of this marriage by having the unique minds of both men and women serving the aim of the salvation of the whole human race. I do not believe women should be allowed to be priests because they are equal and the same as men, but it is because they are equal and different. Each priest as a male or female individual would allow for a more greatly variegated balance of light and heat for the Lord to work through in leading his church on earth (Heaven and Hell 56).

As I said, the understanding I have from my study of the Writings is that men and women are individuals who each have both a will and an intellect that are always at play in their unique identities; in addition to this level, in a marriage, there is a dynamic in which a woman’s will unites itself with her husband’s understanding; but just as a married male priest is not stripped of his functional will in his work as a priest, nor does the Lord flowing into his will in his work as a priest detract from his ability to have a spiritual marriage with his wife, neither should we believe that the engagement of a woman’s understanding in her work as a priest would detract from her ability to have a spiritual marriage with her husband, or that to engage her understanding in her work as a priest would be at odds with her marriage.

In Conjugial Love 100, we read about two channels of love that flow into a husband, one directly from the Lord and one that flows in from his wife:

The male was created to be the understanding of truth, and so a model of truth; and woman was created to be the willing of good, and so a model of good. Each had implanted at the inmost level a tendency to become joined into one (see 88 above). So the two of them make up a single model, which imitates the model of the marriage of good and truth. The term 'imitates' is used because it is not the same, but resembles it. For the good which links itself with truth in the man comes directly from the Lord; but the wife's good, which links itself with truth in the man, comes to him indirectly from the Lord by way of the wife. There are, therefore, two kinds of love, one inward, one outward, which link themselves with truth in the husband. These ensure that the husband remains constantly able to understand truth, and so by means of truly conjugial love to be wise.

Swedenborg even takes the time to emphasize that the marriage between a husband and wife “imitates” (or in other translations “emulates”) the marriage of good and truth, but that it is not the same. Marriage is happening on multiple levels at once. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see that something similar to the inward and outward flow of love in a husband must be going on in a wife, that truth flows in immediately from the Lord and mediately through her husband in marriage; both of these unite with the form of love that she is and keep her in a continual affection for truth.

A central use of marriage is spiritual growth, the union of each person with the Lord and with one another. We grow closer together as we grow closer to the Lord. We need to become a “church” as an individual, that is, we need to marry faith and charity in our lives (which is accomplished by the Lord when we practice repentance):

The marriage of good and truth is what makes the church with a person. For the marriage of good and truth is the same as the marriage of charity and faith, since good has to do with charity and truth with faith. It is impossible to fail to acknowledge the fact that this marriage is what makes the church, because it is a universal truth; and every universal truth is acknowledged as soon as it is heard. This is due to the Lord's influence, and at the same time to the confirmation given by heaven. Now since the church, being from the Lord, is His, and since conjugial love corresponds to the marriage of the Lord and the church, it follows that this love comes from the Lord. Conjugial Love 62

In order for a true marriage to be created in the partnership of a husband and wife, the fact that the church begins in the husband and is implanted in the wife is because a man MUST be working on the marriage of good and truth in himself in order to be able to be married to his wife—that is, he must be committed to a path of repentance, reformation, and regeneration with the Lord in order to be able to be truly married to his wife. Just as our will and intellect are separate so that we can use our rational ability to raise our minds above our self-will, so a husband using his intellect to raise his mind above the lusts of the flesh is essential to being able to receive love from his wife. (And obviously for the wife to have any conjugial love to transmit to her husband, she must be practicing repentance, that is, developing as a “church” herself.)

There are two levels, the church and conjugial love (or married love) in each individual and the church and conjugial love as it makes a marriage between a husband and wife: “The Lord is the head of the church, and human beings, male and female, are the church; and even more so in the case of husband and wife. In this case the church is first planted in the man and by means of the man in the wife, because the man receives its truth in his intellect, and the wife receives it from the man” (Conjugial Love 125, emphasis mine). So I see this passage making a distinction between males and females in general as individuals and the dynamic that is at play on another level between a husband and wife.

The church being first planted in the man and by means of the man in the wife is in order for a true marriage to be established between them, but this does not detract from the woman’s ability to exercise her rational and intellectual capabilities on her own, that is, to exercise her own unique understanding; neither does married love flowing in from the wife interfere with a man’s ability to exercise the love in his will in his work as a priest. If anything, this dynamic going on in a marriage would be to the benefit of either a man or a woman’s work as a priest.

It is important to point out that just as Conjugial Love 100 states that there is love in a husband from the Lord immediately and via his wife mediately, the fact that within a marriage the church is first planted in the husband and then in the wife does not mean the wife does not already have the church in her; neither can married love coming from the wife in a marriage mean that the man doesn’t have married love on his own from the Lord at the same time. Both are going on, and here are passages that make me see it this way:

(9) The Word is the means of conjunction, because it is from the Lord and thus is the Lord.

(10) The church comes from the Lord and it exists in people who go to Him and live according to His commandments.

(11) Conjugial love depends on the state of the church in a person, because it depends on the state of his or her wisdom.

(12) So, then, because the church comes from the Lord, conjugial love comes from Him as well. Conjugial Love 116

The church exists in people who live according to the Lord’s commandments, because they alone have conjunction with Him…Love is what conjoins, and conjunction with the Lord is the church. Conjugial Love 129

A person, male or female, who lives by the 10 commandments has conjunction with the Lord because this indicates that the person is practicing repentance and so is being reformed and regenerated by the Lord. Wisdom, and so the church, has this direct relation to repentance as in this passage:

Since wisdom is, as we said above, a matter of life first and consequently of reason, the question arises, what wisdom of life is. In brief summary, it is this: to refrain from evils because they are harmful to the soul, harmful to the civil state, and harmful to the body, and to do good things because they are of benefit to the soul, to the civil state, and to the body.

This is the wisdom that is meant by the wisdom to which conjugial love attaches itself [between a husband and wife, but also within an individual man or woman]. For it attaches itself through wisdom’s shunning the evil of adultery as a pestilence injurious to the soul, to the civil state, and to the body. And because this wisdom springs from spiritual concerns which have to do with the church, it follows that conjugial love depends on the state of the church in a person, because it depends on the state of his or her wisdom. This also means, as we have frequently said before, that a person is in a state of truly conjugial love to the degree that he or she becomes spiritual. Conjugial Love 130 [4]

So an individual can become spiritual and so become a church in miniature, and so also can come into a state of truly conjugial love, whether male or female, married or not. Now when you have two people come together in marriage, as husband and wife, in order for a marriage to be created between those two individuals, the husband must shun adultery in order to allow the woman’s love for him to come in and dwell in him.

Conjugial Love 223 and 224 emphasize that conjugial love is received solely through the wife and communicated from the female sex to the male sex. And “where truly conjugial love exists, this atmosphere is received by the wife, and by the husband solely through his wife” (224). The word “solely” seems pretty conclusive, but then in Conjugial Love 226 we’re told that, “Conjugial love can be present in one of the partners and not at the same time in the other. Conjugial love can exist in one and not in the other, for one may fervently vow for himself a chaste marriage, while the other does not know what chastity is. One may love matters that have to do with the church, while the other loves only matters that have to do with the world. One may be with his mind in a state of heaven, while the other is with his mind in a state of hell.”

This passage does not make a distinction as to gender—the translation uses the masculine pronoun throughout, which I did not render gender neutral. Are we to assume that if it is present conjugial love is only ever in the wife, since it is communicated from the female sex to the male sex? No, because that wouldn’t be consistent with Conjugial Love 130 quoted above that points out how a man can be in a state of truly conjugial love when he has wisdom, the wisdom that comes from living by the Lord’s 10 commandments in his life. And so the church and conjugial love can exist in each a man and a woman. The key point I see being made in Conjugial Love 223 and 224 is that when you have a man and woman come together in a spiritual marriage, then the dynamic is that the conjugial love in their marriage flows from the wife to the husband, and only (or “solely”) from his one wife for their marriage in proportion as the husband is in the state of a church, that is, shuns adultery and turns to the Lord in his life.

Just as we know that the Lord rules with a rod of iron, that is, by way of the truth in the Word and with rational considerations (Apocalypse Revealed 148, 828), I’ll end by sharing a rational consideration as well as a few passages from the Bible that I find applicable. One “rational consideration” I have along with thinking about this is that as human beings, we do not have any sense that our thought is the result of two hemispheres working in conjunction in our brain, nor especially any awareness that some of our thoughts are connected only to the right hemisphere and others only to the left. We have no built-in sensory way of knowing this, but through advances in technology we now have a much greater understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the brain. I draw a parallel of this to the dynamic that might be going on between men and women in society, in their work, all the time. Perhaps it is true that all love that men use in their work no matter what their profession, in some way is flowing in through the women around them although they experience it as their own, and so perhaps even the most learned women who work in fields that require much critical thinking, rational judgment, and knowledge are able to function in these fields because of a flowing-in from the men around them. We know that really all wisdom and love comes from the Lord and is flowing into all of us from the spiritual world (True Christianity 364, Arcana Coelestia 2556, and Divine Providence 308 all speak to how this is the case for all of us), and yet we are gifted with a sense of autonomous selfhood (“that which is animated by the Lord in a person is the very thing which makes it seem as though it were from himself. That man does not live from himself is an eternal truth; yet if he did not appear to do so he could not possibly live at all” Arcana Coelestia 1712:2-3). As a woman, even if every aspect of my understanding is actually somehow flowing in from the Lord via men, and especially my husband, I am still gifted with a sense that it is from myself and I find enormous joy in applying my mind to the study and sharing of truths from the Word and the Writings.

How could women and men both serve within one priesthood while honoring the distinctiveness of the genders? Here is one passage from the Old Testament that I find especially apt:

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man saying, ‘We will eat our own food and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach.’ In that day the Branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious; and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and appealing for those of Israel who have escaped. Isaiah 4:1-2

We know from Prophets and Psalms that these verses speak of how “there will then be from the Lord a new thing of the church” (4). If women were to be allowed to pursue the profession of priest and say one were deemed suited, that woman would “eat her own food” and “wear her own clothes,” that is, have unique goodness and truth to offer others through her work as a priest on account of her being a woman. I see the plea to be called by the man’s name in this passage as the need to be recognized as equally an image of God, even though distinct/different as a female. Both men and women are capable of exercising their individual understanding and will to share the Lord’s goodness and truth in service to the church as ordained ministers. The reproach of understanding a woman’s work in the priesthood as disorderly is to be lifted as part of the development of the New Church on earth.

And in the New Testament, Jesus resurrects the twelve year-old daughter of Jairus, the ruler of synagogue, and heals the woman with the twelve year flow of blood in one stretch of verses (Matthew 9, Mark 5, Luke 8). This speaks to me of how when there is a marriage of goodness and truth, or when goodness and faith “are in one complex" (signified by the number 12; Apocalypse Explained 430, Arcana Coelestia 577), which happens when we live a life according to the 10 commandments (the bleeding woman touches the hem of Jesus’ garment, see Numbers 15:37-41), then womankind is healed of its “impurity.” As long as we are holding repentance as central in our church, it is wrong to say that it is inherently dangerous for women to serve in the priesthood on account of their gender (the same could be said for men). “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10:15).

And for a specific example of a woman serving as a “priest” in the Word as revealed by the Heavenly Doctrines, I will end with this passage:

For she was a shepherdess (or, "she was one who feeds.") That this signifies that the affection of interior truth teaches what is in the Word, is evident from the signification of a "shepherd," or one that feeds the flock, as being one who leads and teaches (n. 343); and from the representation of Rachel, who in the present case is "she," as being the affection of interior truth (concerning which just above, n. 3793). The reason this teaching is said to be from the Word is that she came to the well with the flock; and that the "well" signifies the Word may be seen above (n. 3765). Moreover it is the affection of interior truth which teaches; for from this affection the church is a church, and a shepherd or pastor is a pastor. The reason why in the Word a "shepherd," and "one that feeds" signifies those who lead and teach, is that a "flock" signifies those who are led and taught, consequently churches, and also doctrines of the church (n. 3767, 3768, 3783). That a "shepherd" and a "flock" have such a signification is well known in the Christian world, for so they who teach and they who learn are called, and therefore it is needless to confirm this from the Word. Arcana Coelestia 3795, emphasis mine

Chelsea Rose Odhner

Calling for the Lord in the Priesthood Part 2

Fri, 08 May 2015 11:00:45 +0000

Tomoya adds to his discussion of gender and humanity this week. He presents a different approach to the ownership of the priesthood, suggesting that it needs to be stepped back from, and full ownership handed over to God rather than any humans of either gender. -Editor.

The Ripple Effects from before the Time of the Last Judgment

What the First Commandment addresses, namely the source from which truths ought to be thought of, has been one of the major pillars of inquiries in human philosophy. As a human philosophy, however, it ended up deciding that this source rested with us. Beginning with Descartes's cogito, which is our own immediate self-reflecting selfhood, we have come to see ourselves as a complete whole human based merely on our physical indivisibility, which is the smallest unit of our cogito. This idea was emphasized in the atheistic existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre in the last century, wherein we were the owner of our own existence and the power of rationality, before being defined by anything else, including the Divine. In its insistence that we must keep the ownership of our own existence, this philosophy did not allow any room for us to ever start from the Divine. So it established itself diametrically against the First Commandment; the truths must not be thought of from any other source than our own cogito.

In this same philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir, soon found a theoretical framework that can be applied to our gender. Feminism, which at its core is this atheistic existentialism, insists that we are a complete whole human based merely on our physical indivisibility, before we are defined by anything else, this time, including our gender. We are human before we are our sex, and it also likewise insists that we keep the ownership of our existence as a human being first before we are our sex. It needed to start from and end in our cogito, too.

While Sartre's atheistic existentialism struggled along with the fate of Marxism that it ultimately looked toward, the essence of it that clothed itself within the form of feminism spread from France to the rest of Europe and North America.

Gender before Human in the Church

In a new church faith, we are not a complete whole human in our own immediate selfhood. We are our sex first before we are truly human. True humanity only comes about between a unique two of the opposite sex in a relationship called conjugial love. It never exists outside of this relationship.

Man can become the love which is an image or likeness of God only by a marriage of good and truth; for good and truth inmostly love one another, and ardently long to be united that they may be one; and for the reason that the Divine good and the Divine truth proceed from the Lord united, therefore they must be united in an angel of heaven and in a man of the church. This union is by no means possible except by the marriage of two minds into one, since, as has been said before, man was created to be the understanding of truth, and thus truth, and woman was created to be the affection of good, and thus good; therefore in them the conjunction of good and truth is possible.  (Apocalypse Explained 984 [2])

Just as every one of us is created for heaven, every one of us is created for one unique other. So both male and female while alone are quite rightly infirm and vulnerable, never a complete whole alone without this one unique other of the opposite sex. We are all, and always, second-class citizens within our own sex, whether male or female, while the first-class citizen is the conjugial love itself, namely, the Lord.

This is not a description of a result, but the cause, of the dignity and respect that we may receive, just as the good and truth as separate units are not the result, but the cause, of the salvation that we may receive. In other words, the infirmity and vulnerability are not signs of illness to be treated of but are signs of wellness to be protected, since they are what condition the conjugial relationship to materialize, sustain, and strengthen.

As we look to the Divine, this relationship then becomes the matrix of our true existence that allows us to become not only truly human as a pair, but also truly ourselves in our given sex as to our own immediate selfhood. And the more we deepen our acknowledgment in our heart that we are indeed incomplete in our own immediate selfhood, the more we are in this very matrix of our true existence.

With us the finites, there is no real human without and apart from our sex; we are not only born our sex but also to become even more so as we grow:

In the marriage of one man with one wife, between whom truly conjugial love exists, the wife becomes more and more a wife, the husband more and more a husband. (Conjugial Love 200)

In the church, therefore, an "individual" is to be redefined back to the meaning it had at the time of our creation, as the unique two of the opposite sex in one flesh, which are not divisible, just as how our physical body is only human with both the heart and the lungs joined together in one body. And in this reclaimed "individual," the dignity and respect as to our immediate selfhood comes from our potentiality for a true humanity with our one unique other, and not our actuality of it without our one unique other. In other words, our innate trust in our own power as an immediate selfhood does not have any place to thrive in. And most importantly, the conjugial love that consolidates the two as one becomes the only true entity deserving of the dignity and respect, which is the Lord.

This of course challenges the idea of "human rights" which is one of the fundamental common sense of the modern world. All rights indicate the ownership of powers. In a new church faith, we are never the owner of what makes us truly human, so our own immediate selfhood must not be the one deserving the dignity and respect associated with what makes us truly human. Instead, all the dignity and respect rest with the conjugial love, which is the Lord, who is also the First Commandment. He is the only one with all the human rights, as He is indeed the Divine Human, while we are like the husbandmen of this vineyard, who work for Him to protect and cultivate it. When human rights have been violated, therefore, we have first and foremost sinned against the Lord who owns it.

In the church, the one-ness of existence where an ownership resides are supposed to shift from our immediate self-reflecting selfhood, which would be countable many, to the Lord who is uncountable and truly one. It is not the people, but the Lord, who has the rights and powers. He is the only true existence or the ownership, the only true Human.

Human before Gender in the World

So if we start from an idea that we are all completely human in our own sex alone without the need for the one unique other, the scene is almost all set for the opposite effects; our immediate selfhood regardless of our gender holds on to all the rights and powers, and claims to be the only true existence on our own. It is the very premise behind sexism by men and also the goal sought after by feminism.

In a human philosophy, since we have dismissed the First Commandment, we have nowhere to start from except our own immediate selfhood with our bodily senses. The more we are in this selfhood in how we define our own being, the more we consider ourselves true and authentic to our existence. Our immediate selfhood and our bodily senses are where we find our "freedom," and it is from and for this freedom that the rest of our values in life are interpreted. From this perspective, we condemn the infirm and vulnerable state of our being alone in our own sex. Perhaps similar to how Adam and Eve were compelled to despise and cover the obviousness of their sexes by fig leaves, the infirm and vulnerable state of our being alone in our own sex is deemed something to be denied or shaken off because it interferes with the freedom of our own immediate selfhood. Moreover the conjugial love and its effects of having children and raising them are essentially looked down upon for the same reason. Despite its name, feminism despises the gender itself, not only masculinity, but also femininity; it simply seeks to be human all on its own apart from our gender and apart from the one unique other. Our gender and the one unique other are no longer the foundation of our true humanity, but our capacity for not being affected by them becomes positive proof of one's autonomy in our mind. Subsequently, in this framework, adultery and promiscuity no longer harm our humanity; they rather become our rights to exercise the freedom that is considered already attained within our immediate selfhood.

As faith only doctrine placed faith as the primary over charity, human philosophy places humanity the primary over gender. The effect is the same for both; faith and charity as well as male and female are disconnected from each other and considered as two autonomous entities. The simple flip of causality in our dignity and respect is enough to deliver more subtle and effective ways to prevent conjugial love from taking form, as it plucks conjugial love at its potentiality before its actuality.

This immediate selfhood, however, is not new or progressive by itself. It has most likely been around since the time the serpent spoke to us in the beginning of our human history. And in the absence of the First Commandment, this immediate selfhood seems to behave like the serpent that is biting its own tail. Confirming in this immediate selfhood was the error that swiftly and primarily infected masculinity ever since the fall of the Most Ancient Church. It resulted in various forms of blatant dominance and abuse over femininity. Femininity then picked up what masculinity left them with - the violence and cruelty that suffered - and utilized it to give more sustainable manifestations that carry, deliver, and nurture the exact same erroneous belief that masculinity had harboured first. In appearance, the sexism by men and feminism appear bitterly against one another, but they are merely the opposite sides of the same coin, where the falsity in trust in power of our own immediate selfhood is cherished and pursued. Left to ourselves as we dismiss the First Commandment, we seem to end up going nowhere except solidifying the error we have allowed to germinate at the dismissal thereof.

Both de Beauvoir and Sartre were proponents of this human philosophy and at the same time opponents of anything that transcended our own selfhood, such as religion. Their opposition would not be possible if the idea of being human before our gender was all thought of from the Lord, in accord with the First Commandment. It is evident that, despite how righteous the common sense of the modern world appears to be, whatever it claims to offer is manmade and can only lead us to our immediate selfhood. Our true humanity is presumed achievable without the real need for our one unique other and without the conjugial love, which is the Lord, who brings two together to be one. Instead of all of us seeing one and only infinite Sun from which we receive all that makes us truly human, we allow countless many finite stars to emerge within us, who are now suns in their own rights. The humanity with us thus degrades from the infinite that belongs to the Lord to the finites that belong to human beings. This degradation of our humanity from the infinite uncountable value to the finite countable values seems to allow the idea of equality – an equation - to emerge for the first time. It seems to fuel and solidify these finite stars of ours, but what it eventually seeks to achieve is to further destroy things properly spiritual with us.

Equality

By itself, the idea of equality is also a falsity. It is a civil idea at most, which merely describes how we defined and arranged our powers amongst ourselves; the understanding that we own our powers has already been built into this very word. Its convincing and persistent characteristics seem to come from the association often made to how the Divine affects us universally. The falsity in this association is again a manipulation of the causality. The reason that the Divine affects us universally has nothing to do with power we claim to own; He affects us all universally because He is Love Itself.

When something is truly by "Itself", it does not require others to provide a condition for Itself to be Itself. As Love Itself, the Lord does not require the recipients of His Love to provide a reason for Him to be Love. (Likewise, as Truth Itself, the Word does not require other truths - political, social, cultural, archeological, scientific, etc. - to provide a reason for It to be the Divine Truth, which is the basis for the First Commandment.) This is the true unconditional love and is not a kind of love that we are familiar with or capable of. Our own love is always conditional, even with our storge - parental love toward children - which is said to be the love we have the closest to the Divine Love. If we take away the characteristics of what make our children who they are, such as the physical appearance, the behaviour patterns, and the personalities, even before they are reduced to complete strangers to us, we can easily begin to observe a change within our own storge toward them. The recipients of our love indeed affect the love we have for them, making our love susceptible to changes. In other words, our love is finite, because it requires the recipients of its love to provide reasons for our love to be love.

Being Love Itself, the Lord loves us all regardless of who we are and what we do, whether we are angels in the highest heaven or satans in the lowest hell. The Lord is fully active without anything about Him being reactive, as best elaborated by the sun and the planets. The sun does not adjust and accommodate its own heat and light in reaction to the planet's various attributes; it emanates its heat and light universally to all directions regardless of what the planets are and what they do. The Lord similarly pursues us all with the same indiscriminate constant force, not because of any reasons that we can provide for Him to so reach out to us, but solely because of His being Love Itself (and as He never acts in reaction to our various attributes, it is never the Lord but always we who condemn ourselves through the attributes we have obtained for ourselves). Since this is how the Lord operates in His essence - the Divine Love - and everything that makes us truly human comes from it, it is the Lord who owns both the humanity in us and the way He affects us, from the beginning to the end. It is the true Proprium, and it is the First Commandment.

Since what reigns universally in the atheistic humanism is the trust in the power that we can claim an ownership of, just as this humanism manipulated the causality of the humanity and gender, it also manipulates the causality in the way the Lord affects us. The result is the idea of "equality," wherein the reason of the universality of the Divine has shifted from the attributes of the Divine to the attributes of us the finites.

Once we own the reason for the universality of the Divine, we become powerful because we feel we now have the endorsement from the Lord that we are something on our own as well. Coupled with the idea of our complete whole human in our immediate selfhood, this formulation of two fallacies produces the effect upon which male and female are perpetually put at a contest for their powers as if we were on a balance scale. Once it starts to seesaw, it becomes a framework that grips our thoughts and confronts us with "what is the answer?"

The idea of equality, however, is not just an effect of these fallacies, but also an embodiment of perpetual failures. Our intentions - our loves - do not believe in it. All loves seek an inequality instead. If love is toward others, the more we love, the more we give and not hold back, until letting others have all and ourselves none. If love is toward self, the more we love, the more we take and demand, until letting ourselves have all and others none. As a result, equality means a compromise to both of these loves. This means that, despite its uniform appearance, there are two kinds of equalities around us, similar to how there are two possibilities in a set of two repelling poles. One is that of the former where we give mutually without holding back, and we compromise by taking back a half of what we offered, and the other is that of the latter where we take mutually and demand more, and we compromise by giving back a half of what we took. The idea of equality is not a self-evident spiritual truth by itself; it is merely a result of two like intentions of either selflessness or self-centeredness. And what is far more compromising about this idea in the church is that it is incapable of describing anything that is properly spiritual.

Things properly spiritual are not defined by time and space, but the idea of equality is very much defined by these finite attributes. It is an equation; it can handle only finite values. As a result, when we embrace this idea and start to interpret everything from it, it demands we see things in a heavily material manner: whatever things we are trying to give or take, it must be divisible and we must be able to own it. In other words, we would commit an offence if we applied this idea to things that cannot ever be divided nor owned, which is all that is properly spiritual. The absurdity of this materialistic view is shown in how the woman who was not the mother responded in this passage:

And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake before the king. Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living. And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof. ( 1 Kings 3:22-27)

In the context of the call for women in the priesthood, the thing we are trying to "give" or "take" is the priesthood as well as humanity to which dignity and respect are attributed. When we start from the idea of equality as a reason for the call for women (or anyone) in the priesthood, we incur the same absurdity, as we have already deemed these things as something that can be divided and owned amongst us.

As we allow ourselves to see male and female as separate autonomous entities and ascribe the causality of Divine Love to ourselves, the idea of equality takes it further and converts everything on its path by division and possession until there is nothing properly spiritual about the humanity with us. It is one thing to use the idea of equality to treat others as you would like to be treated, with respect to things properly natural which can be divided and owned without harm; it is quite another to seek and confirm ourselves in this idea so that we can enhance our power, with respect to things properly spiritual which must not be divided nor owned. In the church, equality should be no more than a mere result of our mutually offering something properly natural at most. We cannot employ it as an instrument for our acquiring something properly spiritual without destroying this very thing being acquired.

Ownership

It seems that out faith in any sincere religion boils down to how we understand and fight around the ownership. The ownership, I believe, is really the key word, and it is what both the First Commandment and atheistic humanism address directly, albeit in opposing directions. One who owns is ultimately the one who leads. It is easy to say in the church that we are led by the Lord, but when we still hold onto a sense of ownership of our life, our intelligence, our wisdom, or even our uses and charity in the church, looking for chances to enhance more of them, we are simply led by ourselves in actuality. And when we claim an ownership of anything properly spiritual, such as our humanity, we end up destroying it.

The way we come to claim ownership of these things is by ascribing the power - values or "treasures" - to things that appear to belong to us. The act of ascribing is perhaps the inclination we are born into since the serpent spoke to us. We start from ascribing this very life to ourselves, and as we grow up, we continue to ascribe more including our knowledge and intelligence, abilities, material wealth, gender, social status, physical appearances, personalities, even the faith we declare, the acts of charity we have performed, and the churches we are a member of. We believe and confirm ourselves in the appearance that we own these things. When we attempt to worship and serve the Divine in this framework, these things we have now claimed ownership of become the sources from which we presume we can offer something to the Divine. We then imagine that the Divine is in want for it.

At the very point when we have claimed ownership of power, however, we falsify the primary truth about how the Divine affects us universally: that the Divine does not require the recipients of His Love to provide a reason for Him to be Love. Offering the power that we think we own to the Lord does not change how the Divine affects us, but it does change our own perceptions about the Divine and ourselves. The Divine that we think we are serving at that point is already not the real Divine. He has been distorted in our minds into a finite being who would require something of power from us to be himself. In other words, the Divine has been reduced to one of the countable many gods:

This is why those who are in hell do not acknowledge God, but acknowledge as gods those who  surpass  others  in  power; thus they acknowledge lower and higher, or lesser and greater gods, according to the extent of their power.  (True Christian Religion 45)

The more we pursue to own the power on our own, the more the Divine in our view is reduced into a being finite, limited, and conditional, who would require reasons from us for him to love us. We thus let sacrifices and traditions overtake the way we perceive and interpret the spiritual truths.

When sacrifices and traditions become essential in religion, they serve as a means for us to become the owners of power apart from and with respect to the Divine. They may be sincerely meant as a vehicle of worship of the Divine at first, but in the course of time, the balance of power we supposedly own and could offer to the Divine and the power that the Divine is supposedly in want of may shift and tip, making us more righteous than the Divine we perceive. Having become higher and greater than the Divine we worship who is now lower and lesser, we falsely accuse the Divine for the apparent lack of virtues, even though this perception was something we have caused by the very process of our empowerment. In the end, we find ourselves wholly independent and righteous in our power on our own, dismissing the Divine from our life all together. The power that we think we own and can offer as a sacrifice to the Divine appears as "merit" at first, and this merit eventually grows into atheism at the expense of the Divine, particularly, atheistic humanism, which is proud of its own righteousness.

The First Commandment is a declaration about this one and only ownership. The Lord owns, so He leads. And for that to ever happen, we must relinquish the ownership of all things we deem powerful that we have assumed thus far in our ignorance, acknowledging that we are indeed nothing on our own. We can then finally stop leading our life and allow the Lord to lead it for us. The genuine selflessness and the unlimited forgiveness toward others would not be possible in any other way. The "other gods" in the First Commandment which we are commanded not to have are in the end the very "thou" He speaks to.

What this means for us as a church is that when we feel we need to be doing something more than what is simply in the Decalogue for us to be in the right place as a church, for example, putting together our strategies and plans for our church growth, we must be on our guard against ourselves. As the Decalogue is the Lord Himself, It is complete on Its own, yet we exhibit our distrust in the effects of the Decalogue for us to be in the right place as a church, by our urge to add something more to it, and perhaps later on, even subtract something from it to keep up with the progressive ideas of the modern world in the name of our church growth. Our urge to be doing something more in the church is an indication of our longing for ownerships under the clothing of serving our church, adding "sacrifices" and "traditions" to the Lord. It seems to me that this longing is manifested by the call for women in the priesthood, perhaps exemplifying the background from which these calls originate.

It is not any of us who should be visible and doing more in the church; it is the Lord who should be the only visible existence in the church as He is indeed in the heavens. Our real strategies and plans for the church should be toward achieving the visibility of the Lord, to increase Him as high as we can, by decreasing ourselves as low as we can. I'm sure we'll find that the strategies and the plans for that have already been put together and promulgated by the Lord Himself in the perfect and complete form in the Word, leaving nothing for us to add to or subtract from.

The Call for the Lord in the Priesthood

The priesthood is the one occupation on earth which solely and fully belongs to the Lord. None of us owns or has the right to own any part of it in a way we could ever derive power therefrom and ascribe it to ourselves to raise us up, regardless of whether it is for superiority or equality. As He is the One who owns the priesthood, it is the Lord who calls us, not we who call ourselves from our own needs and self-evaluation about our skills and abilities. People who are called have the distinct sense that the call is the Lord's, not theirs. We do not and are not supposed to have the freedom to serve in the priesthood; it is of the Lord only and must always remain so in our mind.

It is indeed convenient to project an interpretation that the men currently own the priesthood in the church. In fact, the call for women in the priesthood is dependent on that men indeed claim ownership of the priesthood, as it is the only way the case can be made in their favour, which is that women can also join them in the ownership of the priesthood. This is perhaps why the implication that the clergy owns or monopolizes the priesthood prevails. But this seems to be more a projection of what is sought after in the call for women in the priesthood.

The truth is that men do not (and should not) even own the priesthood either. There is no point to argue for women in contrast to men. For us to claim ownership of the priesthood, we have to first push aside the First Commandment, and it seems that we are constantly driven to do so by at least these two fallacies of atheistic humanism through which we view males and females as separate autonomous entities each with ownership of their own powers that are supposedly endorsed by the Divine. The priesthood becomes a throne where males and females compete for the equal share to sit on it as a king. And if this endeavour is allowed to materialize, the result would be that the priesthood would become a vessel for the human power, instead of the Lord’s. The history of the churches has already demonstrated that human beings are quite capable of taking over what properly belongs to the Lord. We no longer need to keep repeating this.

If we were called to the priesthood yet found ourselves offended by the existing clergy because we were turned down for ordination, then it seems to me that it is perhaps proof that our being turned down was the right thing to happen. The very offense we feel indicates that we have already claimed ownership of the calling to the priesthood. We are only offended as to what we have claimed ownership of.

If our peace is not disturbed by being turned down for ordination, yet it is the Lord's will that we still be ordained in this church, we would be given the wisdom that would uplift the understanding of truths in the church, which will effect such an ordination. Furthermore, as we acknowledge that the Lord has also called the existing clergy and that they cannot serve the Lord other than with truths they are allowed to see in accord with their freedom, we will likely be the one who will bear such wisdom. One thing that we can be certain of is that we will not find in this wisdom, which is from the Lord, any hint of rights and empowerments with regard to ourselves. The Lord would not contradict the first thing He says, which reigns universally to all things of our faith.

In any scenario, we should be able to find peace so long as we truly acknowledge that the Lord is the only one who owns the priesthood and calls us to it. And I believe the congregation can find peace in the same way for ourselves.

As for us, the congregation, we should stop expecting that our priests serve us. We should instead expect that our priests serve the Lord only, because the priesthood is the Lord's. And we also know that the way the priests serve the Lord is not by empowering themselves through the priesthood, but by disempowering their own personhood with respect to the Lord, so that they are reduced to nothing on their own. It is in this nothing on their own that the Lord manifests as Something on His Own and leads the church Himself. Needless to say, this process of disempowering our own personhood with respect to the Lord is not any different from what all of us, the congregation, are to go through in our effort to truly live the precepts of the Decalogue. As a result, we ascribe neither merit nor blame to the clergy for their service to the priesthood they were called to, but we deem them as our very brothers and neighbours in the same pursuit and process of our own disempowerment with respect to the Lord.

Then we would perhaps also cease to see them as the ones in charge of the growth of the church, but see the Lord as the only one who is truly in charge of the growth of the church. If we still somehow find ourselves worried that we do not have enough priests to meet our spiritual needs or that our church is headed in the wrong direction or falling apart, we would take it up not to the clergy but to the Lord and hold Him responsible for these issues, since He now owns the leadership of the church, and only He can call someone to the priesthood. If, instead, we realize that He actually has not been in charge of the office all that much to be held responsible for anything, then we can perhaps hold ourselves responsible for that first and allow Him to be in charge of the priesthood in the church, by making sure that we always start with the dignity and respect for the First Commandment. Once the Lord is thus properly in His own priesthood in our hearts, our care for the morrow of the church will dissipate because we no longer see ourselves - human beings - in it. We will at last find only the Lord along with the peace He immediately brings, which is that we are perfectly and eternally in good hands.

Tomoya Okubo

Tomoya started reading the Writings when he was studying religion and philosophy in Tokyo. He grew up in Japan and now lives in Canada with his wife and three children. They attend the Olivet New Church in Toronto.

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wystansimons - Affection for Truth - essays - New Church Perspective

Affection for Truth

The Writings teach that truth on its own is not enough. This week Joel uses a few passages from the Bible as well as other ideas from the Writings to look at why we need more than truth to have a complete perspective. -Editor.

Joel Brown

Meditate | Salty Bible, Salty Life

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. —Editor

Chelsea Rose Odhner

The Future Part 3

Todd concludes his look at life prolonging technology and our desire to control the future. He looks at what could happen if we stopped fearing death, and the peace that comes with relying on God. -Editor.

Todd Beiswenger

Rev. Tomassetti - An Interview with Frank Rose, Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

Stephen Muires - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

George Gantz - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

George Gantz - The Future Part 2 - essays - New Church Perspective

The Future Part 2

Carrying on from last week's article about technology prolonging life, Todd ponders why humans might want to extend their time on earth. Why be afraid of moving on? Is it good to live longer or are we trying to outsmart God? -Editor.

Todd Beiswenger

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 1 - essays - New Church Perspective

Todd Beiswenger - The Future Part 1 - essays - New Church Perspective

The Future Part 1

There are many ways to try and control our future life and death, and Todd starts to look at a technological one and all it's implications. -Editor.

Todd Beiswenger

Utterly Enchanted

There are parts of the Bible that seem no longer relevant in modern life. This week Helen demonstrates a way of taking the information we have from Swedenborg's Writings and making applicable connections about those passages. -Editor.

Helen Kennedy

Gender and the Priesthood: An Alternative Perspective

Chelsea Rose Odhner

Calling for the Lord in the Priesthood Part 2

Tomoya adds to his discussion of gender and humanity this week. He presents a different approach to the ownership of the priesthood, suggesting that it needs to be stepped back from, and full ownership handed over to God rather than any humans of either gender. -Editor.

The Ripple Effects from before the Time of the Last Judgment

Gender before Human in the Church

Human before Gender in the World

Equality

Ownership

The Call for the Lord in the Priesthood

Tomoya Okubo

Play's APK - A Week With the Twelve Tribes: Are we really living what we believe? (Part 1 of 2) - essays - N