touching, pushing and leading them.
…during the regeneration of a person the Lord draws them out, each and all in
their order, and separates and disposes them so that they may be bent toward truths
and goods and may be conjoined with them, and this with diversity according to
the states, which also are innumerable. (Arcana Coelestia 675; see also Spiritual
Experiences 2804, 4037)
Example of Marriage
The same bending dynamic exists in marriage. An angelic couple, in reflecting
back on their relationship, recognized that their initial happiness was more
a state of heat than light. “We found that it is gradually tempered as the
husband is perfected in wisdom and as the wife grows to love that wisdom in
her husband.” (Conjugial Love 137:3) And the superior wisdom of wives was
explained when Swedenborg was speaking with several married couples in
heaven. The wives, saying their husbands are not aware of their own affections
which influence their thinking, but they (the wives) know them, declared:
Yet we moderate them so prudently that, by permission and sufferance, we
acquiesce in everything that pertains to the desire, pleasure and will of our
husbands, merely bending it when possible but never forcing. (Conjugial Love 208:2;
see also 294:2)
In heaven couples who tenderly love each other have a heightened
awareness of all things of each other. And wives from their higher wisdom
consciously moderate or bend their husbands’ affections.
But in this world, while the same underlying proc ess occurs, it does not
appear to be conscious, as it was for those angelic wives. Describing the marital
process of transforming a husband’s self-intelligence into a love for his wife,
the Writings note:
Woman was created from man by a transmission and replication of his distinctive
wisdom, which is formed from natural truth, and that man’s love for this wisdom
was transferred to woman so as to become conjugial love; moreover, that the
purpose of this was to replace love of self in man with love for his wife, who, from a
nature innate in her, cannot help but turn the love of self in man to his love for her. I
have been told, too, that this comes about as a result of the wife’s love, without either
the man or the wife being conscious of it. (Conjugial Love 193:2)
How Does the Lord Treat Our Freedom?
Given that the Lord will not compel or break, but bends, how carefully does He
treat our freedom? In one sense He treats it absolutely; He will not violate it.
Yet, He will touch it and actively massage it. The Lord “governs and bends the
person to such a quality; and this by a continual moderating of his freedom.”
(Arcana Coelestia 3854:3; True Christian Religion 504:5) He leads “through
freedom.” (Arcana Coelestia 6472:2, 4031:4, 9587) And He actually “bends
one’s freedom.” (Ibid. 7007:3; 3869:3)
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