Letters to the Editors
Our Opportunity, Our Challenge
To The Editors:
In recent months I have been following and influenced by the things
written about women in the clergy in New Church Life and elsewhere. I do
believe it is providential (isn’t everything?) that there are no clear statements
in the Writings that say indisputably that women should or should not be
ministers.
If God gave us all the answers, with no room for doubt or debate, we
would not grow. Adversity and conflict are permitted by God so that we have
opportunities to make steps forward in our regeneration. Though important,
the decision to be made regarding this issue in the Church is much less
important to us as individuals than the way we respond.
I do not have the wisdom or power to make a final decision for the Church
about this. I do have the ability and responsibility to do my best to presume
that those who are compassionate about this are doing what they believe to
be best for the Church and to accept the outcome. To decide not go to church
if there is a woman in the pulpit, or decide to leave the Church if there isn’t,
doesn’t make sense to me. When we step into the spiritual world we will not be
asked if we attended a church with an all-male clergy, or even if we attended
church.
The Lord asks us to have love and compassion for each other, even as we
struggle. To love one another as He loves us. To do unto others as we would
want them to do to us and to “judge not.” Our spiritual life is more important
than our natural life.
In Arcana Coelestia 5008:6 there is a warning about how we tend to believe
whatever conforms with our feelings or what our friends say; that when falsity
is confirmed in us it appears to be the truth: “It appears exactly like truth and
even more than truth itself.”
We are all influenced by both the spiritual and the natural. We are swayed
by natural forces and need to pray for guidance and go to the Word for spiritual
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