n e w c h u r c h l i f e : m ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5
Here’s an explanation from the teachings of the New Church about what it
means to be part of the Church:
There are some people who believe that they belong to the Church because they
have the Word, read it or hear it read by a preacher and know something of the
sense of the Letter, although they do not know how certain passages in it are to be
understood. . . . The Word is the Word according to the understanding of it with
a person, that is, as it is understood. If it is not understood, the Word is indeed
called the Word, but with the person it does not exist. The Word is truth according
to the understanding of it; for the Word may not be truth, as it can be falsified. . . .
Through the understanding of the Word and according to it, the Church is a Church
– a noble Church if it is in genuine truths, an ignoble Church if it is not in genuine
truths, and a Church destroyed if it is in falsified truths. . . .The Lord… is present
with a person through the reading of the Word; but He is conjoined with him
through his understanding of truth from the Word and according to it; and in the
degree that the Lord is conjoined with a person, the Church is in him. The Church
is within a person. The Church that is outside of him is the Church among the many
people within whom the Church exists. (Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture 76-78)
People in the Church are those who have the Church in them. People in
the New Church are people who have the New Church in them – in their
minds, in their hearts, in their lives.
So, are you part of the New Church? Is the New Church in your mind and
in your heart? If you were going to picture your relationship with the Lord
as a city, what sort of Jerusalem do you have within you? Is it the Jerusalem
of Solomon’s time – a city following the Lord but mostly focused on just the
external actions of going to church and doing the religious rituals? Is it a
corrupt Jerusalem where the temple is run down and unused, and the king
and people are worshiping the gods of self-gratification? Or is it the Holy City
New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven where the Lord Himself is
the temple and the light of your mind?
Now, I am not trying to talk everyone out of thinking that he or she is part
of the New Church. When we really understand what it means to be part of the
New Church it feels arrogant and presumptuous to say that we know we are
part of it. We’re running into the challenge of ideals vs. reality. We want to hold
onto and believe in ideals for ourselves and other people and we also want to
be realistic and understanding about the fallibility of ordinary human beings.
We run into difficulties when we look at our man-made natural world
organizations and compare them with the ideal of what the New Church
is meant to be. Or when we look at the actions of other people who “call
themselves New Church” but don’t measure up, in our minds, to that glittering
ideal. Or we look at ourselves and think the same thing. “Who am I to call
myself New Church when my marriage is like this or when my children are
doing that?”
Part of the benefit I see in understanding the whole history of Jerusalem is
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