What is New About the New
Church?
The Rev. Daniel W. Goodenough
W
hat’s in a name? The New Church, for example. Why do we call it new?
Partly, we call it new because the disciple John saw the New Jerusalem
descending from God out of heaven. This new city represents or stands for
a New Church which the Lord promised to build after the end of the First
Christian Church – a New Church to take the place of the First Christian
Church which lost sight of the paths to the Lord. But that still doesn’t explain
how it is new.
What really is new about the New Church? The true answer is –
everything. Everything is new about the New Church because now we can
clearly understand the Lord and His ways and what He wants for us and from
us. It is not that New Church people act completely differently from everyone
else. In fact, we worship in more or less similar ways as other people – though
many people love the quiet, joyful peace of New Church worship, especially at
weddings and memorial services.
We go to work and school; we enjoy sports; we vote and take part in the
life of community, society and church. We should live useful and productive
lives, in outward ways not too different from the lives of many other people.
The New Church is not new because its members’ lives are outwardly very
different from the lives of various good people we run in to. What is new is
how our lives can become inwardly new – new in the way we think and feel,
new in the way we do things, new in what and how we love. For love is our
very life. We are not what we do; we are what we love and take delight in. This
is what the Writings tell us.
The newness of the New Church is not from ourselves, but from the Lord,
because He has now revealed things that people have not known before. The
Heavenly Doctrines, given by the Lord through Emanuel Swedenborg, teach us
plainly and directly many things that for hundreds, even thousands of years,
people have wondered about but have not understood.
Who really is God and what is He like? Is He human? What does He
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