: .
life – that is, the love and wisdom
emanating from the Lord, who appears
readings
as a sun in heaven.
And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee,
Swedenborg was a “spiritual
saw two brothers, Simon called Peter,
fisherman.” It was his divinely appointed
and Andrew his brother, casting a net
mission to teach spiritual truths by
into the sea; for they were fishermen.
relating them to natural truths. He was
Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and
prepared for this by his many years
I will make you fishers of men.” They
of scientific and philosophical study,
immediately left their nets and followed
followed by a revelation of spiritual
Him. (Matthew 4:18-20)
truth and many years of experience in
which he was conscious of both worlds,
the spiritual and the natural. He was
able, therefore, to illustrate and confirm the truths of revelation by means of
science and logic – and thus to teach spiritual truths in a way that the natural
mind could grasp. As Doug liked to say: the New Church is “a religion that
makes sense.”
Swedenborg was a unique case, of course, but the spiritual truths the Lord
revealed for him to publish enable us, also, to teach spiritual truths naturally,
or in a way the natural mind can grasp. That is, by relating them to things
people are already familiar with on the natural level: the stories and symbolism
in the letter of the Word and the facts of nature.
In providence we have an ever-increasing multitude of natural facts
discovered by modern science with which to fill the nets of faith and reason
and so enrich our understanding of spiritual reality.
Consider, for example, how a radio (something that didn’t exist in
Swedenborg’s day) receives an electronic signal that we cannot see or hear and
converts it into sound. This provides a fine illustration of how spiritual life
from the Lord – invisible and undetectable by any natural instrument – flows
into a person’s body and activates it. Human beings on every level – soul, mind
and body – are “receivers” of life from the Lord which, like the sound coming
from a radio, appears to originate in the receiver but does not.
The typical call for people simply to “believe” and “accept Jesus as their
Savior” is insufficient for the New Church, because the Heavenly Doctrine
is complex and appeals to rational understanding. The highest kind of
reason, spiritual rationality, is the ability to see how the spiritual and natural
dimensions of creation are related.
Seeing this makes all things – earthly and heavenly – new. It brings heaven
down to earth with rational logic and concrete imagery drawn from the world
of nature and the letter of the Word. And it elevates our earthly existence into
the light of heaven by revealing the Divine and spiritual reality from which it
comes and which it repre sents, and to which it is designed to lead.
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