new church life: november/december 2015
This is the true place that the Lord can be born in your life, which is why
He was born in Bethlehem. He came into the world to bear witness to the
truth, so that love could be restored to the human race. All this is contained in
David’s prophecy of the fields of the forest.
The forest also can be dangerous
In the opposite sense a forest is a dark and forbidding place – a place of
danger, a place of where you can easily lose your way. Characters in ancient
mythology often become lost in the forest. In the war between David and
Absalom, when the battle raged into the forests of Ephraim, we are told that
“the woods devoured more people than the sword devoured.” (II Samuel 18:8)
When you are in the forest you can lose perspective about your position and,
faced with a multitude of choices of direction, you move in endless circles,
exposed to the elements and the dangerous animals that live there.
A person who is lost in the spiritual forest is not lacking in knowledge.
Instead, that person is faced with facts and information that confuses him. We
read that regeneration can be confusing:
Regeneration must take place through faith and charity. Without truths to teach
and guide, it would be like riding a horse in a dark woods by night. (True Christian
Religion 620)
The confusing and dark spiritual forest is described as the “entangled
boughs of the woods” in Isaiah. The Lord not only guides you through it, He
cuts down the branches in your way:
Jehovah Zebaoth will hew down the entangled boughs of the woods with an axe.
(Isaiah 10:34)
“The entangled boughs of the woods” stand for facts. The reason why in the Word
facts are called entangled boughs is that facts are by nature like thickets, especially
when the desires of self-love and love of the world, and false assumptions, exert
an influence on them. Celestial and spiritual love is a love that arranges into order
the facts that belong to the external memory, whereas se lf-love and love of the
world disrupt that order and bring confusion to everything there. (Arcana Coelestia
2831.10)
The teaching here is that the forest of facts in the Word becomes confusing
especially to the extent that your own desires and prejudices prevent you from
looking at its teachings objectively. For “anyone who reads the Word . . . gains
instruction according to his intention and affection." (Arcana Coelestia 3436)
“People who attribute everything to their own prudence are like those who
wander in dark forests and do not know the way out.” (Ibid. 6485)
Modern life provides people with access to great amounts of information.
The Heavenly Doctrines give us a vast array of teachings about religion.
Anyone can become confused in attempting to sift their way through it. These
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