new church life: september/october 2014
God.
True Christian Religion describes the vital importance of approaching the
Lord specifically:
A person can only acquire by his own efforts natural faith, which is a firm belief that
a thing is so because an authoritative person so declared it. He can also acquire only
natural charity, which is working in someone’s favor for the sake of some reward.
These two contain man’s self, and there is no life as yet from the Lord. Still a person
by either of these prepares himself to receive the Lord. In so far as he prepares
himself, so far does the Lord come in and make his natural faith spiritual, and
likewise his charity, and so make both living. These results follow when a person
approaches the Lord as the God of heaven and earth. (True Christian Religion 359,
emphasis added)
The Gospel of Mark records a poignant example of the way this can look.
A man brought his son to the Lord and told Him that the disciples had been
unable to cast out the spirit that caused the son to foam at the mouth and
become rigid. The father said to the Lord, “If You can do anything, have
compassion on us and help us.” The Lord replied, “If you can believe, all things
are possible to him who believes.” And “immediately the father of the child
cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:24).
That can be our cry, our prayer: “Lord, part of me believes, but part of me
doesn’t – help me to have faith completely in You!” If we make that prayer to
the Lord, while seeking to obey Him, He will answer our prayer and give us
faith. It may not be immediate, but the Lord hears and answers those prayers
directed to Him.
As we have seen, there are several things necessary for us to do if we
want to have faith: adopt the affirmative principle, seek to obey the Word, and
approach the Lord alone in thought and prayer. It is only then that we turn to
the final part of coming to belief: looking at the facts and the evidence. Here is
the conclusion to Arcana Coelestia 2568:
The more those who think from the negative principle consult rational things,
knowledges, and philosophical things, the more do they cast and precipitate
themselves into darkness, until at last they deny all things. …. On the other hand,
those who think from an affirmative principle can confirm themselves by whatever
rational things, by whatever knowledges, and whatever philosophical things they
have at command; for all these are to them confirmatory, and give them a fuller idea
of the matter.
What does this mean? It means that when we look for evidence from a
place of skepticism, from a belief that only physical things are real, we will find
a way to use that evidence to come up with physical explanations for things.
But if we have that affirmative principle, we can see how that same evidence
actually points to the truth of what the Lord says in His Word.
So to return to the specific case of the Lord’s resurrection: We will never
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