Many commented on the usefulness of the process, and John shared some
of his experience using this worksheet regularly in small groups, including
married couples who found asking each other what they need transformed
their relationship. He expressed the hope that the New Church would become
known as having acts of love as more central than ritual and sermons, which
took center stage in previous churches.
The Word for Half the World
The final afternoon session had two concurrent sessions, but began with a
plenary presentation in which the Rev. Brian D. Smith and Mr. Stephen L.
David updated us on the progress of The New Christian Bible Study (NCBS)
Project.
Brian told of his work with the Spanish side of the project and the way
in which it has led to Spanish speakers downloading and publishing Spanish
translations of the Writings in their local areas.
Steve said the big goal of the project is for everyone to be able to read the
Word and the Writings side-by-side in their own language, and that this is
now possible for half the world’s population to do with at least one book of the
Writings.
After presenting other exciting statistics (e.g. over 17 million pages
published), and exciting features (e.g. you can take notes and make bookmarks
on the site), he both urged us to use the website, spread the word about it,
[www.newchristianbiblestudy.org], “like” it on Facebook, and send in material
such as sermons explaining the Word. The group then split into two, with
some staying to discuss the NCBS project further, and others moving to
another room for the following:
How Do the Writings Address Feelings?
The second concurrent session was led by the Rev. Scott I. Frazier who
presented his paper: “Emotions, Affections, and Delights: an Examination of
the Heavenly Doctrines in Search of the Seat of Emotions.” He made clear that
this was not a finished study but a “foray into the forest” to see how well the
modern idea of “feelings” and “emotions” can be fit to the Writings’ treatment
of “affections” and “loves.”
He described four ways in which he conducted this exploration and gave
a detailed account of his methodology, results and conclusions. He was trying
to discover how the Heavenly Doctrines describe what we feel. Are emotions a
subset of affections or synonymous with the delights and undelights associated
with affections? Are “feelings” emotions and “emotions” affections?
From his study to date, he concluded that emotions aren’t a category or
“room” in the mind, the way the will is; we do not feel affections directly in the
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