Awaken to Love Part 1 - LIFE, GOD AND YOU

(1)  God and You!

Our modern world with its consumer culture is forever trying to put the spotlight on you – who you are, your likes and dislikes, what you want (or should have), and so on.

In fact, the world today does its utmost to get us thinking in terms of “me”, a “me” that’s in constant competition with all the other “me’s” out there, to maximize all the possible benefits for “me”.  But this effort only tends to make us lonely and miserable, not to mention suspicious and envious of one another.

From a spiritual point of view, it’s all wrong!

Actually, when understood deeply (that is, spiritually), life isn’t about you at all!

Rather, we’re all part of life, of something that is much bigger than any one of us. 
This life has a truth, a purpose and, most incredibly, a great love that sustains and renews everything in it, moment by moment.

This wisdom and love that creates and re-creates all of life (including you) we call by names such as the Divine, the Spirit, or God.

So life isn’t about you; it’s about God and you.

Just to be alive means you’re automatically in a relationship, a relationship with this Creator and Source of life.  There’s always the two of you, not just you!

Being “spiritual” or “walking a spiritual path” is about making a choice to get to know that mysterious Other.  Acting on this choice (each day) is what will gradually change and transform your life, opening up new possibilities and a new future.

(2)  But Who Is God?

It’s important to have a correct understanding of who God is, because everything else about your spiritual journey will hinge on that.

For example, if you think God is an angry judge up in the heavens who punishes people for being bad by sending them to hell, then you may be anxious about pleasing this God and spend a lot of time worrying about being “saved” from his “wrath”.

(Thankfully, such a notion is completely wrong, based on a too-literal reading of the Bible, as you will see later in this booklet!)

To describe who God is, or the “nature” of God, brings us quickly to the farthest reaches of our finite minds and limited words.  Fortunately, there have been great mystics, visionaries and seers, across all times and all religions, who have drawn near to God.  Their reports agree to a remarkable extent on the nature of this mysterious Other who, at the same time, is so intimately connected with us.

Choir

They tell us God is Spirit.  God is the non-physical reality in and behind all things, the Life in all of life.  God is the spiritual “stuff” in which we and everything else live, move and have our being.  Like fish in the ocean or birds in the air, we live in God and God lives in us.

But not only is God life; God is love.  That is the consensus of all the saints and mystics (Emanuel Swedenborg included!) and it is what we read in God’s Word (the Bible).  See 1 John 4: 8!

We live in a reality where love – self-giving, tender, faithful, devoted, joyful, creative – is the truth of all things.

Moreover, love has a clear purpose – the well-being and joy of the other, the beloved.  To make and guide everything toward that end is the wisdom of love.

Thus it was revealed to Swedenborg (as it has been to others) that God is the universal Spirit of Love and the Wisdom of Love. 

This means that, as the apostle John says, “in him there is no darkness” (1 John 1: 5), i.e. no anger or violence, no punishing “divine wrath”.  Rather, God does everything to lead us to him.  Having made us from himself, from love and for love, God then does everything (short of forcing us, which would be unloving!) to bring us into a relationship with him where we can share his joy.

(3)  God Revealed in Jesus

But words like universal Spirit, and infinite Love and Wisdom, are too vast and abstract for us to really comprehend.  It’s impossible for us to have a real relationship with an abstraction!

For that reason, God revealed himself for us as a human person – Jesus.

Jesus reveals to us the humanness of God, the intimacy of this indwelling Spirit.  God is not some alien presence “up there” on a throne somewhere, with some inscrutable purpose in mind.  Rather, God is totally involved in every part of our existence, knows it, understands what we face, and cares deeply.   That’s why one of this God’s Names is “Emmanuel”, meaning “God with us”. 

From a Swedenborgian perspective, it is very important to understand exactly who Jesus was, and is, for us.

A.  Jesus as the “Son of God”

First, Jesus was not “born God” but as an ordinary, human baby.  However, Jesus had a soul that, unlike ours, was the very Spirit of God. 

Jesus expressed this duality by sometimes referring to himself as the “Son of Man” and sometimes as the “Son of God”.  When speaking of himself as the Son of Man, Jesus was acting in awareness of his lower nature or ego-self.  When speaking as the Son of God, Jesus was in communion with his higher nature, the Spirit within.

Mission Statement Workshop

It’s important to note that this language about “the Son” – and “the Father” and “the Holy Spirit” – is not meant to be understood literally, as referring to a threesome (or “Trinity”) of separate beings.  There is only one God, just as there is only one you.  However, just as you have different dimensions to your personhood – your inner, true self, your outward appearance, and your deeds and doings – so does God.  God’s inner, infinite self, unknowable to us, is signified by the Father, God’s appearance in human form by the Son, and God’s work in the world by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is “God’s son” only in the sense that Jesus as a human being had a special relationship with God, having all of who God is for his own soul.  That reality is what set the stage for the course of Jesus’ inner, spiritual life, as he sought to live in a way that could integrate both his divine and his human natures.  That “way” involved regularly resisting all the temptations of his purely human nature, such that everything human in him became divine.

Eventually, this path of progressive and continual “self-overcoming” led Jesus to become more nearly one with the Spirit within, as his higher or true self.  His human nature was not eliminated but instead gradually made more free and fully realized through the Spirit.  Finally, Jesus died to the demands of his lower self altogether on the cross.  He rose on the third day as an entirely new and never-before seen creation, a being fully divine yet still fully human.  This was and is the one God whom we worship, the Lord Jesus Christ.  It was God proclaiming the humanness of his divine nature for all time.

Important note: none of the above should be taken to mean that Swedenborgians reject the famous doctrine of the Trinity, i.e. the trinitarian nature of God as revealed in Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  As stated above, Swedenborgians see these as three dimensions – essence, form and action – of the one Divine-Human Being that is God (and called by us the Lord Jesus Christ).

However, Swedenborgians do not accept an understanding of the Trinity which sees the Father as a judge justly angered by the endless disobedience and wickedness of humankind (ever since Adam) and who sends his Son, Jesus, and allows him to die in our place, making Jesus the “atoning sacrifice” for our sins.

This drama of a punishing Father and an atoning Son, with humanity as a kind of deaf and dumb audience helpless beneath the weight of its own sin, is really only one interpretation.  Swedenborgians see it another way. 

B)  Jesus is my Redeemer

With God putting everything of himself into everything of our existence, there is no part of our life that has not been touched by grace.  That means there is nothing, either in us or out there, that is unknown to God or greater than God.  In turn, that means there is nothing that can have ultimate power over us.  In the Lord, we have been made FREE to choose love over fear and life over death.  Our spiritual destiny is in our hands.

Picnics

Swedenborgians say that Jesus is our Redeemer for, in his triumph over fear and evil, he has redeemed us from anything ever having the power to keep us from sharing in his joy.  No one and nothing can ever take away our HOPE of new life in the Spirit – unless we choose to do that ourselves!

Of course, God had made us free – free to choose for his love or not – in the first place.  That’s because God is love as we said and it would not be loving, and therefore contrary to who God is, to make us unfree, that is, compelled to “do as he says” and made to love him in return.  Love does not force the beloved’s response because that would be a relationship of power and control, not love.  So God made us free, perfectly balanced between good and evil, heaven and hell, so that neither has a prior hold over us.  It is for us to choose our path and our fundamental choice is always the same: either for God and his love or for ourselves alone, either a greater Love or it’s-all-about-me.

However, over the centuries, humanity had gradually lost sight of its freedom and its connection to God.  It was time for a new revelation and a new start, therefore  God came to us in Jesus to affirm, once and for all, that we are truly loved and we are free to choose for that love.   

C)  Jesus is my Saviour

Exactly how we do that will be discussed later in this booklet, but for now one point needs to emphasized: this choosing for God is a lifelong process of learning and growing!  In Jesus we are made free, yes, but that does NOT mean we are immediately or automatically “saved”! 

Being saved (i.e. coming into a wonderful new life, with Jesus) is not a one-time, “born-again” experience.  The fact is, you are born redeemed (i.e. free) as is everyone on the planet because of what Jesus did.  But you are being saved only insofar as you use your freedom to choose for his way of compassionate love each day of your life.  In other words, salvation is a process you live, not a reward you get.  Salvation lies in the journey, not the destination.  Where you end up depends totally on how you live here, not on what you believe or say but on the life you choose to live.

That choice is always yours and the kind of life that results from it, heavenly or hellish, becomes your own judgment upon yourself.  God does not judge, rather, we judge ourselves.  Rather, God, being Love and the Wisdom of Love, will do absolutely everything, short of forcing you as we said, to encourage, support and guide your choosing for him.  God wants the very best for you at all times – it would be good if we listened to God and did the same!  As it says in the Bible, “Choose life!”

(4)  God’s Purpose for Your Life

And why?  What is the purpose of it all?  That in learning to choose for the Spirit, for his Love as your highest good in living your life, you will yourself become a form of that Love.  For we all become what we most love.  Loving our selves above all else we become selfish; loving God above all else we become godly. 

So living in the ways of heaven, we experience more and more of heaven in our lives.  It was revealed to Swedenborg that this is God’s deepest desire for us all – regardless of religion, race, creed, etc. – that he might “make a heaven from the human race”. 

Your purpose in life is to know the God revealed in Jesus, to rejoice and grow in his love, and to help in building his kingdom (the New Jerusalem), in your neighbour and thereby in yourself, according to your gifts.  In short, you are to be an angel, here and then hereafter.  A human being is intended by God as an angel-in-training!

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