1. Divine Love and Wisdom

Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love

Part 1

Love is our life. For most people, the existence of love is a given, but the nature of love is a mystery. As for the existence of love, this we know from everyday language. We say that someone loves us, that monarchs love their subjects, and that subjects love their monarch. We say that a husband loves his wife and that a mother loves her children, and vice versa. We say that people love their country, their fellow citizens, their neighbor. We use the same language about impersonal objects, saying that someone loves this or that thing.

Even though the word "love" is so commonly on our tongues, still hardly anyone knows what love is. When we stop to think about it, we find that we cannot form any image of it in our thoughts, so we say either that it is not really anything or that it is simply something that flows into us from our sight, hearing, touch, and conversation and therefore influences us. We are wholly unaware that it is our very life--not just the general life of our whole body and of all our thoughts, but the life of their every least detail. Wise people can grasp this when you ask, "If you take away the effects of love, can you think anything? Can you do anything? As the effects of love lose their warmth, do not thought and speech and action lose theirs as well? Do they not warm up as love warms up?" Still, the grasp of these wise people is not based on the thought that love is our life, but on their experience that this is how things happen.

271. Evil and false things are absolutely opposed to good and true things because evil and false things are demonic and hellish, while good and true things are divine and heavenly. On first hearing, everyone will admit that evil and good are opposites, and that the distortions of evil are opposite to the truth of what is good. However, the whole feeling and consequent sense of people who are engaged in evil pursuits is that evil is good. Evil gratifies their senses, especially sight and hearing, and therefore it also gratifies their thoughts and consequently their perceptions. Because of this, while they do recognize that evil and good are opposites, as long as they are engaged in evil they call evil good and good evil because of their delight.

For instance, if we use our freedom wrongly to think and do evil, we call it freedom; and the opposite, which is thinking what is intrinsically good, we call slavery. Yet this latter is true freedom, and the former is slavery. Again, people who love adultery call adultery freedom, and they call it slavery to be restrained from adultery. They find delight in lasciviousness and discomfort in chastity. People who love power for selfish reasons feel a living delight in that love, a delight that surpasses any other kind of delight. So they call everything associated with that love good and everything that conflicts with it bad, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is the same with every other evil; so even though everyone does admit that evil and good are opposites, people who are engaged in evil pursuits have an opposite picture of this opposition. Only people who are engaged in good pursuits have a fair picture. While involved in evil, no one can see what is good, but people who are involved in something good can see what is evil. It is as though evil were down below in a cave, and good up above on a mountain.

271. Evil and false things are absolutely opposed to good and true things because evil and false things are demonic and hellish, while good and true things are divine and heavenly. On first hearing, everyone will admit that evil and good are opposites, and that the distortions of evil are opposite to the truth of what is good. However, the whole feeling and consequent sense of people who are engaged in evil pursuits is that evil is good. Evil gratifies their senses, especially sight and hearing, and therefore it also gratifies their thoughts and consequently their perceptions. Because of this, while they do recognize that evil and good are opposites, as long as they are engaged in evil they call evil good and good evil because of their delight.

For instance, if we use our freedom wrongly to think and do evil, we call it freedom; and the opposite, which is thinking what is intrinsically good, we call slavery. Yet this latter is true freedom, and the former is slavery. Again, people who love adultery call adultery freedom, and they call it slavery to be restrained from adultery. They find delight in lasciviousness and discomfort in chastity. People who love power for selfish reasons feel a living delight in that love, a delight that surpasses any other kind of delight. So they call everything associated with that love good and everything that conflicts with it bad, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is the same with every other evil; so even though everyone does admit that evil and good are opposites, people who are engaged in evil pursuits have an opposite picture of this opposition. Only people who are engaged in good pursuits have a fair picture. While involved in evil, no one can see what is good, but people who are involved in something good can see what is evil. It is as though evil were down below in a cave, and good up above on a mountain.