520. From Birth We Have a Tendency toward Evils of Every Kind. Unless We at Least Partly Lay Them Aside through Repentance, We Remain in Them, and If We Remain in Them We Cannot Be Saved

We are all born with a tendency toward evils. As is recognized in the church, from our mother's womb we are nothing but evil. Now, the reason this is recognized is that the church councils and leaders have passed down to us the notion that Adam's sin has been passed on to all his descendants; in this view, this is the sole reason why Adam and everyone since has been condemned; and this damnation clings to us all from the day we are born. Many teachings of the church are based on these assertions. For example, [we are told that] the Lord instituted the washing of regeneration that is called baptism so that this sin would be removed. This sin was also the reason for the Lord's Coming. Faith in his merit is the means by which this sin is removed. The churches have many other teachings as well that are based on this notion.

[2] Nevertheless, the teachings that were brought forward above in 469 make it clear that there is no such thing as evil that we inherit from Adam. Adam was not the first human being. "Adam" and "his wife" are used symbolically to describe the first church on this planet. The Garden of Eden symbolizes the wisdom of the people in that church; the tree of life symbolizes their focus on the Lord who was to come; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes their focus on themselves instead of the Lord. Secrets of Heaven, which was published in London, uses many parallel passages found elsewhere in the Word to demonstrate thoroughly that the first chapters of Genesis describe this church in symbolic terms. Once people comprehend and absorb the teachings presented in that work, they experience a collapse of their formerly cherished opinion that the evil bred into us by our parents comes from [Adam's sin]; they realize that inherited evil comes not from Adam but from some other source.

As was amply demonstrated in the chapter on free choice [466-469], the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil exist within every human being; and the fact that these trees are said to have been placed in a garden means that we have free choice to turn ourselves toward the Lord or to turn ourselves away from him.

650. The Lord Ascribes Goodness to Everyone; Hell Ascribes Evil to Everyone

It is a new concept for the church that the Lord ascribes goodness to us all and ascribes no evil to us, but the Devil (meaning hell) ascribes evil to us all and ascribes no goodness to us. The reason this is new is that in the Word it says many times that God is angry at people, takes revenge, hates them, condemns them, punishes them, throws them into hell, and tests them, all of which actions actually come from evil and are therefore evil things to do. In the chapter on the Sacred Scripture, however, I showed that the literal meaning of the Word was written in what are called apparent truths and correspondences [215, 226, 254, 256-258]. It was written this way to allow for a partnership between the outer church and the inner church, and therefore between the world and heaven. There I also mentioned that when we read things like that in the Word, the apparent truths are turned into genuine truths as they pass over from us into heaven. In this case, the genuine truths are that the Lord is never angry, never takes revenge, never hates us, never condemns us, never punishes us, never throws us into hell, never tests us. He does evil to no one. In the spiritual world I have often witnessed this change and conversion of meaning.