275. Evils Are Permitted for a Purpose: Salvation

If we were born loving, as we were when we were created, we would not be prone to any evil. We would not even know what evil is, because if we have not been drawn to evil and therefore are not inclined to evil, there is no way we can know what it is. If we were told that one thing or another was evil, we would not believe that it was possible. This is the state of innocence that Adam and his wife Eve were in; the nakedness that did not embarrass them portrayed that state. Familiarity with evil after the fall is meant by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The love we were created with is a love for our neighbor that makes us as generous with our neighbor as we are with ourselves, and even more so. We find ourselves full of the joy of that love when we do something good for others, very much the way parents feel toward their children.

This love is truly human. There is something spiritual within it that makes it different from the earthly love that the lower animals have. If we were born loving like this, we would not be born into the darkness of ignorance the way all of us are nowadays, but into some light of knowledge and intelligence; and before long we would actually be informed and intelligent. At first we would go on all fours like animals, but would have an inborn urge to walk on our feet, because even though we were on all fours we would not be looking down toward the ground, but forward toward heaven; and we would be straightening up so that we could look upward.

In general, trees represent the deepest and most significant intellectual concepts: the ones that come to us most directly from the Lord. This varies depending on us and our states: the people of the Most Ancient Church, who were in a state of loving the Lord, understood truth automatically and internally through what the Writings call "perception"; people in lower states (including most of us) have to work a little harder to learn it from the Word and by willing to follow the Lord. In other parts of the Bible, especially in the prophets and New Testament parables, the meaning of "tree" is broader, meaning not just a person's intellectual concepts but the whole person.

'Trees,' as in Joel 1:10-12, signify knowledges.