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Life on slippery slopes

Par New Christian Bible Study Staff

Life offers up plenty of "slider-adjustment" challenges - slippery slopes, curves, and various continuums. They require a lot of judgment. Some - maybe most - have spiritual aspects. In every such challenge we face, we need to figure out where we want to set the slider, and then try to stick to it.

Here's a fairly non-controversial example: Debt. It's easy to make the case that debt's a reasonable, useful thing. For example... I don't have enough money to buy this pickup truck outright, but over the next five years, I will be earning enough money to be able to pay for it gradually, and in the meantime I can use it, and that will enable me to do my job and earn that money. So, it's reasonable to borrow some money to buy the truck.

But there's a potentially slippery slope lurking in there. I might think... well, there are some options for the truck that I'd really like to have. If I borrow a little more, I can get them too. Or... well, we've been working hard, and deserve a nice vacation. We can't really afford it, but it will work out. I'll put in on my credit card. And then, before you know it, the debt's gotten pretty big, and it starts to "own" you. It didn't start out as a problem, or an evil thing, but now it's getting to be one.

You can imagine trying to draw a diagram of this. There's a slope, or curve, or continuum. At the top of the slope, there's the "never borrow" position. Towards the bottom of the slope, there's the "I'm doing really stupid things and I'm in way over my head and things are out of control" position.

Most people manage to take positions on the slope, and go up and down a little, but they don't keep sliding down. They borrow some money, buy cars or houses, and pay the loans on time. But it IS slippery, and some people lose their hold.

What are some other "slider-adjustments" that people have to cope with? How about alcohol? Some people are teetotalers. Some drink some alcohol sometimes, but it doesn't play an important role in their lives. And for some, it gets a grip on them, and they end up sliding down into deep trouble.

Drugs are similar. You might start by trying a little recreational marijuana, and maybe there's little or no harm done. Or you might end up habituated, wasted, demotivated, and down 10 IQ points. Or addicted to harder stuff and in huge trouble.

In other cases, you manage to adjust a slider and it makes improvements in your life. You work out a little more, and you lose some weight and your blood pressure goes down to normal. It's good! But even that can be taken to extremes.

It's hugely varied. There are sliders we need to set for work, and for leisure. And for hobbies. And for parenting. Health. Beauty. Strength. Learning. Sex. Competition. Fame. Power.

Some of them don't have "reasonable" tops; you can't have 100% work or 100% leisure. Some continuums have steep slopes, while others might be shaped like bell curves or valleys. Some (as with the core definition of a slippery slope) have small evil baked in from the very beginning, which wants to grow and consume. Some start out good, but can become evil if you take them to extremes. Some are very slippery.

As if that wasn't complicated enough, there's another layer: the sliders are interconnected. If you increase your exercise slider, are you going to decrease your parenting slider? Or your work slider? You can't ignore context or priorities.

So... how in the world are we supposed to operate, taking and holding our positions on all these slopes? It's an enormously complex set of challenges, and it seems to be part and parcel of being human. It's not an accident that we also just happen to have rational minds that can come to grips with this complexity. We can think and decide where to try to "be" on a slope by slope basis. We can learn as we go, and change our behaviors, and our slider-positions. It takes some perspective, and judgment, and discipline, but we have the ability to do it.

Think about the evolutionary aspects of it. Over a long period of time, homo sapiens have evolved. People who were particularly bad at handling some of the many slopes in life will have tended to die younger, or to have been less attractive mates. That's an encouraging thought, in a way. If you're reading this, it means you're a product of many, many generations of human development. Your genetic makeup has been getting tuned up for a long time! You're equipped to handle enormous complexity.

About those spiritual aspects to this need to take up positions on life's curves... they seem to be at the heart of "human-ness". We know, from archeology, that spirituality developed in human beings a long time ago - maybe 80,000 years ago or more. That suggests that spirituality is something that's helpful to us; it's a "fitness" for the task of being human. There's a case to be made that it helps us keep our footing on slippery slopes. If that's true, one would expect to find supporting evidence, and... there is some. Here are a few pieces:

1. Religion seems to correlate with happiness. See this recent Pew Research Center study.

2. 12-step programs seem to work well for people, when they ask for God's help in fighting addictions.

3. There are inspiring cases of faith in terrible circumstances, which have helped people. Think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Corrie ten Boom, Viktor Frankl, Louis Zamperini, Nelson Mandela, Helen Keller, and Abraham Lincoln... and many others.

If we look in the Bible, we'd hope to find some insights there, too. It's interesting; a search for "slippery" turns up several Bible passages. Here's one, in which, if you're trying - really trying - to be good, God can steady you on the slippery slope:

"Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had nearly slipped.... For my soul was grieved. I was embittered in my heart. I was so senseless and ignorant. I was a brute beast before you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You have held my right hand. You will guide me with your counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." (Psalm 73:1-2, 21-24)

Here's a passage from another Psalm in much the same vein:

For Yahweh won't reject his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance. For judgment will return to righteousness. All the upright in heart shall follow it. Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will stand up for me against the evildoers? Unless Yahweh had been my help, my soul would have soon lived in silence. When I said, "My foot is slipping!" Your loving kindness, Yahweh, held me up. (Psalm 94:14-18)

The Lord doesn't want us to slip down into bad habits or bad places. His hand is extended to us. That's really important for us to know, and to believe.

How, though, should we develop good judgment for all the nuances - about where to set our sliders -- how should we develop that? We're given freedom to make spiritual decisions, and slide around all over the place. To help prevent disaster, we're also given rational minds that can think, observe, learn, put on the brakes, and override our lower drives. We can - in fact, we desperately need to - open our minds to spiritual truth.

When you boil it down, the whole "slider-adjustment" challenge is the human challenge. One of the best places in the whole Bible to learn about it is right at the beginning, in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. The story of creation is, symbolically, the story of a person's stages of spiritual development. The creation of Adam, and then of Eve, from Adam's rib, is the story of the development of our freedom, and the feeling of independence, which is still infused with innocence. The trees of the garden, and the animals and birds being named, represent knowledge about good and truth that our rational minds can use.

Here are links to those early Genesis chapters (and please refer to the chapter summaries for these): Genesis 1, 2

Here, too, are some links to sections in Swedenborg's works where he discusses the inner meaning of these chapters: Arcana Coelestia 73-80, and 131-136.

There's also an interesting passage in Swedenborg's "Divine Love and Wisdom", section 263, on how we can go downhill in a spiritual spiral, or gradually reform and be reborn, again, in a spiral.

For further reading, here are some other passages that bear on this subject: , Arcana Coelestia 205, 585, 2764, 3227, 3963, 10362; and Heaven and Hell 295, 547, 558, 580.

There's more to add to this, but we're going post it now, and append more thoughts later. If you, gentle reader, have thoughts to add, please send them along. Use the "Contact Us" link in the footer of this web page. Thank you!

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Arcana Coelestia #131

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131. Genesis 2:18-25

18. And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man 1 should be alone. I will make for him a help suitable for him.

19. And Jehovah God formed out of the ground every beast of the field, and every bird of the air, 2 and He brought it to the man to see what he would call it; and whatever the man called it, the living creature, 3 that was its name.

20. And the man gave names to every beast, and to the birds of the air, 2 and to every wild animal of the field; but for man there was not found a help suitable for him.

21. And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he fell asleep; and He took one of his ribs, and He closed up the flesh in its place.

22. And Jehovah God built the rib which He took from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.

23. And the man said, By this change, it is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; for this she will be called Wife, because she was taken out of man (vir).

24. Therefore a man (vir) will leave his father and his mother and will cling to his wife, and they will be one flesh.

25. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.

CONTENTS

The subject is the descendants of the Most Ancient Church, who set their heart on the proprium.

Notes de bas de page:

1. Unless otherwise indicated man in these verses 18-25 represents the Latin homo.

2. literally, bird of the heavens (or the skies)

3. literally, the living soul

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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Arcana Coelestia #9335

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9335. 'And the wild animal of the field multiplies against you' means an inrush of falsities arising from the delights of self-love and love of the world. This is clear from the meaning of 'multiplying', when it has reference to a hurried removal of evils and falsities, as an inrush; and from the meaning of 'the wild animal of the field' as falsities arising from the delights of self-love and love of the world. For affections, good and bad, are meant in the Word by different kinds of beasts, 9280, and therefore affections for falsity that arise from the delights of self-love and love of the world are meant by 'wild animals'. These affections are also represented in the next life by wild animals, such as panthers, tigers, boars, wolves, or bears. Such affections furthermore resemble wild animals, for people ruled by those loves are steeped in evils of every kind and in the falsities arising from them. They are like wild animals in the way they see and treat companions. The fact that those loves are the source of all evils and falsities, see 2041, 2045, 2057, 2363, 2364, 2444, 4750, 4776, 6667, 7178, 7255, 7364, 7366-7377, 7488, 7490-7494, 7643, 8318, 8487, 8678.

[2] The reason why a hurried removal of evils and falsities leads to an inrush of falsities arising from those loves is that forms of good and truths, implanted in successive stages, must remove them; for falsities are not removed except by truths, nor evils except by forms of good. If this removal is not done in successive stages and in keeping with proper order, falsities that lend support to those selfish loves enter in, since those loves reign with every person before he has been regenerated; and when the falsities enter in truths cease to be acknowledged any longer. Also a person who is being regenerated is maintained in an affection for truth; and when maintained in this he searches for truths in all directions among factual knowledge in the natural. But at this time illusions of the outward senses, which exist in great abundance in the natural, present themselves there. From those illusions, when the delights of self-love and love of the world hold sway, the person deduces nothing except falsities, which come in and fill his mind if falsities arising from evil are removed suddenly. These are the considerations that are meant in the internal sense by I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest perhaps the land becomes desolate and the wild animal of the field multiplies against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land.

[3] The fact that 'wild animal' means falsity and evil arising from self-love and love of the world is evident from places in the Word which mention it, as in Isaiah,

There will be a path there and a way, which will be called the way of holiness. The unclean will not pass through it; the savage of the wild animals will not go up it. Isaiah 35:8-9.

In Ezekiel,

I will send famine and evil wild animals upon you, that they may make you bereft. Ezekiel 5:17.

In the same prophet,

When I cause evil wild animals to pass through the land and they leave it bereft so that 1 it becomes a desolation, with the result that no one passes through on account of the wild animals ... Ezekiel 14:15.

In the same prophet,

You will fall on the open field; 2 to the wild animals of the earth, and to the birds of the air I will give you for food. Ezekiel 29:5.

In the same prophet,

At that time I will make with them a covenant of peace, and I will banish 3 the evil wild animal from the land, in order that they may dwell securely in the wilderness. They will no longer be a prey for the nations, and the wild animals of the field will no longer devour them. Ezekiel 34:25, 28.

[4] In Hosea,

I will lay waste her vine and her fig tree; and I will make them into a forest, and the wild animals of the field will eat them. Hosea 2:12.

In the same prophet,

The land will mourn and every inhabitant will waste away because of the wild animals of the field and the birds of the air. Hosea 4:3.

In David,

The boar of the forest tramples on it, and the wild animal of the fields feeds on it. Return, O God Zebaoth, and visit Your vine. Psalms 80:13-14.

In the same author,

You dispose the darkness to become night, in which every wild animal of the forest comes forth. Psalms 104:20.

In Moses,

If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them, I will banish 3 the evil wild animals from the land. But if you despise My statutes, I will send into you the wild animals of the field, which will lay you waste. Leviticus 26:3, 6, 15, 22.

In the same author,

Jehovah your God will cast out the nations before you little by little, lest perhaps the wild animals of the field multiply against you. Deuteronomy 7:22.

In these places 'the wild animals of the field', 'the wild animals of the earth', and 'the wild animals of the forest' stand for the falsities and evils that belong to self-love and love of the world.

[5] Since 'wild animal' means falsity, and falsity can spring from two different origins, that is to say, it may stem from evil or it may stem from good, 9258, 'wild animal' in the Word also means upright nations or gentiles who, though they are subject to falsity, nevertheless lead upright lives. The term 'wild animal' is used in this sense in David,

Every wild animal of the forest is Mine, and beasts on mountains of thousands; I know every bird of the mountains, and the wild animal of My fields is with Me. Psalms 50:10-11.

In the same author,

Praise Jehovah, wild animals and all beasts! Psalms 148:7, 10.

In Isaiah,

All wild animals of My fields - come to eat, all wild animals in the forest. Isaiah 56:9.

In Ezekiel,

In the branches of the cedar, which was Asshur, all the birds of the air made their nests, and under its branches every wild animal of the field brought forth, and in its shadow dwelt all great nations. Ezekiel 31:6.

Notes de bas de page:

1. Reading ut (so that) for et (and)

2. literally, the face of the field

3. literally, cause to cease

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.