231. "Profanation of what is holy" means profanation by people who know the truths that their faith discloses and the good effects of caring taught by the Word, and who in one way or another acknowledge them. It does not mean people who have no knowledge of such things or who simply reject them out of irreverence. What follows, then, is about the former people, not the latter.

There are many kinds of profanation, some less serious and some more, but they boil down to the following seven kinds.

The first kind of profanation is committed by people who make light of the Word or use it lightly, or who do the same with the divine gifts of the church. Some people do this because of habitual immorality, pulling words and phrases out of the Word and including them in conversations of questionable quality, sometimes indecent ones. This necessarily involves some disrespect for the Word, when in fact the Word is divine and holy throughout and in every detail. At the heart of everything it says, there is something divine lying hidden; and it is through this that it is in touch with heaven. This kind of profanation is more or less serious, though, depending on the recognition of the Word's holiness and on the indecency of the conversation into which the supposed humorists inject it.

[2] A second kind of profanation is committed by people who understand and acknowledge divine truths but who violate them in their lives. This is less serious, though, if they simply understand the truths and more serious if they actually acknowledge them. All our discernment does is teach, much the way a preacher does. It does not automatically unite the teaching with our volition. Acknowledgment, on the other hand, does unite itself. There can be no acknowledgment unless our volition agrees. Still, this union may vary, and the severity of the profanation depends on the closeness of the union when our lives violate the truths that we acknowledge. For example, if we acknowledge that vengefulness and hatred, adultery and promiscuity, fraud and deceit, slander and lying, are sins against God and still commit them, we are guilty of this more serious kind of profanation. The Lord says, "The slave who knows the Lord's will and does not do it will be beaten severely" (Luke 12:48 [Luke 12:47]). Elsewhere, "If you were blind you would not have sin, but now you say that you can see, so your sin remains" (John 9:41).

Acknowledging things that are apparently true, though, is different from acknowledging things that are really true. If we acknowledge things that are really true and violate them with our lives, then in the spiritual world we seem to have no light or warmth in our voice and speech, as though we were completely listless.

[3] A third kind of profanation is committed by people who use the literal meaning of the Word to justify their evil loves and false principles. This is because the justification of falsity is the denial of truth and the justification of evil is the rejection of goodness; and at heart the Word is pure divine truth and divine goodness. In its outermost meaning, its literal meaning, this does not come out as real truth except where it tells about the Lord and the actual path of salvation. Rather, it comes out in those outer garments of truth that we may call "appearances of truth." As a result, this level of meaning can be persuaded to support all kinds of heresy; and if we justify our evil loves we do violence to things that are divinely good, while if we justify our false principles we do violence to things that are divinely true. This latter violence is called "the falsification of what is true," while the former is called "the adulteration of what is good." Both are meant by "blood" in the Word.

There is something spiritual and holy in the details of the literal meaning of the Word--the spirit of truth that emanates from the Lord. This holy content is damaged when the Word is falsified and adulterated. Clearly, this amounts to profanation.

[4] A fourth kind of profanation is committed by people who utter devout and holy words and whose voice and body language seem to express loving feelings, but who at heart neither believe nor love what they are pretending. Most of these are hypocrites and Pharisees. Everything true and good is taken from them after death, and they are dismissed into outer darkness. People of this sort who have also become fixed in their rejection of Divinity, the Word, and the holy gifts of the church sit in silence in the darkness, incapable of speech. They want to utter devout and holy words the way they did in this world, but they cannot, because in the spiritual world speech must be in accord with thought. Hypocrites, though, want to say what they do not really think. This gives rise to a resistance in the mouth, and the result is that they can only be silent.

However, there are less and more serious forms of hypocrisy depending on how resolute the opposition to God is, and on the outward arguments in favor of God.

[5] A fifth kind of profanation is committed by people who claim divine qualities for themselves. These are the people meant by Lucifer in Isaiah 14 "Lucifer" there means Babylon, as we can tell from verses 4 and 22 of the same chapter, which also tell of their fate. These are the same people who are described as a harlot sitting on a scarlet beast in Revelation 17:3.

There are many mentions of Babylon and Chaldea in the Word. "Babylon" means the profanation of what is good and "Chaldea" the profanation of what is true. In each case, it applies to people who claim divine qualities for themselves.

[6] A sixth kind of profanation is committed by people who accept the Word but still deny the divine nature of the Lord. These are the people known as Socinians and Arians in the world. Both kinds of person ultimately find themselves praying to the Father, not to the Lord. They pray constantly to the Father for admission to heaven (some also praying for the sake of the Son), but their prayers are in vain. Eventually, they lose all hope of salvation and are sent down into hell with people who deny God. These are the people meant by those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, who are not forgiven in this world or the next (Matthew 12:32).

The reason is that God is one in both person and essence, comprising a Trinity; and this God is the Lord. Since the Lord is heaven as well, and since this means that the people who are in heaven are in the Lord, people who deny the Lord's divine nature cannot be granted admission to heaven and be in the Lord. I have already explained [28, 60-67] that the Lord is heaven and that therefore people who are in heaven are in the Lord.

[7] A seventh kind of profanation is committed by people who at first accept divine truths and live by them but later backslide from them and deny them. The reason this is the worst kind of profanation is that these people are mixing what is holy with what is profane to the point that they cannot be separated, and yet they need to be separated for people to be either in heaven or in hell. Since this is impossible for such individuals, their whole human volition and discernment is torn away from them and they become no longer human, as already noted [226, 227].

Almost the same thing happens to people who at heart acknowledge the divine contents of the Word and the church but submerge them completely in their own sense of self-importance. This is the love of being in control of everything that has been mentioned several times before [38, 112, 146, 215]. When they become spirits after death, they are absolutely unwilling to be led by the Lord, only by themselves; and when the reins of their love are loosened, they try to control not only heaven but even the Lord. Since they cannot do this, they deny the Lord and become demons.

It is important to realize that for all of us, our life's love, our predominant love, stays the same after death and cannot be taken away.

[8] This kind of profanation is meant by the lukewarm church described in the Book of Revelation: "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. If only you were cold or hot! Since you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:14, 15 [Revelation 3:15-16]). This is how the Lord describes this kind of profanation in Matthew: "When an unclean spirit leaves someone, it wanders in dry places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, 'I will go back to the home I left.' Then it does go back and finds it empty, swept clean and furnished for itself. It goes off and allies itself with seven other spirits worse than itself, and they come in and live there; and the latter times of that individual are worse than the earlier ones" (Matthew 12:43, 45 [Matthew 12:43-44, 45]). The departure of the unclean spirit describes our turning; and the return of the unclean spirit with seven worse spirits to the house made ready for them describes our turning back to our former evils once our true and good qualities have been banished. The profanation of what is holy is described by the profanation that makes our later times worse than our former ones.

The following passage from John means much the same: "Jesus said to the man who had been healed at the Pool of Bethesda, 'Do not sin any more, or something worse will happen to you'" (John 5:14).

[9] The following passage tells of the Lord's provision that we do not inwardly acknowledge truths and then backslide and become profane: "He has closed their eyes and blinded their hearts so that they do not see with their eyes or understand with their hearts and turn themselves, and I heal them" (John 12:4 [John 12:40]). "So that they do not turn themselves and I heal them" means so that they do not acknowledge truths and then backslide and so become profane. This is also why the Lord spoke in parables, as he himself explained--see Matthew 13:13. The Jewish prohibition against eating fat and blood (Leviticus 3:17; Leviticus 7:23, 25 [Leviticus 7:23, 26]) meant that they should not profane holy things. The fat meant what is divinely good and the blood what is divinely true. Once we have turned to what is good and true, we should remain turned to the end of our life, as the Lord tells us in Matthew: "Jesus said, 'Whoever will have remained faithful to the end will be saved'" (Matthew 10:22; likewise Mark 13:13).

227. These are the reasons such disasters happen, but because of the darkness of ignorance, they need further explanation if they are to reach the light of comprehension.

(a) Everything we willingly think and say and do becomes part of us and remains so, whether it is good or evil. This has already been presented in 78-81. We have an outer or earthly memory and an inner or spiritual memory. In this latter memory is recorded everything we have willingly thought, said, and done in this world so inclusively and in such detail that nothing whatever is left out. This memory is our "book of life" that is opened after death and by which we are judged. (There is more about this memory in Heaven and Hell 461-465 [Heaven and Hell 461-469], drawn from personal experience.)

[2] (b) The Lord is constantly using his divine providence to make provisions and arrangements so that what is evil will be by itself and what is good by itself, and so that they can be kept separate. Each of us has both good and evil qualities. The evil ones come from us and the good ones from the Lord; and we could not be alive if we did not have both. If we were totally wrapped up in ourselves and therefore in our evil natures we would not have any trace of life; and if we were totally wrapped up in the Lord and therefore in our good natures we would not have any trace of life either. In the latter case, that is, we would be like people who are suffocating and constantly gasping for breath, or like people in the last throes of dying. In the former case life would have been snuffed out because evil totally devoid of anything good is intrinsically dead. So each of us has both. The difference is that for some the inner self is devoted to the Lord while the outer is apparently concerned with self, while in others the inner self is wrapped up in self and the outer is apparently devoted to the Lord. The one is focused on evil and the other on good, though both are present in each.

The reason evil people have both sides is that they are involved in the constructive activities of civic and moral living, and outwardly, too, in a kind of constructive spiritual life. Further, the Lord keeps them in enough rationality and freedom that they can engage in something good. It is this good through which all of us, even the evil ones, are being led by the Lord.

So we can see that the Lord keeps the evil and the goodness separate so that one is inside and the other outside, thus providing that they do not become mingled.

[3] (c) This cannot be accomplished, however, if we first acknowledge the truths that faith discloses and live by them and afterwards backslide and deny them. This can be seen from what has just been presented: first of all that everything we have willingly thought, said, and done becomes part of us and stays with us; and second, that the Lord is constantly using his divine providence to make provisions and arrangements that what is evil will be by itself and what is good by itself so that they can be kept separate. The Lord does separate them after our death. If we have been inwardly evil and outwardly good, then the goodness is taken away and we are left to our evil. In contrast, if we have been inwardly good, but--like everyone else--have outwardly struggled for wealth, vied for eminence, relished various worldly pleasures, and given in to some of our compulsions, then still the goodness and the evil in us have not been mingled but kept separate, one inside and the other outside. Outwardly, then, we have been very much like evil people, but not inwardly. Conversely, for evil people who have outwardly looked like good ones as far as their piety, worship, speech, and behavior are concerned, but who have still been evil inwardly, the evil is separated from the goodness in them as well.

However, if people have at first acknowledged the truths that faith discloses and have lived by them but later have turned in the opposite direction and rejected them (and especially if they have denied them), then their good and evil qualities are no longer separated but are mingled. That is, such people internalize good and also internalize evil, which unites and mingles them.

[4] (d) We then mingle what is good and what is evil so completely that they cannot be separated. This follows from what has just been said. If the evil in us cannot be separated from the goodness and the goodness from the evil, then we cannot be either in heaven or in hell. Each of us must be in one or the other, and we cannot be in both, now in heaven and now in hell. When we were in heaven we would be working for hell, and when we were in hell we would be working for heaven; so we would destroy the life of everyone around us, the heavenly life for angels and the hellish life for demons. This would be the end of life for both, since we all need our own life and cannot live in someone else's life, let alone in an opposite life.

This is why when we become spirits or spiritual people after our death, the Lord separates what is good from what is evil and what is evil from what is good in each one of us. The goodness is separated from the evil if we have been inwardly evil and the evil from the goodness if we have been inwardly good. This is the intent of the Lord's saying, "To all those who have, more will be given in abundance, and from those who do [not] have, even what they have will be taken away" (Matthew 13:12; Matthew 25:29; Mark 4:25; Luke 8:18; Luke 19:26).

[5] (e) Since what is good and what is evil need to be separated in each one of us, and since they cannot be separated in people like this, everything truly human about them is destroyed. What is truly human about us is our rationality, our ability to see and know, if we try, what is true and what is good, and also our ability freely to intend, think, say, and do it, as already explained [96-97]. However, both this freedom and its rationality are destroyed in people who have mingled good and evil in themselves. They cannot see what is evil from the perspective of what is good or recognize what is good from the perspective of what is evil because they have identified them with each other. This means that they no longer have either the actual or the potential ability to function rationally, so they no longer have any freedom. This is why they are simply like wild hallucinations, as already noted [226], and no longer look like people but like bones with some skin on them. It is why they are not called "he" or "she" when they are named, but "it." This is what finally becomes of people who mingle sacred things with profane ones in this fashion. There are, though, other kinds of profanation that are not so dire. These will be discussed in the next section.