327. 3. It is our own fault if we are not saved. Even on first hearing it, any rational person accepts the truth that evil cannot come from what is good, and that good cannot come from what is evil, since they are opposites. This means that nothing but good comes from what is good, and nothing but evil comes from what is evil. Once we admit this truth, we also admit that good can be turned into evil, not by the goodness itself but by the evil that receives it. Every form changes what it receives into something of its own nature (see 292 above).

Since the Lord is goodness in its very essence, or goodness itself, then, we can see that evil cannot flow from the Lord or be brought forth by him, but that it can be turned into evil by a recipient subject whose form is a form of evil. In respect to our claim to autonomy, we are this kind of subject. This apparent autonomy of ours is constantly receiving good from the Lord and constantly changing it to suit the nature of its own form, which is a form of evil. It therefore follows that it is our own fault if we are not saved.

Evil does come from hell, of course, but since our insistence on autonomy accepts evil as its own and thereby incorporates it into itself, it makes no real difference whether you say that the evil is from ourselves or that it is from hell. I need to say, though, where this incorporation of evil has come from, even to the point that religion itself is dying. I will do so in the following sequence. (a) Every religion eventually wanes and comes to completion. (b) Every religion wanes and comes to completion by inverting the image of God within us. (c) This happens because of the constant increase of hereditary evil from generation to generation. (d) The Lord still provides that everyone can be saved. (e) He also provides that a new church will take the place of the earlier one that has been razed.

292. Everything we think and intend and therefore everything we say and do flows in from the only fount of life; and yet that one fount of life, the Lord, is not the cause of our thinking things that are evil and false.

There are enlightening parallels in the physical world. Warmth and light radiate from its sun, and these two flow into all the subjects and objects that we see with our eyes, not only good subjects and beautiful objects, but also bad subjects and ugly objects; and they bring forth different effects in each. They flow not only into trees that bear good fruit but into trees that bear bad fruit, flowing into the actual fruit itself and helping it to develop. They flow into the good seed and into the weeds, into useful, healthful shrubs and into harmful, toxic shrubs. Yet it is the same warmth and the same light; and there is no cause of evil in it, only in the subjects and objects that receive it.

[2] The same can be said of the warmth that hatches the eggs of owls or vipers and the eggs of doves, beautiful birds, and swans. Putting both kinds of egg under a hen and her warmth, which in and of itself is harmless, will hatch them. What does this warmth have in common with these evil and noxious creatures?

The same applies to the warmth that flows into swamps, manure, decay, and decomposition and into things that are winelike, fragrant, sparkling, and alive. Can anyone fail to see that the cause is not in the warmth but in the receptive subject?

The very same light, too, makes beautiful colors when it flows into one object and unpleasant colors when it flows into another. Actually, it is displaying itself and glowing in bright objects and dimming itself as objects become blacker, darkening itself.

[3] The same thing happens in the spiritual world. There are also warmth and light there from its sun, which is the Lord, flowing from him into their subjects and objects. The subjects and objects there are angels and spirits, specifically their processes of volition and discernment. The warmth there is the radiating divine love and the light there is the radiating divine wisdom. They are not responsible for the fact that different people receive them differently, for the Lord says, "He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45). In its highest spiritual meaning the sun means divine love and the rain means divine wisdom.