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!

558 a. Further, to the extent that we are engaged in heavenly love - which is loving constructive and worthwhile activities and being moved by heartfelt pleasure when we provide them to our church, our country, the human community, and our fellow citizens - we are being led by the Lord because this is the love he is in and the love that comes from him. However, to the extent that we focus on love for ourselves - doing constructive and worthwhile things for our own sakes - we are leading ourselves; and to the extent that we lead ourselves, we are not being led by the Lord. Again, then, it follows that the more we love ourselves, the more we move away from the Divine and also from heaven.

Being led by self is being led by what we claim as our own, and what we claim as our own is nothing but evil. It is actually our evil heredity, which involves loving ourselves more than God and the world more than heaven. ¹

We are completely absorbed in our self-image and therefore in our hereditary evil whenever we focus on ourselves in anything worthwhile we are doing, for we are focusing on ourselves and away from what is good and not on what is good and away from ourselves. So in the worthwhile activities we set up an image of ourselves and not an image of the Divine. I have been assured of this by experience as well. There are evil spirits who live halfway between the north and the west, underneath the heavens, who are particularly skilled at getting upright spirits involved in their self-image and therefore focused on various kinds of evil. They do this by getting them absorbed in thinking about themselves, either openly by words of praise and esteem or covertly by focusing their feelings exclusively on themselves. To the extent that they succeed, they turn the faces of the upright people away from heaven and also becloud their understanding, calling up evils from their self-concern.

558b. If you look at their origins and essences, you can see that love for oneself and love of one's neighbor are opposites. In people who are wrapped up in love for themselves, love of their neighbor begins from self. They claim that everyone is her or his own neighbor; and from this as a center they reach out to all who ally with them, with progressively less intensity depending on the love that unites the others with them. They regard people outside this group as worthless, and people who offer opposition to them and their evildoing they regard as enemies. It does not matter what they are actually like, whether they are wise or upright or honest or fair.

A spiritual love of their neighbor, though, begins with the Lord, and spreads out from him as its center to all who are united to him by love and faith. Its spread depends on the quality of their love and faith. ²

We can see from this that a love of our neighbor that begins with ourselves is the opposite of a love of our neighbor that begins with the Lord. The former comes from evil because it comes from what we claim as our own; while the latter comes from what is good because it comes from the Lord, who is good itself. We can also see that a love of our neighbor that comes from us and from our self-image is a physical love, while a love of our neighbor that comes from the Lord is heavenly.

In a word, when we are absorbed in love for ourselves it constitutes our head, and heavenly love constitutes the feet we stand on. If heavenly love does not serve us, we trample it underfoot. This is why people who are being thrown into hell look as though they are diving in headfirst, with their heads down and their feet toward heaven (see above, 548).

Voetnoten:

2417. 'Do not look back behind you' means that he was not to look to matters of doctrine. This is clear from the meaning of 'looking back behind him' when the city was behind him and the mountain in front of him; for 'a city' means doctrinal teaching, 402, 2268, 2451, while 'a mountain' means love and charity, 795, 1430. That this is the meaning will be evident in the explanation at verse 26, where it is said that his wife looked back behind him and she became a pillar of salt. Anyone may recognize that these words - 'looking back behind him' - have some Divine arcanum within them and that this lies too far down to be visible. For looking back behind him seems to involve nothing reprehensible at all, and yet it is of such great importance that it is said that he was to escape for his life, that is, he was to be concerned about his life to eternity by not looking back behind him. What is meant by looking to matters of doctrine however will be seen in what follows.

[2] Here let it be merely stated what doctrinal teaching is. Such teaching is twofold: one kind has to do with love and charity, the other with faith. Each of the Lord's Churches at the outset, while still very young and virginal, neither possesses nor desires any other doctrinal teaching than that which has to do with charity, for this has to do with life. In course of time however a Church turns away from this kind of teaching until it starts to despise it and at length to reject it, at which point it acknowledges no other kind of teaching than that called the doctrine of faith. And when it separates faith from charity such doctrinal teaching colludes with a life of evil.

[3] This was so with the Primitive or gentile Church after the Lord's Coming. At the outset it possessed no other doctrinal teaching than that which had to do with love and charity, for such is what the Lord Himself taught, see 2371 (end). But after His time, as love and charity started to grow cold, doctrinal teaching regarding faith gradually crept in, and with it disagreements and heresies which increased as men leant more and more towards that kind of teaching.

[4] Something similar had happened to the Ancient Church which came after the Flood and which was spread throughout so many kingdoms, 2385. This Church at the outset knew no other teaching than that which had to do with charity, for that teaching looked towards and permeated life; and so they were concerned about their eternal welfare. After a time however some people started to foster doctrinal teaching about faith which they at length separated from charity. Members of this Church called such people 'Ham' however because they led a life of evil, see 1062, 1063, 1076.

[5] The Most Ancient Church which existed before the Flood and which was pre-eminently called Man enjoyed the perception itself of love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, and so had teaching about love and charity inscribed within them. But there also existed at that time those who fostered faith, and when these at length separated it from charity they were called Cain, for Cain means such faith, and Abel whom he killed means charity; see the explanation to Genesis 4.

[6] From this it becomes clear that doctrinal teaching is twofold, one kind having to do with charity, the other with faith, although in themselves the two are one, for teaching to do with charity includes everything to do with faith. But when doctrinal teaching comes to be drawn solely from things to do with faith, such teaching is said to be twofold because faith is separated from charity. Their separation at the present day becomes clear from the consideration that what charity is, and what the neighbour, is utterly unknown. People whose teaching is solely about faith know of charity towards the neighbour as nothing other than giving what is their own to others and taking pity on everyone, for they call everyone their neighbour indiscriminately, when in fact charity consists in all the good residing with the individual - in his affection, and in his ardent zeal, and consequently in his life - while the neighbour consists in all the good residing with people which affects the individual. Consequently the neighbour consists in people with whom good resides - and quite distinctly and separately from one person to the next.

[7] For example, charity and mercy are present with him who exercises righteousness and judgement by punishing the evil and rewarding the good. Charity resides within the punishment of the evil, for he who imposes the punishment is moved by a strong desire to correct the one who is punished and at the same time to protect others from the evil he may do to them. For when he imposes it he is concerned about and desires the good of him who does evil or is an enemy, as well as being concerned about and desiring the good of others and of the state, which concern and desire spring from charity towards the neighbour. The same holds true with every other kind of good of life, for such good cannot possibly exist if it does not spring from charity towards the neighbour, since this is what charity looks to and embodies within itself.

[8] There being so much obscurity, as has been stated, as to what charity is and what the neighbour, it is plain that after doctrinal teaching to do with faith has seized the chief position, teaching to do with charity is then one of those things that have been lost. Yet it was the latter teaching alone that was fostered in the Ancient Church. They went so far as to categorize all kinds of good that flow from charity towards the neighbour, that is, to categorize all in whom good was present. In doing so they made many distinctions to which they gave names, calling them the poor, the wretched, the oppressed, the sick, the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoners or those in prison, the. sojourners, the orphans, and the widows. Some they also called the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and the maimed, and many other names besides these. It was in accordance with this kind of teaching that the Lord spoke in the Old Testament Word, and it explains why such expressions occur so frequently there; and it was in accordance with the same that the Lord Himself spoke, as in Matthew 25:35-36, 38-40, 42-45; Luke 14:13, 21; and many times elsewhere. This is why those names have quite a different meaning in the internal sense. So that doctrinal teaching regarding charity may be restored therefore, some discussion will in the Lord's Divine mercy appear further on as to who such people are, and what charity is, and what the neighbour, generally and specifically.