Life

Becoming a "good" person is a process. You invite the Lord into your life and trying to live according to His will instead of your own selfish will.

Here we are.... human beings. We're smart, talented, inventive, productive, and capable of spiritual awareness. Is there a reason for that?

"Charity" is an English rendering of the Latin word "caritas", which is the root of the verb “to care.”

"Faith is an internal recognition of truth." That's how Swedenborg begins his book about Faith. Here's a place to start exploring this deeply human topic.

Love is God, love is life, love is the goal of every person, love is what takes us to heaven or hell, love is the actual source of all matter and energy in the universe...

For anyone who believes in heaven, one question stands above all the others: How can I get there? How can I be saved?

Swedenborg describes temptation as an assault or an attack on what we spiritually have come to love.

As human beings, we get stuck all the time in conflicts between what we want and what we know. We want to eat that extra piece of pie, but we know over-eating is bad for us.....

Human history can be seen as a series of 'churches', or spiritual mindsets. Not tabernacles or temples or cathedrals, but ways of understanding God, and trying to do His will.

Evil is the inversion of good. It develops when we receive life from the Lord, as all created beings do, and turn it primarily towards ourselves, making our self the main focus. In the process of doing this, we engender fear, hatred and the love of dominating others.

Being useful. What's meant by that?

In all the ways we are useful to others, from occupations to child rearing, the Lord can cause us to bear fruit as we become ever more sensitive to what is of hell within us, and attempt to change. Being useful, even if our motives are not pure at first, teaches us, trains us, to care for others. Love for the neighbor grows as we learn to care by serving others and not just self.

Freedom -- what is it really? As far as we can tell, our level of freedom is pretty new, at least in this neck of the cosmos.

Rationality is the ability of the intellect to understand what is true and good (and the opposite, what is false and evil).

"Endowed by their Creator" - in New Christian thought, with two capabilities: spiritual freedom, and rationality.

What was Samson's Riddle? And how in the world does it apply in our lives 3000 years later?

The Lord wants us to be happy. Really, lastingly happy. From John 15:11: "I have told you these things so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete." So... how do we get there from here?

Repentance doesn’t just mean confessing our sins, being forgiven, and then forgetting about it and going right back to what we were doing before. In order to truly repent, we need to change our ways.

Sin comes first into our desires, then into our thoughts, and finally, if we let it, into our actions.

We can be thrown off the scent when the Word talks of resting from our labors. The best preparation for heaven is learning to love and enjoy being useful.

This is a beautiful prophecy, but two thousand years later much in our world is still not peaceful. Why is that?

This is a further part of our regeneration in which our mind needs to acquire a completely new and different understanding of life being from God, and so be re-formed. While reformation is taking place, we tend to see this as knowledge, yet the seeds of real regeneration and of willing what we know, require this period of being reformed.

Our spiritual life changes gradually. Not all at once. Are we heading in the right direction? How can we be spiritually reborn? It's a process. (See 2 Peter 1:5, and many other places in the Word.)

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

Covenant, Reciprocation, and Conjunction are three parts of the process of our spiritual rebirth.

Smooth things ahead. It doesn't sound like a problem.

We're trying to derive a sound set of spiritual ideas, from the Lord's Word, that help people "build a house on a rock".

Here we are in the 21st century. We know that the universe is an enormous place. We're bursting with scientific knowledge. But how are we doing with the even-bigger ideas?

Beginning a new life is, in some ways, the ONE spiritual topic that people have to get right.

Imagine a society where everyone is always "looking out for #1".

This was the guiding philosophy of the great man, and great Chicago Bears running back, Gale Sayers.

Blessings come from the Lord. We can tap the power of His love to do good to our neighbors, making their lives better. And, with mutual love, it's blessings all around!

People in this world who think and speak well of others "are like the angels" (Arcana Coelestia 1088)

A person is [in effect] worshiping all the time if love and charity abide in him.

The purpose of baptism is not well understood in the world today. Some people view it in almost magical terms--as something which will automatically bring grace to the one who is baptized. What does New Christian teaching say about it?

When a person becomes a church, he has found a dwelling place, a home inside his heart and mind where the Lord can dwell.

In the Holy Supper, or communion, the bread stands for the Lord's good, and the wine stands for His truth. When we eat and drink, there's a correspondence between these natural acts and the spiritual acts of reception.

We have the freedom, and the power, to control the door.

A better translation for "born again" might be "born from above". It's not a big surprise, but it's a nice new way to think about it.