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!

4317. In the internal historical sense 'because he touched, in the hollow of Jacob's thigh, the sinew of that which was displaced' means because of their heredity which could not be rooted out through regeneration because they would not allow that to happen. This is clear from the meaning of 'the thigh' as conjugial love, and consequently all celestial and spiritual love, dealt with in 4280, and 'the hollow of the thigh' as the place where conjugial love, and also all celestial and spiritual love, is joined to natural good, 4277, 4280. Consequently 'touching it', that is, so damaging it that limping results, means destroying the good that flows from those loves. And since it was Jacob in whom this was done, that among his descendants which had come down from him, and so was hereditary, is meant. 'The sinew of that which was displaced' means falsity, see 4303, in this case falsity which stems from hereditary evil. The fact that this heredity could not be rooted out through regeneration because they would not allow that to happen follows from this and from the whole train of thought.

[2] The possession of such a heredity and their inability to be regenerated is quite clear from all that is recorded in the Word about them, and especially from the following in Moses,

Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, You yourselves saw all that Jehovah did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his servants, and to all his land; and Jehovah has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, even to this day. Deuteronomy 29:2, 4.

In the same author,

I know the people's imagination, which they are performing today, before I bring them into the land which I have sworn [to give them]. Deuteronomy 31:21.

And further on,

I will hide My face from them; I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, sons with no truth in them. I would scatter them far, I would make the memory of them cease from mankind, except that I feared the wrath of the enemy. For they are a nation from whose counsel is perishing and in whom there is no intelligence. For from the vine of Sodom comes their vine, and from the fields of Gomorrah their grapes; they have grapes of hemlock, clusters that are bitter. The poison of dragons is their wine, and the cruel head of asps. Is not this stored up with Me, sealed up in My treasuries? Deuteronomy 32:20, 26-34.

The same things are said in many other places, in particular in Jeremiah.

[3] Further evidence that their heredity is meant by the touching of Jacob's thigh and his consequently having a limp may be seen in Hosea,

The controversy of Jehovah with Judah: He will make a visitation on Jacob over his ways, and will render to him according to his deeds. In the womb he supplanted his brother; in his grief he contended with God, and contended against the angel and prevailed; he wept and appealed to him. Hosea 12:2-4.

Here 'contending with God' means, in the internal historical sense, their insistence that a representative of the Church should exist with them, 4290, 4293. From this it is evident that the kind of heredity they possessed had been derived from Jacob himself, as may be shown from further places still but must be passed over for the time being.

[4] As regards heredity specifically, the belief at the present day in the Church is that all hereditary evil is derived from the first parent and that all are therefore condemned in respect of that evil. But this is untrue. The origin of hereditary evil in everyone lies with his parents and parents' parents, that is, with successive generations of ancestors. Every evil which each of these has acquired to himself by his own actions in life, inasmuch as it becomes so to speak part of his character through regular practice or habit, is passed on to his children and becomes hereditary in them; and that evil accompanies what has been implanted in parents from grandparents and ancestors. Hereditary evil coming from the father is more internal, and hereditary evil from the mother more external. That coming from the father cannot be rooted out easily whereas that from the mother can. When a person is being regenerated the deeply-implanted hereditary evil that is received from immediate forbears is rooted out; but with those who are not being regenerated, or who are unable to be, it remains. This then is hereditary evil; see also 313, 494, 2122, 2910, 3518, 3701. This matter is also plain to anyone who reflects, as well as from the fact that every family has some evil or good characteristic by which it is distinguished from other families; and that characteristic, as is well known, is inherited from parents and ancestors. The same applies to the Jewish nation which is still in existence. It is clearly different from all other nations and may be recognized not only from its particular disposition but also from its customs, speech, and facial characteristics.

[5] But few people know what hereditary evil is. It is believed to consist in the doing of evil, when in fact it consists in the willing and therefore thinking of it. It is within the will itself and therefore within thought that hereditary evil dwells. It is the actual inclination to evil which is within them and which attaches itself even when the person does what is good. It is recognized through the kind of delight which enters in when evil befalls another. This root lies hidden deep down, for the interior form itself receiving good and truth from heaven, that is, from the Lord by way of heaven, is perverted and so to speak twisted out of shape, with the result that when good and truth flow in from the Lord these are either cast back or perverted or smothered. This is why no perception of what is good and true exists at the present day, but instead, in the case of the regenerate, conscience which acknowledges as good and true that which has been learned from parents and teachers. Hereditary evil leads to loving oneself more than others, willing evil on another if he does not promote oneself to honour, and taking delight in acts of revenge. It also leads to loving the world more than heaven and to all evil desires or evil affections, which spring from the same source. Man does not know that such things exist within him, still less that they are the opposite of heavenly affections. In the next life however he is shown plainly how much evil, hereditary in origin, he has drawn to himself through his own actions in life, and also how far he has removed himself from heaven through evil affections from the same source.

[6] The fact that hereditary evil in Jacob's descendants could not be rooted out through regeneration because they would not allow that to happen is also evident from the historical descriptions in the Word - in all their temptations in the desert they gave in, as described in Moses, which they also did subsequently in the land of Canaan as often as they did not see miracles taking place. Those temptations however were external ones, and not internal or spiritual. In spiritual things they were incapable of being tempted because they had no knowledge of internal truths nor any possession of internal goods, as shown already; and nobody is able to be tempted except in what he knows or possesses. Temptations are the actual means by which regeneration is accomplished. This is what is meant by them not allowing regeneration to happen. Concerning their state and fate in the next life, see 939-941, 3481.