The Heavenly City, A Spiritual Guidebook #65

Av Emanuel Swedenborg

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65. Chapter 5. Selfishness and Materialism

“Selfishness” is wishing well only to ourselves, and not to anyone else except for our own benefit. When we are selfish, we do not love our religion, our country, any human community, or our fellow citizens. We do good things for them only to increase our own reputation, status, and fame. If we do not see any advantage to ourselves in something we might do for other people, we say in our hearts, “What’s the difference? Why should I do it? What’s in it for me?” So we do not bother. You can see that when we are selfish, we do not love religion, our country, our community, our fellow citizens, or anything good. We love only ourselves.

  
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Many thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for giving us permission to use this translation.