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REPENTANCE |
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“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 3:2 These are the words of John the Baptist in the New Testament. Another translation is “Turn to God and change the way you think and act, because the kingdom of heaven is near." But many people wonder why they should repent, and what sins did they commit. Now, we are not born out of nowhere. We are born from humanity and are always in connection with the collective consciousness of humanity. This means we receive all kinds of free stuff just by being part of humanity. For example, the human form took billions of years to evolve but we obtain a complete human physical body at our birth. Some of us are even blessed with good looks, others of us receive more intelligence or more stamina. We receive all this from our hereditary DNA. Unfortunately, we also inherit all the hereditary spiritual tendencies of our human ancestors. This is also why we may inherit the potential to manifest certain diseases. Most people become fatalistic and erroneously believe that they cannot change anything. But, if that were true, the Lord would never have advised us to repent. Although we may have all this spiritual baggage from humanity’s past, our will is FREE. Therefore, although spiritual reformation and regeneration is a long and arduous process, with the Lord’s help within us, we can change inwardly. But, first, we must be truthful about our present state of being; we can no longer lie to ourselves because this is what people who live in sin usually do. We are in denial. Almost all of us are living in spiritual darkness but do not realize it. What happened to our human ancestors? They fell into love of self, love of the world and love of abuse. And humanity has been living for so long in this state that most of us believe this is a normal way to live. In fact, there are presently so-called spiritual gurus that promote love of self. Other spiritual leaders are advocating that we should study spirituality so we can become rich and powerful in the world. But, when we witness all the corruption, violence, addiction, and perversion that is taking place on earth, some of us are beginning to suspect that there is something fundamentally wrong with humanity. This is not the way God intended us to be or to live. And, if money were the answer, those who have an abundance of it would not fall more readily into addiction, sin and suffering. Now, since we are in spiritual darkness, most of us actually do evil and call it “good.” There is a certain delight in doing evil. But it is very fleeting and it usually ends in addiction and suffering. For example, we have all heard the saying “revenge is sweet.” But, when someone does evil to us and we retaliate, we are just perpetuating evil and becoming evil ourselves. Remember how the Lord was mistreated by others when He was on earth, although He was only doing good. Yet, although He was all-powerful, He always resisted the temptation to retaliate. We must carefully watch our own state of being and make sure that we are at peace with others and God. Swedenborg says that those who are in hell are in infernal delights. The infernal fire of hell that we read about in the Bible is the fire of selfish desires and lusts because the more we try to fulfill these selfish lusts, the more desire grows. On earth, we certainly have heard of persons who become addicted to food, sex, drugs, or violence. Well, these people are indulging in infernal delights. At first, it is delightful and then it spirals into addiction, suffering and misery. From self-love, everyone in hell wants also to rule and control others. This is why there is “gnashing of teeth.” This clashing of opinions is how fights, violence and wars begin. Hell is also a realm of fantasies, illusions and lies. On earth, we can see how some people prefer to believe their own lies, live in their own dream world of insanity and lose touch with Reality. Since the literal sense of the Bible is replete with contradictions, we can also use the Bible or other Sacred Scriptures to justify our evil (selfish) acts. How many crimes and murders have been perpetuated in the name of God and religion! When we are in spiritual darkness, we tend to project our own faults onto others. This is why human beings spend their time criticizing others, telling them what to do and how to live instead of changing themselves. But even if everyone else changed, it would not help us in any way. We would still remain in our egocentric hell: ...when the truth is only in the intellect and not yet in the will, it is a common thing for people to find fault with others, and this because finding fault with others touches only the intellect, whereas finding fault with oneself is much more difficult because it touches the will. Emanuel Swedenborg [TCR 535] Many people are surprised when they hear that love of self is the root of all sin. But, when we understand how human beings evolved, it becomes clearer. Our human self is an empty receptacle that has the capacity to be filled by the Love and Wisdom of God. So, when we love our self, we are loving emptiness or spiritual darkness. God gave us this self in order to have FREEWILL. We can love Him but we can also hate or reject Him and love our self instead. If we were completely united and part of God as some new age gurus seem to believe, we would not be FREE. Eventually, some of these gurus start to believe that they are “God.” And this is the greatest sin of all. In fact, in hell, some believe they are “God” and they wish to rule and control others through threat and punishment. On earth, we have examples of this in selfish dictators. Swedenborg says, when it is let loose, self-love can continue to grow until we ultimately desire to rule the whole universe. But, if we did not have a self that is separate from God, we would be like robots. This is not what God wanted when He created the universe. He wanted beings that would love Him freely and truly. So, even the angels who are in Heaven with God still have this self which they obtained from being on earth. Thus, we see that the root of our sin and suffering is in what we love. And the first step is repentance. We may have inherited tendencies but it is when we FREELY give in to these selfish urges that we commit sin. Some people think they are doing God a favor when they practice religion. But we should refrain from sin because it leads to addiction, misery and suffering (or hell). And we should obey spiritual law because it results in true joy and inner peace (or Heaven). Many people who are still in love of self and the world do good deeds such as giving money to the poor or helping others. However, since these so-called good works originate from their self-love, these conceited individuals usually attribute merit to themselves and only continue to inflate their hellish ego. For example, the actions of the Pharisees appeared good to the world but Jesus judged their actions as evil because their intentions were selfish. They were only performing these so-called good actions to maintain their high stature in the community and perhaps to merit an equally high position after death. In reality, they loved themselves and the world more than God or their neighbor. We should always remember that only God is good and any truly good action that we may do can only originate from the Goodness that is in-flowing into our own empty self from God. Hence, it is God who is manifesting Goodness through us. And it is God who deserves all the merit. Therefore, to repent is to examine our intentions and actions and make sure that they are pure, innocent, wise, just, useful and unselfish. These are the harmonic qualities of real Goodness. Good before repentance is not good, nor, before repentance, is charity charity. |
Copyright © 2011-2014 A. J. Coriat All rights reserved. |