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6. Getting Evil Out of Your Life
By Kurt Simons | May 26, 2007
The teachings of the Second Coming introduce several breakthrough concepts about evil that expose its true nature and show us how to manage it:
1. What makes evil spiritually more dangerous than it may at first appear is that doing evil isn’t just a matter of getting a black mark on some kind of spiritual scorecard, which you can later fix by doing some kind of penalty. In fact, thinking and doing evil is far more insidious - it changes the way you think. It gradually distorts how you see life so that evil seems like an increasingly attractive choice. Like a spider’s venom paralyzing its victim, evil paralyzes your spiritual judgment, making you unable to see how bad your state is until, ultimately, the evil takes over your outlook completely. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “Whoever commits sin is the servant of sin” (John 8: 34). With Jesus’ help, you can reverse this process, but the critically important point is that, if you have allowed evil to pervert your thinking and motives, you may not want to change back. You may choose - in free will as always - to die the “second death” (Revelation 2: 11, 20:14, 21: 8), the spiritual death of going to hell. The idea that anyone would choose hell sounds insane – and the teachings of the Second Coming make clear that everyone in hell is in fact spiritually insane. What else could you call choosing to live in hell to eternity?
2. Sin and evil are not the same thing. A thought or act is evil if it misuses something created for a good purpose. But that thought or act is only a sin if the motive behind it was also evil. Thus, for instance, using a kitchen knife to stab someone is an evil, misusing that knife for a bad purpose. But if the stabbing was done in self-defense against someone trying to kill you, it is not a sin. On the other hand, doing something kind for someone is good, but if it is done in order to gain their trust and mislead them it is a sin. It is sin, not evil, that takes you to hell because it is your motives, not your deeds, that cause you to choose hell. In other words, you don’t go to hell for any deed you did in this world but because you want to keep on doing such deeds when you get to the spiritual world, and that leads you to hell. After death, all your dreams, in other words all your motives, do come true.
3. We feel that our thoughts are completely private, but that is an illusion. While we live in this world, we not only each have two guardian angels and two associate evil spirits with us at all times, providing the functional basis of our spiritual free will, but we are in intricate association with literally thousands of spirits. The particular spirit mix changes with our moods and thoughts on an ongoing, moment-to-moment, endlessly-changing basis. Every thought, feeling, or action we experience, even of the briefest kind, creates a spiritual interaction with these associate spirits, although neither we nor they are directly conscious of it. We literally could not function mentally without this connection, and neither could the spirits who associate with us. (They require the “correspondential” connection with the physical plane of existence, or “ultimates.” See Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret.)
This subject is a profound one, involving everything from how God’s inflowing life comes to us to how free will operates. But the aspect of interest here is that our associate spirits are attracted or driven away by how we think and feel. Good thoughts and actions attract and increase our angelic associations and influence, and bad thoughts or actions increase our evil spirit associations and influence. So when we think or do a good or evil thing, the balance of our network of spiritual associations changes accordingly.
The type of spirits we have made a habit of connecting with continues in the life after death, but with the big difference that they are no longer hidden. There even our deepest motives are apparent. In other words, we become as we really are. While we may have successfully concealed our motives behind a mask of good behavior in our life on earth, after death such hypocrisy is no longer possible. Any angel looking at us can tell every detail of our character. “For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.” (Matthew 10:26). And the kind of spirit we like to associate with comes into the open, and helps in our choice of going to heaven or hell.
4. As noted in The First Coming of Jesus Christ, we all have a spiritual as well as physical heredity. As part of our spiritual heredity, we are born with a set of tendencies to think and do evil because of all the evil the human race has done over its history. What this means, practically speaking, is that evil spirits regularly introduce evil thoughts into our minds, like spiritual spam. We are not held accountable for those thoughts, however, any more than we are held accountable for the evil actions of the people symbolized in the Bible by Adam and Eve who began that heredity (again see The First Coming of Jesus Christ). Human existence is most fundamentally about spiritual free will, and, clearly, we wouldn’t be in free will if evil heredity doomed us to hell from the moment of our birth. We do, however, get into spiritual trouble if we respond positively to the temptations of those evil thoughts. If we encourage such thoughts in ourselves, particularly if we act on them, then we do develop evil motives. In other words, we begin to sin. Sin is bad news because, if we orient toward it, it can become our fundamental moral compass direction - and choosing to immerse ourselves in sin does not lead to a happy ending!
5. Jesus does not send anyone to hell. A loving God could never do such a horrible thing! He created us so that we can experience the great happiness of a good life both here and in heaven to eternity. And He will go to the most extraordinary lengths to help us rise up out of even the most degraded states of evil, if we will let Him. But He will never force Himself on us or otherwise interfere with our free will. He will only “stand at the door and knock” and wait for us to “hear my voice and open the door” (Revelation 3: 20). If we need his help to cure or rid us of a sin, we have to open that door and prayerfully ask Him into our lives.
6. A basic principle of spiritual law is that evil contains its own punishment. We can see this process reflected on the physical law level. If we do the physically “bad” thing of jumping off a tall building or putting our hand too near a fire, we will be hurt, punished in effect. Neither the law of gravity nor the heat of that fire has anything against us personally, but when we use them the wrong way, the principles of physical law involved “punish” us. And we brought that punishment on ourselves by choosing to do the “bad†thing of jumping off the building or getting near the fire. The same process is involved at the spiritual level. There are spiritual laws just as there are physical laws. Going contrary to the spiritual laws hurts us at the spiritual level just like violating a physical law hurts us on the physical level. In other words, the key point here is that learning to do right is not a matter of appeasing a vengeful God Who is out to punish us for our sins. Learning to do right and be happy is actually just a matter of living in harmony with the spiritual laws that Jesus has told us all about in His revelations.
7. In keeping with the same idea, the punishment people receive in hell is self-inflicted. The inhabitants of hell are, as noted above, basically insane. Inspired by their insane fantasies they do evil. Since in doing that they are going against spiritual law, they experience the consequences built into that law, in this case in the form of a feeling of punishment, or, more accurately, discipline. Just as people go to hell in the first place, not for what they did in the past but for what they want to keep doing, so evil spirits don’t get punished as retribution for what they’ve done, but disciplined as a reality check of the existence of those laws in the hell where they live now.
It is a basic feature of human life that we all want to work toward our goals, and the spirits in hell do too. But since their goals are contrary to spiritual law, they repeatedly and endlessly run into the boundaries of that law. Thus, while the angels discover ever-new and deeper states of satisfaction living in harmony with spiritual law, those in hell will spend eternity in a state of recurrent frustration, a terrible price indeed to pay for allowing themselves to be subverted by evil in the brief time they spend here on earth. It should be noted, however, that Jesus, merciful and loving as always, allows those in hell to be largely unaware of how bad their situation is. In keeping with the state of spiritual insanity they are in, they have only a limited and distorted perception of their experience.
8. Some people think they don’t have to worry about evil if they just believe in Jesus Christ. Believing what Jesus teaches (and Jesus is God Himself, not a second person - see The First Coming of Jesus Christ) is certainly important, but just believing in Him, or what has been called faith alone, doesn’t get us to heaven. How could it? If we only have faith we haven’t exercised our free will and actually acted on our belief, making the belief meaningless. A faith-alone heaven would also be a pretty unhappy place since people could do any kind of terrible thing they wanted, as long as they believed. Under that circumstance there wouldn’t be much difference between heaven and hell!
So we have to act on our beliefs and work to improve the state of our motives - and it is work! - if we want to build a set of motives that will lead us to heaven after death. The best and most effective way to do this is to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. To help us do that, He provides a spiritual reference manual for analyzing what is evil in our outlook and how to get rid of it. That manual is made up of His revelations, most recently and in greatest detail those of His Second Coming (see The Second Advent Christian Bible™). No matter where we are coming from spiritually, or how serious our sins may have been, that relationship with Jesus, aided by those truths, can turn our lives around so that we can find true spiritual happiness, starting right now and lasting into eternity in heaven.
9. The actual spiritual mechanics involved in becoming a heaven-oriented person involves copying on our small scale what Jesus did on a large scale (see The First Coming of Jesus Christ). This means getting rid of the bad motives and false understandings that came originally from the evil heredity we are all born with, and being “born againâ” (John 3: 30) with a new set of good motives and true understanding (Arcana Coelestia 5354). “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit in your midst, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh; and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit in your midst” (Ezek. 36:26, 27). It is important to realize, however, that we can’t do this regeneration by ourselves. It’s too big a job spiritually; we need Jesus’ help. He’s more than happy to provide that help, and He’s never more than a prayer away.
“As we become more aware of our Lord’s presence with us (or, rather, our presence with Him) our prayers tend to change in character.
a) The simplest prayer at first would be “Hello, Lord!” We greet Him and talk with Him about everything that concerns us - our friends, our job, our today’s appointments and duties, the book we are reading - everything! This is as it should be. Anything we could tell our earthly father, we can tell the Lord.
b) As we begin to develop spiritually, however, the affairs of this world cease to seem so important, and spiritual concerns come to the forefront of our minds. We pray less and less about the things around us, and more about our spiritual needs. The higher self begins to take over.
c) Knowing, now, that the Lord has complete power over our souls, wanting only what is good for us, we tend to say simply, “THY WILL BE DONE.” Instead of telling Him what we want, we ask him what He wants. We do less and less talking, and more listening. Such prayer may lead to the failure of our own ambitions and the upsetting of our own little plans; but we no longer mind this if it brings us closer to Him. The basic word is now “Amen!” - “So be it!”
d) As a result of all this, the Lord’s own life grows in us. He himself tells us what to say; He “teaches us to pray.” Eventually he infills us completely. Thus we are re-made or “regenerated” by prayer: built up into the Lord’s image and likeness. Prayer is one of the most powerful and effective instruments of salvation. Without prayer, our spiritual natures wilt away and die.” (from Brian Kingslake, Swedenborg Explores the Spiritual Dimension. London: Seminar Books, 1981, p. 109)
10. How exactly do we hear Jesus’ answer to our prayers? By quieting our thoughts, focusing on Him, and listening.
“If a person prays from love and faith, and for only heavenly and spiritual things, there then comes forth in the prayer something like a revelation (which is manifested in the affection of the person who prays) as to hope, consolation, or a certain inward joy.” (Arcana Coelestia 2535)
11. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5) provide the basic list of evils that we want to avoid, the first three on how we should relate to Jesus and the remainder on relating to other people. The Commandments’ wider implications are contained in their symbolic spiritual sense (see review in Bible Stories and Their Inner Meaning. A Family Study Guide, below). What is often not realized, however, is that there is a flip side to the Commandments, which outline their “thou shall” teachings of how to achieve a happy life. These positive implications have been termed our “Spiritual Bill of Rights.”
12. If we are successful in conquering our bad old motives and understandings, and replacing them with regenerated new ones, then we pass on less hereditary evil to the next generation. What finer gift could we leave for our children and grandchildren, and indeed the whole future generations of the world?
For further reading
From Books of the Second Coming
The True Christian Religion. Containing the Universal Theology of The New Church Foretold by the Lord in Daniel 7; 13, 14; and in Revelation 21; 1, 2 - Contains, along with many other teachings, a detailed review of reformation and regeneration.
Other Books
W.L. Worcester. Bible Stories and Their Inner Meaning. A Family Study Guide. See particularly chapter 43, Topical and Doctrinal Notes, and chapter 44 in the spiritual inner sense of the Ten Commandments.
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August 13th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article tting Evil Out of Your Life at The Swedenborg Project, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Hi Daniel,
We’d be interested to know just what parts you didn’t understand.
Kurt
September 5th, 2007 at 4:59 am
As the first reader says, the article is very interesting, and important too because it deals on getting evil out of us. What is the work of the Holy spirit in the transformation of man?