Drawing a Line While Utilizing Both Love and Wisdom with the Homosexual Community
May 12, 2024
Judging Righteously
“A New Earth,” by Eckhart Tolle
Recently I was listening to an audiobook, A New Earth, by Ekhart Tolle, and he was speaking about the definition of the word, sin. He said that it has become a loaded word in our culture, whereby it has almost universally taken on a very negative connotation. The original definition for sin, he wrote, is “missing the mark,” in reference to archery. In other words, sometimes we can miss the mark even though our intent was to hit it. The reason I mentioned this example is because throughout this article, it’ll become apparent that my stance is that homosexuality is, “a sin,” but I want you to understand that that doesn’t mean that I believe that everyone who is engaged in it has bad intentions, nor is irredeemable. Swedenborg wrote several times, and the Lord says in the Gospels, that only the Lord knows what is truly within a person’s heart, and therefore what their inmost motivations are. The inner depths of a person aren’t for me or anyone else to judge. What we can judge, however, are people’s behaviors, words, and ideas and how we react to them; just not the eternal state of a person or his or her eternal salvation. The internals of a person’s soul are so complex that only the Lord knows them, and their true motivations will only be clearly revealed to us after we die and enter the afterlife.
However, there is a type of sin, as Swedenborg wrote, that is involved in the heart, whereby a person’s will is misaligned with the Lord. This is a much more serious kind. It’s likely not who I’m directing this article towards, since there is little to nothing that will convince people like this otherwise, even though I don’t know who they are. Rather, this article is for those who have the intention to do what is right and may simply be missing the mark due to a lack of knowledge, understanding, or confusion due to exposure to the world.
With that said, let me state at the outset that what I’m about to write may seem blunt at times, but this is a subject I believe cannot be ignored because it is such a major topic in the news today and is spoken about and referenced regularly in our culture and media. As the saying goes, “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” Please keep in mind that this is my goal as you read this and any other articles I've written on my blog. I am examining the depths of ideas with the goal of living in and teaching the truth. Also, that when I write about trends that I observe among people, that I’m speaking about how it appears to me, but that I could be wrong on a point here and there. It’s possible that on some points I may miss the mark as well, and if that occurs, I apologize ahead of time, knowing this article will be examining a very difficult subject, likely one of the most challenging subjects from the Word. I’ve been working on it now for nearly three years, with the goal of balancing my words with what is both loving and true — and I pray that I get it right. I’ll also be returning to improve it, and I’m open to constructive comments and suggestions.
I’m sure I’m not the first person who has thought that he should simply remain quiet and allow homosexuals to live as they want rather than speaking up and disrupting the status quo. The common sentimentality is: why say anything and risk spoiling their presumed happiness? As many people say today, “What they do in their bedroom is their own business,” — yet, I fundamentally disagree because of the modern outspoken nature of the homosexual community which demands a response from those who care about the impact this has on our society, for reasons I’ll share below.
Although we, as Christians and as concerned citizens of other faiths as well, shouldn’t cast stones against the sinner, we can shine a light on the subject itself and use the sword — metaphorically speaking — to cut through false ideas, so that we have the potential to correct our path. Something that I'm working to accomplish here is to shine light on a subject that few people are willing to talk about, and concepts within that subject that they may not be fully aware exist, but which everyone would benefit from examining. With that in mind, I'm aware that there are many people — and perhaps you, as you read this article — who have felt at times nauseous with Christianity because you’ve felt judged and condemned for the sexuality you practice. The point I want to make is that judging and condemning others’ souls (vs their behavior), on a spiritual level, is not true Christianity. And so on that point you have a valid argument. (See my article The Heavenly Role of Men and Women in Marriage, Church, and Society for a deeper discussion about that particular subject regarding old church Christianity.)
The Lord’s first motivation is to protect the innocent, rather than the destruction of the wicked, like gathering “chicks under his wings.”
However, it is true Christianity to judge between true and false doctrine, what is wicked or righteous from moral principals in the Word, and how we should live our own lives based on those judgements (John 7: 24), and not to stone prophets, either. As the Lord said,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Matthew 23: 37).
I want to underscore this because often, the phrase, “don’t judge me,” is used as an excuse for escaping the necessity for repentance, but there is a sharp difference between judging someone’s actions and judging their damnation. One is a moral assessment based on immediate information, and the other a spiritual assessment, based on information that only the Lord possesses. And so, the later judgement is reserved for the Lord alone to make and not for me or anyone else to make.
About this, Swedenborg wrote:
The Word is not to be understood without doctrine. Doctrine is to be drawn from the literal sense of the Word. But Divine truth, on which doctrine is based, is not visible to any but those who are enlightened by the Lord…
The Lord says further:
“Do not judge, so that you are not judged; with whatever judgment you judge, so will you be judged,” Matthew 7:1-2; Luke 6:37.
Without doctrine anyone could be induced to assert that we must not judge wicked people to be wicked; but doctrine tells us we may judge, so long as we do so justly.
The Lord also said:
Judge righteous judgment. (John 7: 24)
Which people often overlook.
And so, if I sound harsh at times, it is because of my zeal against false ideas and evil actions, not against people.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
And that being said, if nobody speaks openly about the subject of lust and its different forms, gay or straight, then none of us are likely to improve.
And so, there are two general categories I want to distinguish between:
Sin itself
Promoting sin as acceptable behavior
Whether you are living in sin, (point #1), is something for you to work out between yourself and the Lord, and reflect and repent of, as necessary, by starting a new life. My main concern, in this article, is point #2, that is, understanding what the doctrine of the church teaches us, and making sure that we know what sin is, so that we are not propagating it in the church, in society, and in ourselves, and so that we are taking a stand against false teachings. Only once we understand and accept what sin is, can we remove it from our lives such that the process of repentance and healing can begin, which is why our church and society needs to understand the truth on these matters, and teach people, and our children, what is and isn’t appropriate.
Was Swedenborg Judgemental?
Emanuel Swedenborg, A Prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ
Throughout Swedenborg’s writings, he often made broad statements about groups of people, such as Jews, Muslims, women, and even homosexuals, some positive and some more negative. However, what is sometimes overlooked is that he only did this with regard to groups of people who were already in the afterlife, rather than in the physical world. Remember, from this article, that Swedenborg had the ability to see into the Spiritual World and view groups of people there in a manner that we cannot, people who had already exited the physical world and many of whom were undergoing — or had already undergone — their final judgement whereby they were sorted into either heaven or hell.
The ability to see into the Spiritual World with such clarity and for such a long length of time (at least 28 years) was a unique gift granted to him for a specific purpose to bring about the New Jerusalem. (About this subject, see my article, Why Swedenborg Isn’t Like Other Mystics.) In the scope of his work, it can be seen that he also spoke highly of some of the same groups of people in other places, and gave balance to every subject, explaining that he would often make statements in generalities for the sake of brevity, and that there are exceptions and caveats to many subjects that need to be taken in context of the whole. Additionally, he was critical of his own country, Sweden, as well as countries he often visited, such as England, Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, especially Christians themselves, having disavowed the entire old Christian Church, both Protestants and Catholics, writing that it was filled with falsities which he compared to panthers, owls, poisonous snakes, and spiders. In this, it was clear from what he wrote that he wasn’t simply siding with his own people, or his own country or religion, but that he was reporting to us what it was that he observed, what was given to him from the Lord, and nothing more.
Knowing this, anyone who claims that Swedenborg was racist, bigoted, or homophobic, simply isn’t aware of the full volume of his work, nor of the theology that he taught, which places all of its emphasis on the internal, rather than the external, man and woman.
Swedenborg wrote that after a person dies, he no longer has the ability to change his heart on important matters regarding the Lord and salvation. He has the ability to continue to learn, but within the direction of the things he already loves from his life while in mortality, either towards truth or towards lies. This is the “judgement” that a person undergoes after he dies, in that each person essentially judges himself based on his own passions and desires. God doesn’t judge anyone in the literal sense, but God’s presence causes judgement to be brought down upon them; a judgement which they essentially choose on their own based on their passions. In the afterlife, God is always available, ready to accept a person’s repentance, but because people living in sin often don’t want to repent, they are unable to, and as such they languish in hell, unless they find within themselves, that is, the Lord within them, the love necessary to be raised into heaven.
Cautionary Notice
Before you go further, it should be noted that I’ll be using some light definitions of the things discussed so that you can clearly understand where I’m drawing lines at. I’ve made the effort not to be more specific than I need to be, but there are a few situtations where I need to be unambiguous about the subjects I’m referring to so that you aren’t confused.
It should also be mentioned that I am not a medical professional and that anyone dealing with serious depression or without a sound mind, may not benefit from this discussion if they are not in a state where they’re able to unplug their feelings about the issues explored from the topics discussed. Know that before continuing. My hope is that all readers are mature enough to enter into this subject with these things in mind.
With that in mind, this article is written to be read by adults, and when these concepts are taught to children at an appropriate age (as they should be, before their peers, media, or the asleep public education systems do), it should be done with care by their parents in a setting where they’re able to ask questions, as there are many points presented here which may be confusing to them. Some people, I think, forget the fact that in the modern world, most adolescents are aware of sexual subjects, often at a younger age than they suppose, from their inevitable exposure to the internet, their peers, the media, and comedy, all of which trivializes it, which, despite their best efforts, they can’t entirely eliminate. The attempt to eliminate every worldly influence backfires because for it to be successful the child’s will to avoid it would have to be in agreement and can’t be forced into compliance. Rarely are details about sex explained by mature adults in a manner adequate to the onslaught of sexual messaging they receive in the world, let alone about the spiritual aspect of marriage, because their parents themselves are confused about it.
It’s vitally important that when speaking to children about marital subjects that they are, from the beginning, oriented in the right direction towards the Lord regarding what true marriage love is and what it isn’t, as it informs their thinking patterns going forward in life and gives them the mental and emotional tools to recognize and reject false and evil ideas that they may see or hear in the world as they grow older — being able to immediately turn away from such ideas if presented with them.
What Does the Bible Say?
Before we get into what the Lord taught us through Swedenborg, let’s first examine what the Lord wrote in the Word. I’m quoting several passages near the beginning of this article not to trigger you, but to set the stage. These passages are why many Christians believe that homosexuality is sinful. They are also the reason why many homosexuals and others who sympathize with them have left the church and have turned away from Christianity and sometimes from religion altogether (often becoming disappointed in modern Christianity out of confusion or for reasons other than Swedenborg did) so it’s important that we start with what the Word says so that we can get everything out there on the table, and then, we can find reason about it from that basis. I list these verses in order to give context and evidence, and to make the point that the Word mentions homosexuality in many places. As you’ll see, many of these passages have been, at least in part, misunderstood, and Swedenborg explains a lot of this for us in his writings that we can draw on for clarity.
I’ve split these references up into two sections. The Correspondential Word and the Doctrinal Word. For those unfamiliar with Swedenborg, the Correspondential Word is made up of those books of the Bible that communicate with the third, highest heaven, and are the subject of the Lord and his life. (See The New Jerusalem #266 for a list of these books.) The Doctrinal Word are the remaining books of the Biblical cannon, including Swedenborg’s writings, that are meant for Church instruction and are designed to help us understand the inner meaning of the Correspondential Word.
From the Correspondential Word:
But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.
From the Doctrinal Word:
Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind… shall inherit the kingdom of God.
Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
…for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.
For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.
…for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
The Definition of Adultery Includes Homosexuality
Since Swedenborg wrote that Leviticus, like the other Books of Moses, has a symbolic meaning, does that mean that homosexuality isn’t literally wrong?
I recently posed the question in a prayer, that with as much confusion as there is today around the subject of sexuality, with as much sexual sin as there is, and with as much pride as there is in the gay movement, why doesn’t the Lord reveal more information about it and the problems surrounding it in order to help enlighten modern people?
And then I realized, the reason is because he already revealed his laws and standards regarding these matters long ago, and all of that information already exists in the Word, people simply aren’t reading it and wanting to follow it.
One of the strict laws of the Ten Commandments is, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” And this is a law which Christians don’t dispute. Yet, knowing that, how do we define adultery? This is what the purpose of Leviticus 18 is, it defines what adultery is; and one of the definitions of adultery, as described in that chapter, is homosexuality.
In addition to prohibiting sex with the same gender, it also states:
Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor’s wife and defile yourself with her.
To make this point, I’m going to quote from the Chapter 18 of Leviticus for reference, which are the things mentioned by Swedenborg as the forbidden degrees of adultery.
The law says these things constitute adultery:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘I am the Lord your God. According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you, you shall not do; nor shall you walk in their ordinances. You shall observe My judgments and keep My ordinances, to walk in them: I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.
None of you shall approach anyone who is near of kin to him, to uncover his nakedness: I am the Lord. The nakedness of your father or the nakedness of your mother you shall not uncover. She is your mother; you shall not uncover her nakedness. The nakedness of your father’s wife you shall not uncover; it is your father’s nakedness. The nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father, or the daughter of your mother, whether born at home or elsewhere, their nakedness you shall not uncover. The nakedness of your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter, their nakedness you shall not uncover; for theirs is your own nakedness. The nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, begotten by your father—she is your sister—you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is near of kin to your father. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is near of kin to your mother. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother. You shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law—she is your son’s wife—you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, nor shall you take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness. They are near of kin to her. It is wickedness. Nor shall you take a woman as a rival to her sister, to uncover her nakedness while the other is alive.
Also you shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness as long as she is in her customary impurity. Moreover you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife, to defile yourself with her. And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion.
Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people.
Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the Lord your God.”
Similar things are also said in Leviticus 20.
Some followers of Swedenborg might then make the argument that Leviticus 18: 22 is meant to be taken only symbolically, not literally.
While it’s true that on the literal level of the Bible, many passages contradict each other, and if taken at face value, appear to say things that aren't loving, within the spiritual and symbolic level of the Bible, it is perfect and inerrant. And, knowing this, in which way are we meant to take Leviticus 18: 22; literally, metaphorically, or both?
While answering this question, it should be mentioned that the Five Books of Moses, called the Pentateuch, are considered as the Word in the highest sense, including Leviticus. Whereas many of the rituals mentioned in the Books of Moses are no longer required today, and are meant to be representative, the laws prohibiting adultery weren’t rituals, but were laws about behavior, which fit into a separate category along with the Ten Commandments and its prohibition against it. On this point, all of the laws prohibiting adultery in Leviticus 18 and 20 we are supposed to live by even today. Within those chapters in Leviticus, the stipulations listed stand within the umbrella of the sixth command itself.
For evidence of this, Swedenborg wrote about what he called the “forbidden degrees,” one of which is homosexuality, and that the laws prohibiting the practice of these forbidden degrees were applied by the Lord into the Christian Church as well:
The Word is violated by those in the Christian Church who adulterate its good and its truths. They do this if they separate truth from good, and good from truth. Also, if they take appearances of truth and fallacies for real truths and confirm them. Also, if they know the truths taught from the Word, but live wicked lives; and others who behave in similar ways. These violations of the Word and the church correspond to the forbidden degrees listed in Leviticus 18.
Foul liaisons — which are called the forbidden degrees [of sexual relations], dealt with in Leviticus 18:6-24 - mean various kinds of profanation.
Each law in the Word concerning those matters has reference inwardly to the law of the affiliation and joining together of good and truth in heaven, and to the affiliations of evil and falsity in hell, which are separated from the former. For laws to do with permissible and forbidden degrees, see Leviticus 20.
Such spheres correspond to all the prohibited degrees (concerning which see Leviticus 20:11-21), with differences according to the application of truths to falsities, and according to the conjunction of falsities with evils, especially with the evils flowing from the love of self.
We should know this truth intuitively. For example, just as we are not supposed to be involved in homosexual behavior, we are also not supposed to commit incest, adultery with another man’s wife, or bestiality, which are laws that are written right next to the law prohibiting homosexuality.
Swedenborg’s book, Love in Marriage (also translated as Conjugial Love), translated by David F. Gladish
Swedenborg described in his book titled, Conjugial Love (pronounced con-juj-ial, and also translated as Love in Marriage), there are two primary types of love between partners: one is called conjugial love, which is true love between straight, married partners based on friendship, trust, and caring. This is opposed to the more common word, conjugal (without the “i”), which means marriage by law, whether caring love is in that marriage or not. The second kind of love is called the love of sex, or libido in the Latin text, which means sexual desire. He described heaven as being synonymous with conjugial love because it corresponds with true and lasting love in the Lord. For married angels in heaven, their love for their monogamous partners is based first on conjugial love, and only second on libido. Each of them is allowed and encouraged to express their libido with their partner, but only as a result of conjugial love, rather than devoid of it (Conjugial Love #44).
So yes, we can infer from this that homosexuality is a form of adultery as listed in multiple places in the Word. People can’t pick and choose which types of adultery are wrong from the list of adulteries, for that reason they all are because they all defile the unity of marriage.
Swedenborg wrote:
It should be recognized that the Ten Commandments are rules both for those in the world and for those in heaven. The literal or external sense is for those in the world, the spiritual or internal sense for those in heaven; and this being so, both senses — the external and the internal — are for those who while in the world are also in heaven, that is, those leading a good life in conformity with the truths of religious teachings.
The Lord said:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Arc of the Covenant, which held the Ten Commandments inside.
The cherubs on the top symbolically guard it from being stolen or harmed.
Spiritual vs Literal Death
Outrage is one of the initial reactions many people may have to Leviticus 20: 13 (which is often one of the most commonly quoted scriptures on this subject), because of where it says, “they shall surely be put to death.” The thought then follows, Is this sin really worthy of the death penalty?
In the ancient times of Moses, it was worthy of the death penalty, because, as Swedenborg points out in his writings, the People of Israel were a representational church, that is, they had very rigid laws because they had no inner spirituality, a spirituality which didn’t exist until the Lord came into the world and fulfilled the purpose of the old law. Spiritually speaking, they were like toddlers that had to be fenced in with stricter rules because they didn’t understand deeper things. However, when the Lord came into the world, he showed us that the death penalty for adultery was no longer meant to be understood literally, as shown by his mercy towards the woman caught in adultery (John 8: 1 -11).
The story of the woman caught in adultery goes like this:
Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Now early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing him, that they might have something of which to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger, as though he did not hear. So when they continued asking him, he raised himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
From then on, the penalty for adultery was spiritual, which in the mortal world, did not always lead to death, but in the immortal world, if it wasn’t repented of, it led to a spiritual death that was far worse.
As we’ll soon learn, most things in the Correspondential Word carry a deep symbolism and “death” often refers to spiritual rather than physical death. Spiritual death is the loss of one’s spiritual life, the loss of the true joys of spiritual marriage as God intended it to be. In the afterlife, it corresponds with hell, where there are torments that are worse than death on earth because they keep one stuck forever in an inner, downward, self-destructive spiral. Spiritual death or life is an inner state of being that we must choose as if on our own.
Spiritual death is worse than physical death, like drowning in an unending sea of despair.
Even though the Lord said we aren’t supposed to use the death penalty for adultery, because we are all sinners, he is allowed to, because he is the only one without sin. Even so, the Lord never destroys and never withdraws from people, but he will allow people to withdraw from him, and so from his protection, if they insist on it. In the case of the woman who was caught in adultery, it’s inferred in that story that she was penitent and so was forgiven, but for those with a “high hand,” as the saying goes in the Word, the penalty is still enacted; however, since the Lord’s coming, it’s enacted by him alone by his own judgement, according to the design mentioned, whereby the destruction of the person becomes an inevitability when they withdraw from him, rather than a matter of vengeance. He says, “vengeance is mine” (Deuteronomy 32: 35) because of the outcome of divine providence for the protection of the innocent, not from any will to destroy for its own sake. This is the wisdom portion of the love-wisdom union within the Lord, whereby if he were to exist without wisdom, he wouldn’t truly be loving, and if he existed without love, he wouldn’t genuinely be wise. And so he exists as both at once.
Let’s take an example of how this may have manifested in recent human history. It could be, for example, that STDs and AIDS are forms of divine providence regarding these matters, as the results of sins of adultery, when someone has continued in sin long enough and without remorse. Of course, with the Lord, whenever this is the case, this isn’t meant as spitefulness, but rather as mercy; a wakeup call; a last attempt for him to reform a person before his or her physical death so that he can save them thereafter. It’s mercy because spiritual death is far worse. This is something that should be kept in mind wherever the death penalty is spoken about in the Word. All of the sins mentioned in the Word that declare the death penalty mean that the person who commits that sin is worthy of death, but whether it’s enacted in the Christian world today is a matter for the Lord himself to decide by way of his divine providence, and not by us, nor should we think about or wish the death or harm of anyone, but of their good instead, as he does in every command he’s established.
Swedenborg wrote that the death penalty should still be enacted today (by a judge or magistrate) for some Biblical laws literally as well as spiritually, but I didn’t find adultery on his list of those that are still applicable today, except for the most profane variation of it: bestiality — see Arcana Coelestia #9349 [4], and Exodus 22:19, which he references.
Let’s apply to the church the example that the Lord set. He forgave sins towards the penitent, but he didn’t condone sin itself. I feel like many people within Christianity today have learned about the former part but not the latter, which is definitely a step in the right direction, but isn’t the whole picture of goodness and truth, which requires wisdom as well as compassion, remembering that compassion without wisdom is not true love. We need both. If love gives way to falsity, it isn’t true love.
Perhaps it’s also the situation that many Christians fear that their children or friends may no longer associate with them if they speak a word against their homosexual lifestyle. As difficult as it may be to hear, so long as you’ve spoken with compassion and wisdom, and held your ground on the truth, if it leads to a broken relationship, as sad as that may be, you’ve done the right thing, even if it divides you.
From the Lord’s words:
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
In the above verse, each family member corresponds to a spiritual idea within you. Where those ideas are evil or false, you must separate them from within you, whether or not this actually leads to a separation from literal family members in the physical world (something you should avoid if possible). The key is to tend towards love, forgiveness, and reconciliation upon their repentance, but not acceptance of their wrong behavior.
Adultery, The Mosaic Law, and the New Testament
In True Christianity, Swedenborg explained what “the Law or the Prophets” means. The Law (capitalized) in a strict sense means the Ten Commandments (also called The Decalogue). These laws are kept intact even today because they contain spiritual and celestial qualities, which are immutable, as the Lord said above when he used the word “commands.” In the broader sense, the law (lowercase) means the rituals and practices of the ancient Israelite church, known as the Mosaic Law, which included stipulations such as how to cut your hair, how to perform certain sacrifices, whether or not you could eat certain types of animals, how to cleanse yourself from disease or exposure to it, how to offer sacrifices and on what days and seasons, etc. Many of those ritualistic laws are no longer applicable to the modern Christian Church today with regard to their literal meaning.
Swedenborg explained that there is a difference between, commandments, judgements, and statutes. The commandments that the Lord is referring to above, that he said must be obeyed to the letter, are the Ten Commandments, because within them is the essence of heavenly life — these are life commandments, because they have a complete correspondence between heaven and earth.
Let people beware of thinking that the laws of life such as are contained in the Ten Commandments and elsewhere throughout the Old Testament have been abrogated; for those laws have been firmly established in an inward as well as an outward form, because the two are inseparable.
You can also come to the conclusion that the Lord meant the Ten Commandments and not the literal parts of the Mosaic Law via common sense. Nobody, for example, follows all of the strict particulars of the old law to the letter in the modern day wherever it doesn’t align with the greatest law of love, including the Lord Himself (Matthew 12:10-12). For example, very few people perform animal sacrifices today, including most modern Jews. And the Lord elevated us beyond the literal interpretation of laws such as stoning, as was mentioned (John 8:1-11), and so nobody puts people to death for sins by stoning or fire anymore. Whereas, in the Word, when it talks about judgements and statutes, it typically means those rules meant for the Israelites which aren’t applicable statutes for Christians. However, an exception to this is wherever those judgements and statutes are elaborations on the Ten Commandments, such as adultery, as is the case in Leviticus 18 & 20, because these have to do with sexual behaviors, which form patterns of life.
The reason for that is because the purpose of those ritualistic laws, in the literal sense, was fulfilled by the Lord and his spiritual revelations to the world. The purpose for them was to act as physical representations of spiritual realities that exist within himself. The ancient Israelite church was what is known as a representational church. Within each of their rituals was embedded a spiritual law, but for some of them only the spiritual part of them must be obeyed today, and the literal laws insofar as they are of use to the spiritual laws (See Arcana Coelestia #9349 [3]). The purpose of them was to provide a framework around loving the neighbor, which the Lord said was the reasoning for them for as long as they were utilized:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
As we know from reading it in many places in the Gospels, the Lord didn’t condone adultery, regardless of the fact that he was fulfilling the law; in fact, adultery continues to be a sign of the violation of the Word in the world today. Swedenborg wrote about how adultery even in its natural form corresponds to adultery in its spiritual form.
A Christian who marries more than one wife commits not only natural, but also spiritual adultery.
It is in accordance with the Lord's words that a Christian who marries more than one wife commits natural adultery. He laid down that it is not allowable to divorce a wife, because they have from the beginning been created so as to be one flesh; if anyone divorces his wife without just cause and marries another, he commits adultery (Matthew 19:3-11).
…
The spiritual meaning of this statement is that a polygamous marriage in the Christian world profanes the marriage of the Lord and the church, and likewise that of good and truth, as well as the Word, and the church together with the Word. To profane these is to commit spiritual adultery.
Under that reason, so does homosexuality, because it is defined as a degree of adultery. To teach anybody that they are allowed to disobey that command was strictly forbidden by the Lord in his words, above, in Matthew 5:19. Any attempt to use the Word to refute the Ten Commandments puts you on par with the Pharisees and bars you from entering heaven, as the Lord stated in verse 20. And, again, it’s not like the Lord is literally throwing up a gate and saying, “you can’t come in.” The symbolism in the Word is often written so that it appears that way, but in the deeper sense the Law is a matter of divine reality, since the joys of heaven exist only in conjugial love, and so you have to first want conjugial love in order to find your way to it.
With his permission, I've attached a couple of documents by Reverend Jeremy Simons from the Bryn Athyn New Church, who made a strong case for Swedenborg’s beliefs on homosexuality:
I stumbled across the first of Simons’ documents after doing some web searches while studying what the New Church taught about this subject. I believe what he wrote in these documents is accurate. From what I could tell, there had been somewhat of a division between different sects of the New Church with regard to what we should believe about homosexuality, whether Swedenborg spoke out against it or not.
As was shown in the Bible verses I quoted above, the Word clearly spoke against it in multiple places, which should be all we need to know, regardless of whether Swedenborg said anything specific about it or not; however, with Swedenborg’s writings we can get a better idea of what those verses mean not only literally, but spiritually.
Simons made a strong argument proving that Swedenborg did, in fact, speak about homosexuality, but that Swedenborg thought it was so reprehensible, that he didn't often mention it by name, calling it, “abominable,” “adulterous,” and “an evil too unspeakable to be named.” Additionally, the word, homosexuality, didn't exist in the 18th century, and instead the word sodomy was used.
The modern acronym, LGBTQIA+, if converted to 18th century vernacular similar to its meaning, is a verbose way of saying sodomy or homosexuality, because the definition of each term in the acronym includes or implies a pattern of homosexual behavior, and it’s stated in the doctrine of the church that such behavior goes against the pattern of heaven. The terms, lesbian, gay, and bisexual include an explanation of those who’ve practiced homosexuality. Queer, allied, and +, indicates a thought, intent, questioning, or endorsement of it, and to the extent that they intend it, it becomes true for them in spirit (Life #111). And the explanation of transgender, intersex, and asexual, if legitimate, fall under the category of what the Lord termed a eunuch, in the literal sense (which I explain below), and may not include the lifestyles associated with homosexuality, but in the context of the LGBTQIA+ community, likely does, otherwise it wouldn’t branch into sexual activism favoring and promoting it.
Another reason Swedenborg didn’t often mention homosexuality except for in his journals is because of the limitations on the freedom of the press were stricter, such that even if he had wanted to speak more candidly about it in his official publications, he was not allowed to. This by no means, however, indicates that he endorsed it, and in fact, if we search in his personal journal, as well as a few places in Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven), we are able to find out what he clearly thought about it, which is important information to bring forward as a counterbalance, given the nature of the present cultural landscape in which modern people live and the media they are exposed to daily.
As Simons explains, in the 18th century, homosexuality was rarely referred to except through euphemisms because it was considered so heinous, and Swedenborg’s use of the same euphemisms indicated that he thought so as well. Simons makes a strong argument that Swedenborg’s use of the word, sodomy, referred not just to homosexual rape (as some readers of Swedenborg may claim), but to all kinds of homosexuality, including when it’s apparently consensual, because a relationship is not truly consensual if it doesn’t align with the Ten Commandments (Apocalypse Revealed #502 [3]).
Adultery has so corrupted the United States government that it is now championed by them.
Another possibility is that Swedenborg did this, not only because he wasn’t allowed to be any more explicit than he was without risk of his books being canceled from the press, but also because he didn’t like the idea of writing anything that could in any way accidentally bring profanities forward in a person’s mind, being very careful about sensitive, young eyes and ears, as well as the negative effect that profane thoughts could have on heaven when merely mentioning such subjects (Arcana Coelestia #5055).
I can only imagine what Swedenborg must be thinking as he observes from the spirit world the direction the physical world is moving today, whereby a sin that he was told was unspeakable is now worn on T-shirts and hung next to our national flags as a point of pride. What a contrast Swedenborg’s careful approach to the subject makes against the backdrop of the modern cultural landscape where homosexuality is not only spoken about, but is pushed in front of everyone’s faces. The U.S. has an official holiday for sodomitic pride. Pride banners are hung from people’s houses, on their lawns, on billboards, and in advertisements, even on the front of the White House. Some companies actually encourage hiring people with gay lifestyles because of what they consider to be diversity, conflating diversity of races (which is good in the right context) with a diversity of adulteries (which is always bad), as if they were the same thing. While shopping online for movies, music, apps, or video games, there are special sodomitic genres and discounts that are shown and pushed in front of us, often whether we want to see them there or not. In movies and TV shows, depictions of men kissing men or women kissing women, and depictions of various gay lifestyles are shown as representing truth in love. In this decade, one can hardly find a TV show that doesn’t have a gay or lesbian character in it, as Hollywood relentlessly attempts to push a false narrative on the world that sodomitic sins are a-okay. Many websites ask you to describe yourself using specific pronouns in order to affirm to others whether you’re gay or transgender. In Mormon sub-culture, some homosexual men will dress up in white and clean looking clothing to appear holy while in defiance of the policies of the mainstream organization regarding marriage and sex, making it appear to people on social media that homosexual relationships are just as normal and honorable as heterosexual relationships. We’ve heard in the news the past few decades about many of the problems that the Catholic Church had when their priests were found to be involved in sodomitic practices, and with regard to the Protestants, how they’ll sometimes look the other way, or indeed speak in favor of homosexuality in order to stave off dwindling church attendance, which has been steadily declining for the last 25 years. A lifestyle that was once considered unspeakable is today depicted by many corporations, and even churches, as normal and even desirable, and for anyone to say otherwise is today considered by many to be speaking evil, such that the nature of what constitutes evil has been turned upside down. Anyone who dares speak out about this is at risk of being cancelled and as being labeled as an extreme right-winger who spreads nothing but hate speech.
Yet to speak the truth on these matters is far from hate speech, because as was said, something isn’t love if it upholds falsity. Such unholy things have already been brought forward to people’s eyes and ears all throughout the world on a daily basis by simply walking out their front door. This happens not only to adults, but also to children, through corporations such as Disney and many others who push these false messages in front of them at a young age, and unless the false ideas that they’re propagating are finally revealed to be what they really are, they will only deceive people into generations to come.
And so with that said, I’m not going to tread quite as lightly in today’s article as Swedenborg did in his official publications; first, because there is greater freedom of speech today which allows me to pinpoint and call out these lies specifically, and second, because this has become such a problem in the modern day that we, as people, can no longer sit silent about it. I believe there was a reason why the Lord ensured that Swedenborg’s journal writings were preserved and were posthumously published at a later date, so that some of the harsher, more esoteric, but necessary truths written within them could, in time, be revealed to people who needed them.
The Symbolic Meaning of Sodom
Sodom and Gomorrah, by Jules Joseph Augustin Laurens
Let’s talk for a moment about Arcana Caelestia #2322, where Swedenborg is explaining the inner meaning of Genesis 19:
That ‘Sodom’ means the evil, especially those inside the Church, is clear from the meaning of ‘Sodom’ as evil that stems from self-love, dealt with in 2220, 2246. It means therefore people who are governed by such evil. People who understand the Word only from the sense of the letter may imagine that ‘Sodom’ is used to mean a certain kind of foul behavior that is totally unnatural, but in the internal sense ‘Sodom’ means evil that springs from self-love. Out of this evil all evils of every kind well up. And the evils that well up from it are in the Word called ‘adulteries’ and are described as such. This will be clear from those places in the Word which will be quoted at the end of this chapter.
And:
Those who love themselves and whose love is commanding others are Sodomites.
About Sodomy:
That “Sodom” is the love of dominating from self-love, may appear from the description of Sodom in Moses, that they wished to do violence to the angels who came into Lot’s house; and that fire and brimstone rained upon them out of heaven.
That ‘Sodom’ is every evil that stems from self-love is clear from the meaning of ‘Sodom’ in the Word. Although in the next chapter it seems as if Sodom means the evil that consists in the worst form of adultery, nevertheless nothing else is meant by it in the internal sense than evil that stems from self-love. In the Word also the dreadful things that well up out of self-love are represented by various kinds of adultery.
What is “Self-Love”?
In the spirit world, people absorbed in selfishness appear (symbolically) in and among burning fire and smoke, which symbolizes their passion to serve only themselves at the expense of others.
Modern people sometimes use the term self-love to mean taking care of their body and mind for the sake of being able to give back to others from a healthy foundation, but that is not the way Swedenborg is using it here. For those unfamiliar with Swedenborg, the term, “self-love,” in this context, means when a person only cares about himself without regard for anyone else, and that includes people who feign altruistic actions or motives, when secretly, everything they are doing and saying is for their own benefit and nobody else’s. Other terms for this are selfishness, egotism, or narcissism. Swedenborg also used the word proprium to describe it, which indicates the part of the mind that is concerned with itself and its own survival and success. The proprium can be used for good or for evil, depending on where it’s slotted within a person’s list of internal priorities.
Some people may take the passage from Arcana Caelestia #2220 and claim that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with sodomy because Swedenborg wrote, there, that the inner meaning of Sodom is self-love rather than homosexuality. However, it’s very important to point out that Swedenborg said that Sodom means self-love only on the inner meaning, but that the Word has three layers of meaning, and the inner meanings are depicted by outward symbols and actions taken by the people who are written about in its stories. And so, even though Sodom means self-love in general, rather than homosexuality specifically, it is clear that Swedenborg also knew that the definition of it included homosexuality upon the outer layer due to the fact that he described it, there, as “foul behavior that is totally unnatural,” as well as due to the fact that he didn’t exclude it from the definition of self-love, but only mentioned that it is one of many forms of adultery that “wells up from” self-love, whereas there are clearly many forms of adultery, such as those listed in Leviticus 18 and 20. He often wrote that a person’s outward actions correspond with his inner life. (See Divine Love and Wisdom #277.)
Within the internal sense there are individual details, millions of which together constitute one particular feature that occurs in the literal sense. Or what amounts to the same, within the internal sense there exist particular features, millions of which together constitute just one general whole that occurs in the literal sense. This general whole is what is seen by man, but not the particular features which are present within it and which constitute it. Nevertheless man can see within the general whole the order that holds the particular features together, though he sees it according to his own essential nature.
The bottom line he was making in Arcana Caelestia #2322 (above), is that although homosexuality is indicative of self-love, there are many forms of self-love, just as there are many forms of adultery, which are all included within the symbolism of Sodom. Not only that, but his journal entries indicate that sodomy is at (or near) the very bottom, being as Swedenborg wrote, “the worst form of adultery.” These specific quotes by him from Arcana Caelestia didn’t say more about it at that point, I believe, because it was widely believed to be the worst form of adultery by society in the 18th century already, and he could not have foreseen how twisted our beliefs about it would become today, over 250 years later. It is more generally described by him as self-love because there are levels to hell, and self-love is in all of hell, but it gets worse the deeper down you go (Apocalypse Explained #1006). He wrote that there are levels of evil within sodomy, like there is within every type of evil, but that it is, nonetheless, what he considered to be an unspeakable evil, as can be seen from the following passage:
About sodomy
In the other life those who are sinners of sodomy in their lifetime had believed nothing about the life after death, the existence of a hell and a heaven, but that they are entirely like wild animals, and would therefore die. Therefore they have nothing of understanding, even though they are able to reason. In the other life they are treated very miserably, being punished by hellish torments that are so dreadful that they can hardly be told. And moreover they inhabit the region of the tail, where the feces are, because they are manure, and dwell in outhouses. 1748, 25 July.
Keep in mind that when Swedenborg wrote in his journal that wicked people are punished and tormented, often severely, that he means they are punished by other demons, not by the Lord. The Lord would pull them out of hell in a second if he could, that is, if they’d accept him and his love and wisdom (I’ve included a story, later in the article, that shows him doing just that with Howard Storm). It’s important to note, however, that death-bed repentance is not an option for people because their passions and patterns of living tend to follow them into the afterlife, where those passions can no longer be broken or redirected towards good, or to what extent they can, not without great difficulty, and with some degree of eternal limitation. In Howard’s story, he was sent back to earth so that he could straighten out his life before he could be accepted into heaven — he had to do the hard work of reformation in the physical realm. For that reason, anyone who thinks they can live an evil life and then repent near the end, is mistaken. As we’ll see in Howard’s case, he dodged a bullet, and that can’t be said for everyone (Matthew 10: 25).
Procreation is a Function of Heavenly Marriage
Sexual union within monogamous, straight marriages that are formed from genuine love from both partners corresponds with the third heaven. In the third heaven, the Lord shines like a reddish, golden sun, where the angels live in the most holy union.
The reason that self-love, or selfishness, corresponds to Sodom, is because its opposite, that of straight sex, corresponds to usefulness via the procreation of children within heavenly marriages. On the outermost level of creation (that is, here in the physical world), straight sex within a male-to-female marriage has the potential to create new life in the form of a child, and that provides the greatest usefulness to the Lord and to heaven.
The reason sex is so pleasurable, Swedenborg wrote, is because of its usefulness, because it is the most useful activity a person can engage in — primarily because of its power of creation and the eventual population of heaven with angels. The sole reason why God created the universe was so that usefulness could exist within the human race.
Marital pleasure, which is a purer and more delicate pleasure of touch, surpasses all others because of its service, the procreation of the human race and thus of the angelic heaven.
These pleasures are inherent in the senses because of the inflow of heaven, where all pleasure belongs to service and depends on service.
The reproductive organs in both sexes interact with the inmost or third heaven, where the angels more than others have a heavenly marriage, that is to say, a marriage of goodness and truth. In a word, marriages in the heavens are most holy, on which account they must not be profaned by adulteries.
Therefore to love one’s married partner is to do good in the Lord’s eyes, for this, when it comes from a chaste heart, is to love the Lord: it communicates with the heavens, and delights the minds of angels so much that it cannot be believed.
Swedenborg wrote that sex has several purposes, but the primary purposes are:
The continuance of the human race via childbirth.
The unity between goodness and truth that takes place when monogamous partners are brought closely together.
And thus, the population of angels in heaven, since everyone who lives in the Lord becomes an angel.
And through these processes, the formation of life on earth as it is in heaven, leading to the reunification between the realms of existence.
Before creation, God was love itself and wisdom itself. That love and that wisdom had a drive to be useful. Without usefulness, love and wisdom are only fleeting abstract entities, and they do indeed fly away if they do not move in the direction of usefulness. The two prior things without the third [love and wisdom without usefulness] are like birds flying across a great ocean that eventually become worn out, fall into the ocean, and drown.
God created the universe so that usefulness could exist. Therefore the universe could be called a theater of useful functions. Because we, the human race, are the principal reason for creation, it follows that absolutely everything else was created for our sake. All aspects of the divine design have been brought together and concentrated in us so that God can perform the highest forms of useful service through us.
Without these purposes, the plan of God is not able to continue, and so any sexual behavior outside of these bounds isn’t permitted in heaven.
Within homosexuality, the first use within marriage, the bearing of children, is either impossible, or goes against the natural order. The second use, the unity of partners through pleasure and shared experiences, some might argue could exist within a homosexual relationship. However, this isn’t a part of God’s design because of straight marriage’s correspondence with spiritual unity with the Lord. In the Bible, a husband generally symbolizes goodness on the inner level and a wife, truth — these being two fundamental elements of God’s creation. The correspondence between goodness and truth is represented within the unity of a husband and wife in a monogamous marriage. Within a homosexual marriage, however, the situation would become goodness-with-goodness or truth-with-truth, but this combination doesn’t lead to consummation, as truth-with-truth lacks goodness, and goodness-with-goodness lacks truth, and you need both in order to achieve unity (Mark 10:6-8).
Truth without goodness, Swedenborg wrote is the “faith alone” doctrine, which lacks love and charity. Whereas goodness without truth is the “love alone” doctrine, which lacks wisdom, and without wisdom, there is no power to effect form, change, or creation (Divine Love and Wisdom #139). Either one, acting alone, doesn’t lead to salvation because it doesn’t lead to life.
Thus,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1: 1).
In other words, God was and is made of these two elements — goodness and truth — and without a complete unity of them within us, what we end up with on earth is not God within us, but something outside of God. In this way, homosexual marriage cannot correspond with God.
To quote Leviticus 18:22 once again:
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.
The word abomination sounds harsh to some people, but what it essentials means is, something which does not conform to the unity of goodness and truth. Like all forms of adultery, it is a misuse, or a misappropriation, of the unity with God. It misses the mark.
Swedenborg elaborated on this, making the point that hell is hell because the type of delights experienced there are not united to the delight of being useful.
There are sodomitic hells for those who were in evils from a love of ruling over others from mere delight in ruling, and who were in no delight of use.
About a Nefarious Community
Some spirits came to me who I think had recently passed away, for they did not yet know that they were in the next life; with them it should be shown that at that time they were able to be enlightened. They appeared at first as if they were good, for they preferred such an attitude; but when they withdrew, I heard from others that they would act nefariously. And indeed, they were among those who think that casual sex between multiple women and men is not only lawful, but also holy. They said they were born in sins, and that, because of this, they could not abstain, and for that reason they are joined to others who, like themselves, confess the same. They think it is unclean to do otherwise. They reproached straight marriages, thinking them to be unholy, and rather, they represented straight marriage as unclean. It was said to me, that the fact is, that people like this exist in human societies who seek to obtain communion among others like them without the goal of marriage, the love of marriage, and children, but merely for the sake of casual lust. About which, they claimed they had lived the most enjoyable life since childhood.
When I inquired about what kind of pain remains in them, it was said that they are severely tormented. Nor did they want me to make the nature of their torments common knowledge, only that it was terrible. And it continues until all their vitality is gone, that is, until they do not know that they are alive. This continues until they have put aside such deeds and nefarious behavior; for under the pretense of sanctity they cause confusion, and under the pretense of sanctity they extinguish what is universal and particularly special to the procreation of the human race. Such confusion can only result in severe torment and in the extinction of their spiritual life. Neither are they absent among the community of sodomites, as I was told. Therefore, let everyone beware who knows about this, because such people are not spared in the next life. 1748, 16th of May.
How many people are like this today, or hold this attitude, who consider traditional housewives and mothers to be despicable, but LGBTQIA+ lifestyles to be honorable? I see this attitude on social media often and within the world culture around me, even among church-going people, who put down traditional marriage and consider it to be outdated.
Swedenborg wrote:
All the blessings of heaven flow from the delights of conjugial love, like sweet waters from a sweetly gushing spring.
But no others come into that love and no others can be in it but those who go to the Lord and love the truths of the church and do the good things it teaches. No others come into this love but those who go to the Lord, because monogamous marriages, which are marriages of one man with one wife, correspond to the marriage of the Lord and the church, and they have their origin from the marriage between goodness and truth.
Only a Christian conjugial relationship is chaste. This is because truly conjugial love advances in a person in the same degree as the state of the church in him and because that love is from the Lord… By a Christian conjugial relationship we mean a marriage of one man with one wife.
The procreative force the Lord put into human beings was put there by him so that usefulness could exist, giving life and meaning to the universe.
He wrote that this marital pleasure exists in heaven, although children are not born there as they are here, because people exist there in their spiritual bodies rather than in their physical bodies. In the Spiritual World, then, the sexual union between a husband and his wife is an image and likeness of goodness and truth from the Lord combined into loving concepts and ideas within them and their shared life in heaven.
Because of this synchronicity between sexual expression on earth with sexual expression in the Spiritual World, homosexuality is adultery, because within the homosexual act, there is no union between husband and wife, and heaven is the union between husband and wife.
Marriage is heaven itself, because all there live in a state of conjugial love, each in his own degree. That that love is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven, because by it an angel becomes an embodiment of love, because those who are there possess a marriage of good and truth. And that therefore heaven is likened to marriage of good and truth. And that therefore heaven is likened to marriage and a wedding, and hell to adultery and licentious liaisons.
And from Heaven and Hell #384:
It’s not only mortals who suffer when we sin, but those who lived before us, and those who will live after us.
Marriages on earth are the seedbed of the human race and also of the angels of heaven, for as already noted in its own chapter, heaven is from the human race. For this reason, and because they do have a spiritual origin (from the marriage of the good and the true), and because the Lord's divine nature flows especially into this love, these earthly marriages are seen as most holy by heaven’s angels. Correspondingly, adultery, as the opposite of marriage love, is seen by them as unholy; for as angels see in marriages a marriage of the good and the true, which is heaven, so in adultery they see a marriage of the false and the evil, which is hell. So if they even hear adultery mentioned, they turn away. This is why heaven is closed to people if they commit adultery because they enjoy it. Once it is closed, the Divine Being is no longer acknowledged, nor is anything of the faith of the church.
I could tell that everyone in hell is opposed to marriage love from the aura that emanated from hell. It was like a ceaseless effort to break up and destroy marriages. This showed that the dominant pleasure in hell is the pleasure of adultery, and that the pleasure of adultery is also the pleasure of destroying the union of the good and the true, the union that makes heaven. It follows from this that the pleasure of adultery is a hellish pleasure, diametrically opposed to the pleasure of marriage, which is a heavenly pleasure.
Let’s move on to another passage, this time from Swedenborg’s book, Conjugial Love, #55 [5, 6], where he recounts a spiritual experience where he had a conversation with spirits and angels about true marital love:
…Some [spirits] intervened, saying, “We have been with the loveliest women without desiring them. So we know what chaste sexual love is.” But their companions, knowing their lewdness, replied, “You were then reduced to loathing the other sex as the result of impotence, and this is not chaste sexual love, but the depth of unchaste love.”
On hearing this the angels were angry and asked those who stood on the right, that is, to the south, to speak. “There is,” they said, “the love of two men for each other, and the love of two women for each other, and the love of a man for a woman and of a woman for a man. These three pairs of loves are completely different. The love of two men is like the love of two intellects, for man was created and therefore is by birth designed to become an intellect. The love of two women is like the love of two affections for man's intellect, for woman was created and is designed by birth to become the love of a man’s intellect. These loves, those between two men or two women, do not sink far into the breast, but stay outside, making merely superficial contact and not leading to any inner union of the two. This too is the reason why two men fence with reasoned arguments on either side, like boxers; and two women sometimes with lusts on either side, like actors pretending to fight with fists.
In the present chapter, quoted above, Swedenborg is relating a few things that were said to him by spirits about other types of love, such as between men and men, women and women, or men and women not married, saying that those types of love can and do exist, but that they never extend to sexual love in heaven, because in heaven, everyone strives to become one with his or her monogamous partner, a husband with his wife and a wife with her husband. These straight couples have sex in heaven because of the ultimate purpose, and thus joy, achieved within the unification between goodness and truth, but with none others. However, if affection for the same sex remains on the surface level with angels, it doesn’t interfere with chastity, but if it goes deeper, into sexuality and sexual intent, then it does interfere. If it goes deeper and is acted on sexually, it becomes profane.
What is a Woman? What is a Man?
In the documentary by Matt Walsh, What Is a Woman? he shines a light on the deception and confusion being propagated by the LGBTQIA+ community in the modern world.
Of particular interest to me was the section of the documentary when he visits a tribe of Africans in Nairobi, Kenya. The people he spoke with while in Kenya hadn’t been exposed to the modern corrupt ideas surrounding the issues of homosexuality and male and female roles that exist in first-world countries. The African people he met simply understood on a perceptual level what it meant to be a man or a woman; they knew what a woman was and what a man was. It was intuitive and obvious to them. Swedenborg called this “celestial perception,” which he said existed among the earliest human beings, back in the Golden Era, before the inventions and changes for the worst that occurred in modern industrialized nations. Some of this perception is still maintained among African tribes such as this today, such as those Walsh visited, and among religions and people living unassuming, honest lives of genuine love and charity for their neighbors. For example, you may find this sort of common sense in farmers, truckers, and industry workers around the world, including even in the rural US, whose ideas aren’t corrupted by the greed for worldly power that often dominates large cities, where the intellectual elites become so intellectualized that they spin their own spirits upside down.
Swedenborg wrote about a region mentioned in the Bible that is called, “the land of Cush,” and that it existed in what is today Ethiopia (and encompassing surrounding regions such as Kenya), and that it symbolizes, “cognitions of good and truth, or of love and faith.” (Arcana Coelestia #117)
In Walsh’s documentary, one of the men from Kenya says, “The role of a man is to work for your woman. Secondly, to have children.” It’s so painfully obvious that one has to facepalm when he examines the stupidity within Western culture. Some things shouldn’t be overcomplicated. God didn’t make sexuality complicated or hard to understand. As they mention in the documentary, the organs of reproduction fit together for the purpose of having children. A woman can deliver a child and a man cannot. When speaking only about the physical connection, it doesn’t get much more complicated than that, and yet even this is confused by many of us today.
However, there is, of course, spiritual symbolism to such subjects as well, which the Kenyans also understand. When asked by Walsh if a man could become a woman, the Kenyan man goes on to say, “No, if a man wants to become a woman, there is something wrong in your family or something wrong in you.” Meaning, not in a gay man’s innate quality as a human — which is never questioned — but rather, in his volition and lifestyle, which is a subject of human will.
In Swedenborg’s books, he described that the terms for men and women have symbolic meanings in the Word:
Man = Inward form of love, outward form or wisdom.
Woman = Inward form of wisdom, outward form of love.
There are also rational levels in the middle and ways in which these interact, but this is the basis of it. Wisdom equates to knowledge, intelligence, and experience, whereas love equates to desire, affection, and volition.
By “outward,” he means the body and the mind, including their genetic makeup, and by “inward” he mean the eternal essence of one’s heart and soul, which is composed of the intentions and decisions one formulates and makes throughout his life.
Swedenborg’s entire theology is based on these two concepts, which weren’t his own, but were and are the very substance of the Lord, and were secrets of heaven until recently, embedded into the text of the Word itself. For this reason, the Lord Himself is goodness and truth, united into one, and this aspect of him is symbolized through monogamous marriage between one man and one woman — which is why the Lord spoke about heaven as being like a marriage so often in his teachings.
And [Jesus] answered and said unto them, “Have you not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this cause will a man leave father and mother, and will join to his wife: and they together will be one flesh?”
Swedenborg spoke to people from Africa who are now in heaven, who he reported to be the wisest and most heavenly people there. From one of his accounts, he retold a story where several people from Europe were debating the source and significance of marriage love, from which the Africans won the award for wisdom. From the retelling:
Behind a long, low partition set up in the palace in front of the doors, stood some foreigners from Africa. They called out to the Europeans, “Let one of us express an opinion, too, about the source of love in marriage and about its vigor or potency.”
Everyone at the tables signaled with their hands to let them do this. Then one of the Africans came in and took a stand by the table with the tiara on it. He said, “You Christians trace the source of married love from the love itself. In Africa, though, we trace it from the God of heaven and earth. Isn't married love a pure, holy, and chaste love? Don't angels in heaven have it? Isn’t the whole human race and the whole angelic heaven that comes from it the seed of that love? Can such an important thing come from anyone but God Himself, Creator and Sustainer of the universe?”
“You Christians trace the vigor or potency of marriage from various worldly and rational causes. We Africans trace it from how the person stands in conjunction with the God of the universe. We call this the status of his religion, but you call it an ecclesiastical status. Now, since love is from this, and this is constant and perpetual, it can't help expressing its vigor, which is the image of it and therefore is just as constant and perpetual.”
“The real love in marriage is known only to those few who are near to God, so this love’s potency is not known to anyone else. Angels in heaven describe this potency in married love as the delight of perpetual spring.”
Are People Born Gay?
About this question, Swedenborg wrote:
As regards love for the opposite sex, this is universal in all people, for it is implanted from the moment of creation in a person’s very soul, from which comes the essential nature of the whole person, and it is implanted for the sake of propagating the human race. This love remains especially, because after death a man is still a man, and a woman is still a woman, and there is nothing in the soul, mind, or body which is not masculine in the male and feminine in the female; and the two sexes have been so created as to strive for conjunction, indeed, for conjunction in order that they may become one. This impulse is the love for the opposite sex which precedes conjugial love.
And the Lord said this above, in Matthew 19, that from the beginning, they were made male and female, which in short, is our answer.
No, people aren’t born gay.
(There are some, however, who are born eunuchs, which we’ll speak about below.)
We know from the inner sense of the Word explained in Swedenborg’s writings that each person has a soulmate and that God designed every woman for one man and every man for one woman (Conjugial Love #229). Knowing this is the case, and that God designed the human body this way, such that the sexual organs of both are meant to fit together in unity as a representation of this, why would he then design some of his children to fit man-on-man, or woman-on-woman, knowing that the paired organs would not function or fit together properly according to the way he’d created them?
It would make no sense to do this and would defeat the purpose of his creation. This is true even if you take into account sexual deformities from birth. Although it is possible for a person to be born with a sexual abnormality, its occurrence doesn’t innately make that person into a homosexual, and gender is nonetheless determined on the chromosomal level of each person’s genetics, regardless of any external sexual abnormality. Where there are chromosomal abnormalities, gender can be determined by function (can the person carry a child, or produce sperm), and in the very rare case where that’s not even yet determined, it may be meant to be revealed after death, but gender as a universal concept is a fixed design from the divine, even if it isn’t known in mortality.
Ultimately, whether a person is a man or a woman is determined in the womb at conception, by the Lord, and is not a choice. Although he has free will granted to him by the Lord in how he behaves and what he believes, he isn’t able to change his fundamental gender, as much as he believes that he can. A person cannot change his or her sexual orientation based on how he or she feels. A woman is a woman down to her DNA and a man is a man down to his DNA, regardless of what either of them have done to surgically or chemically change themselves outwardly and regardless of any outward deformities or abnormalities he or she has from birth.
So why then are some people born with sexual deficiencies or abnormalities?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
The Lord said that anyone who is born, was made, or becomes a eunuch, while in the mortal body — and hears his message — should accept his message, and serve the Kingdom of God in the next best way he is able. (Matthew 19:12)
The word eunuch is complex and has a literal and spiritual meaning, but we’re only discussing the literal meaning at the moment. In the literal sense, it simply means someone without the ability to have sex, for whatever reason (Conjugial Love #151). Most people think it means a man who has been castrated, but that’s a narrow and incorrect understanding of the literal meaning of it, let alone the spiritual meaning (Conjugial Love #156, Apocalypse Explained #710 [28]).
For the purposes of our discussion at the moment, the bottom line is that all physical deformities will be healed in the next life for those who live a life of loving intention according to the design of God’s Kingdom. And all those who want a marriage will find one, if not here, than in heaven. (Matthew 7:7-11)
This is because the soul is made up of the entire person, not just his temporal body.
Some scientists have claimed (such as in the video to the right) that there is a causation between sexual orientation and genetics because of what they’ve observed between identical twins; a certain percentage of them being more likely to be gay than non-identical siblings. However, it’s mentioned by them that identical twins are not always gay, even given their identical genetics. This is telling, because it indicates that environmental exposure and personal choices are at play rather than genetics. The causation, then, stating that identical twins are more likely to both be gay than otherwise is just as easily explained by the fact that identical twins often share the same social and cultural environment while growing up, including their exposure to each other. This fact indicates that it’s environment more than biology that leads some of them towards becoming gay.
And even if you were to prove that it was biology, this would not negate the Lord’s words that eunuchs, who were made so, from whatever reason, even if from the womb, are advised to accept the Kingdom of God according to their calling. Also see Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7 where he explains this as well, and what Swedenborg wrote in Conjugial Love 151:
Chastity cannot be ascribed to people who are born eunuchs or who have been made eunuchs. By people who are born eunuchs we mean chiefly people in whom the outmost impulse of love is missing from birth. And because the highest and intermediate impulses then lack a foundation on which to rest, neither do these impulses develop. Or if they do, the people are not concerned with distinguishing between chaste and unchaste states, since either one is a matter of indifference to them. The diversities among people like this, however, are many.
The case with people who have been made eunuchs is almost the same, as with some who are born eunuchs; only that having become eunuchs, and being such, whether men or women, therefore they cannot help but regard conjugial love as a fantasy and its delights as fairy tales. If anything of the inclination remains in them, it becomes silent, which is neither chaste nor unchaste; and being neither, it is incapable of being classed in one category or the other.
That said, here Swedenborg is talking about those who lack any sexual impulse, not those who have a sexual impulse, and invert it towards the same sex, which is the primary subject in popular culture today. The reason I mention this is because there are many homosexual people today who claim to be born that way, but this isn’t true. There are people who are born eunuchs, but not those who are born homosexuals.
Transgender, intersex, and asexual people — if, or to the extent, they’re being honest and not grifting — fall under the category of eunuchs; but, as Swedenborg said, sexual love doesn’t develop in them (until after death). This fact infers that homosexuality is an entirely different category than that of eunuchs. Homosexuality is never natural because it’s a type sexual love turned towards the same gender, which is always against the pattern of heaven, but eunuchs simply haven’t had their sexual love develop yet, regardless of what their gender actually is.
If they’re wearing their transgender status on their sleeve, such as via crossdressing, they may be in a state of sin, and not truly a eunuch. This idea was written about by John Maynard Smith, an evolutionary biologist. He introduced the concept in his work on game theory and mating strategies in the animal kingdom, for example, in scenarios where animals take on the colors or behaviors of other animals in order to appear to be evolutionarily adapted for the purpose of survival when in fact they don’t actually need it and it’s used as a ploy in order to avoid competition.
Like most things, this element of deception was warned against in the Word thousands of years ago, where crossdressing is forbidden:
The garment of a man shall not be on a woman, neither shall a man be clothed with the raiment of a woman; for all who do these things are an abomination to Jehovah thy God.
Homosexuality Isn’t Nice
And likewise comes the conclusion that just as the Lord had mercy on the woman caught in adultery, we should also have mercy with homosexuals within our society who are repentant about it, but that we should never condone an attitude of pride within those who have the intent to continue it. The Lord’s last words to the woman were, “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). This is in stark contrast to pride-day parades, rainbow colored corporate logos, and comatose Hollywood scripts, all of which are championing wrong behavior. Much of our modern society is not only deeply engaged in adultery, but is in fact promoting it.
There are two opposite extremes:
Standing on the street corner with pickets, yelling to every passerby that they're going to hell for their sexual sins.
Draping your church or corporate logo with rainbow colored flags and promoting homosexual activity as chic within your sermons.
I think we as a society need to put down both the stones, the pickets, and the rainbow colored flags and promote what the Word actually says. There is a balance to be had, one of neither internal condemnation nor the promotion of sin. Within that balance, needs to be a strong stance against allowing unrepentant homosexuals into church communities, as Paul made clear in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 (NIV):
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
If they are repentant, or seeking repentance, then they can be integrated gradually, according to their behavior, and under the careful guidance of a counselor, but not before then.
Recently, Patrick Bet-David published a couple videos from Valuetainment about this subject (shown above and to the right), which encouraged me to emphasize these points to you. He explored the history and statistics behind the homosexual movement and revealed some distributing trends. He pointed out that we, as Christians, and as a global society, have for so long looked the other way on the issues of homosexuality, rather than drawing a line, which has been a huge mistake. Although it’s true that there are a few extreme people who are engaged in hate speech, there are far more people who believe that it is immoral from a point of wisdom rather than malice, and are afraid to speak out about it because they don’t want to be labeled as bullies. To disprove of homosexuality in any way, even in a loving and wise fashion, is often considered by many to be bullying, which is a shallow oversight because there is more to the story than meets the eye.
There is no reason why we should not be able to engage in conversation with people struggling with homosexual behavior, and take a strong stance against it, without it being assumed that our disapproval of their behavior and their exclusion from the church includes the disapproval of their value as people and their ability to repent.
Yet, I don’t think being too harsh is the issue that most of the church has, rather, in recent times we’ve become too nice. I’ve often seen an argument made of, “let’s be nice,” and my argument is that something that upholds evil behavior isn’t nice. True kindness requires acknowledging what is good and teaching and guiding others towards that good. In doing so, it needs to be acknowledged that homosexuality isn’t nice, and that it’s manipulative to package up our teachings surrounding it as if it was. Sometimes the nicest thing you can do, in reality, is draw a line.
One of the Ten Commandments is, ‘Do not use God’s name in vain,’ and people think that means do not swear. And it sort of means that, that’s one of its tangential meanings; but what it really means is: do not claim divine motivation for self-serving behavior.
—Jordan Peterson
Why isn’t it nice? As I’ll explain below there are several implications to it that aren’t as rosy as they’re made to appear to be in modern culture and TV. To list a few:
It banishes the person’s true soulmate of the opposite sex to a single life of sexual rejection.
It is associated with violations of the young and the innocent, depriving them of a life of true conjugial love.
When anal sex is involved, it’s spiritually harmful and painful to the person who it is being done to, and goes against the Lord’s natural order for sexual union.
It prevents the natural birth of new children and the formation of psychologically healthy and stable families, who need the loving influence of both a father and a mother.
Since conjugial love is the source of all the joys in heaven, it disconnects earth from heaven, influencing the human race in a hellish direction, whereby angels are not able to help the church grow on earth, as is so necessary today.
We can’t have a church or a country that teaches that sin is acceptable — especially not the worst of sins that Swedenborg didn’t even want to mention explicitly because he thought it was so evil — and think that we're simply being inclusive. Being loving requires telling the truth, even when others don’t want to hear it. Christians should uphold high standards for the truth, whether people like to hear it or not, and not be covering it up with merely nice sounding words or burying it in the sand.
The Lord had no issue with speaking boldly even if people would perceive him as mean spirited, because the truth is the truth, and it needs to be shared. He was anything but nice in this sense. Those who agreed with what he said thought he was nice, and those who didn't, as cruel. He understood that kindness was predicated on true intent rather than mere words. To turn a blind eye to evil things is to become complicit with it:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.
Gay Pride is Not a Good Thing
Many people are familiar with the slurred voice that homosexual men and promiscuous women often adopt.
Swedenborg wrote:
The reason why chastity and unchastity are attributed to matters relating to marriages is that both sexes have a tendency towards marriage imprinted on them, from the inmost to the outermost, and on this depend a person’s thoughts and affections, and so inwardly their actions and bodily behavior. It is easier to see the truth of this by looking at the unchaste. They have unchastity resident in their minds, and it can be heard in their tone of voice, and the way they put a lewd interpretation on everything that is said, even a chaste remark. The tone of voice derives from the affection of the will, and what they say from the thinking of the intellect. This is a sign that the will and everything to do with it, and the intellect and everything to do with it, that is, their whole mind, and thus everything in their bodies, from inmost to outermost, is teeming with unchastity.
Something I’ll point out is that this tone of voice is often thought to be non-threatening, feminine, and kind. However, as we’ve explored above, the reality is anything but that.
One of the biggest issues is with how society, by and large, has become okay with open promiscuity, and how it’s being marketed as acceptable behavior by corporations, by the country, and by the world as normal, and even admirable. This is a topic that is universal to everyone in the modern world insofar as we have all been exposed to its backlash. I believe this is something we can write about, speak about, and be zealous about as Christians. As Christians, we are all sinners in some fashion or another, or at the very least are prone to it if we for an instant withdrew from the Lord, but I think it is more forgivable if we are actively seeking reformation rather than reveling in our flaws and even promoting them to others. To have flaws is human, but to wear your flaws with pride is a hellish, unrepentant state. Swedenborg often wrote that we are supposed to do good “as if” on our own, with the acknowledgment that no good comes from anywhere but from the Lord. He is the only source of good. If we think we’re doing good simply by giving to the poor literally, but not spiritually as well, and that we merit purity from this, we are hugely mistaken (Luke 11: 42).
And that’s really what this is all about, isn’t it? Pride.
To sin is one thing, but to do so in denial is another.
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the street, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
On the issue of stoning, which we touched on earlier, and of a stone symbolizing hard truths, the Lord commanded Moses to stone people who committed adultery, including homosexuality, (Leviticus 20: 13), saying that they should be “put to death,” but this was typically done when the person had a “high hand” (Numbers 15:30-31), that is, with a prideful, unrepentant attitude about it, rather than one of ignorance and penitence, such as in the situation listed above about the woman caught in adultery who was brought to the Lord. The Old Testament taught this truth as well, and so the Lord was not in defiance of the spiritual aspect of Law of Moses. Numbers 15: 24 - 31 makes this clear:
Then it shall be, if anything be done by ignorance away from the eyes of the congregation, that all the congregation shall make one bullock, a son of the herd, for a burnt offering, for a restful smell to Jehovah, with its gift offering, and its poured offering, according· to the judgement, and one male goat of the goats for a sin offering.
And the priest shall make atonement for all the congregation of the sons of Israel, and it shall be pardoned them; for it is ignorance; and they shall bring their offering, a fire offering to Jehovah, and their sin offering before Jehovah, for their ignorance, and it shall be pardoned to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, and the sojourner who sojourns among them; because all the people were in ignorance.
And if a certain soul sin by ignorance, then he shall offer a she-goat, a daughter of a year for a sin offering.
And the priest shall make atonement for the soul who sins being ignorant, when he sins in ignorance before Jehovah, to make atonement for him; and it shall be pardoned to him.
You shall have one law for him who does something by ignorance, for the native among the sons of Israel and for the sojourner who sojourns in their midst.
But the soul who does anything with a high hand, from the native and from the sojourner, he blasphemes Jehovah; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
Because he despises the word of Jehovah, and has made His commandment of none effect, that soul being cut off shall be cut off; her iniquity shall be upon her.
Today, we no longer do animal sacrifices, and so the sacrifices mentioned above are symbolic. But the same concept of repentance still applies today. However, today, the process of repentance is one of humility and reformation, by offering our will to the Lord and following his will for our life.
Thou shalt not revile God, and a chief among thy people thou shalt not curse.
Swedenborg reiterated the same truths:
People whose beliefs differ from those of the priest but who do not cause disturbances should be left in peace; but if they do cause disturbances, they should be removed from the church. This is part of the priesthood's responsibility to maintain order.
How Goodness Properly Yields to Truth in the Heavenly Marriage
Goodness, or love, is the first to yield itself to truth, or wisdom, the way a woman submits to a man willingly in a marriage according to free will. In a similar way, the inner goodness that is within the man submits to the inner truth that is within the woman. Goodness doesn’t take the lead, but rather is the end in sight. This symbolism can be seen in a bow, arrow, and target. The target is the good that you’re aiming to hit. The bow and the arrow are the truth, that is, the means by which you shoot the target. Good, in fact, comes first, but it comes first as the aim, whereas the drawing and release of the bow is the truth, and it must actually be drawn and released in order for the good that was aimed for to take effect.
In courtship dynamics, the man leads and the woman submits (Conjugial Love #297), but in the New Church she does so willingly when she accepts the man’s proposal under freedom and without duress. She by no means, however, takes on the role of the man by leading in the courtship; to do so is against divine order. Swedenborg wrote about it in Conjugial Love 125, and notice how at the end of the section, he said:
In the case of married couples, the church is implanted first in the man, and through the man in his wife, because the man with his understanding acquires the truth that the church teaches, and the wife acquires it from the man. But if the reverse takes place, it is not according to order. Nevertheless, this sometimes happens, but only in the case of men who either are not lovers of wisdom and so are not part of the church, or who hang like slaves on the bidding of their wives.
This description makes it clear that men are supposed to lead in this courtship process, which is symbolized in the church as well and throughout all of creation in the way that goodness and truth operate as they become one in the Lord.
Meanwhile the Lord continually fights for him against evils and falsities, and by combats confirms him in truth and good. The time of combat is the time of the Lord’s working; and therefore in the Prophets the regenerate man is called the work of the fingers of God. Nor does He rest until love acts as principal; then the combat ceases. When the work has so far advanced that faith is conjoined with love, it is called “very good;” because the Lord then actuates him, as His likeness.
“Love acting as principal” means that it acts as the target of the bow, that the correct good is being aimed for. It does not, however, convert itself into the bow. The way of truth is the functional component of the bow and arrow by which the arrow is able to hit its target, which is why it is first in the order of function, even though it comes second in the order of intent.
“This shows that sexual love is not the source of real married love but is before it in point of time, though not in point of purpose.
For what is first in purpose is first in the mind and its intention, because it is the most important thing. But the only access to this thing is gradually through means to an end. The means are not the most important thing. They just move you on toward the most important thing.”
You have to actually walk the path to get to the good at the end of it. Love playing the “leading part” is different than love “taking the lead.” The love that is embodied in the feminine is the greatest and deepest principal and highest good; symbolizing a reason and a motivation, and the wisdom embodied in the man becomes the means.
From this comes the symbolism of Cupid on Valentine’s Day. When love and wisdom are working together, you may get struck with the arrow.
These symbols are important to understand because in the homosexual way of thinking these lines are not clearly drawn, and all of this can easily become blurred. However, in the light of understanding drawn from the Word, which is where this symbolism is derived, clarity emerges about this subject when your ears and eyes are open to it.
About the Order of Male and Female Unity
All things, among themselves, possess an order;
And this order is the form that makes the universe like God.
Here do the higher beings see the imprint of the Eternal Worth,
Which is the end to which the pattern I have mentioned tends.
Within that order, every nature has its bent, according to a different station, nearer or less near to its origin.
Therefore, these natures move to different ports across the mighty sea of being, each given the impulse that will bear it on.
—Beatrice, speaking to Dante Alighieri, in Paradiso, from the Divine Comedy
Just as each being has an order in the heavens, so do men and women generally, and together, possess an order. As I wrote in The Heavenly Role of Men and Women in Marriage, Church, and Society, this order between the sexes makes neither of them lessor or greater, but simply different.
As Swedenborg wrote, the goal of heaven is the unity of these two forces into one. However, because of how this unity takes place in each individual, this is only accomplished through conjugial love: the love of a husband and wife acting together, and more generally, of men and women working together in the church towards the same aims, each appropriately yielding to the other’s gifts and supporting each other’s callings.
Generally speaking, when women preach on spiritual subjects in isolation, or from themselves, rather than from the Word, and via the doctrinal understanding of it from the wisdom the Lord has placed in their husbands, fathers, brothers, and priests, it comes from a place of affection, rather than truth. As Swedenborg wrote, the form of women’s minds causes them to bend truth towards affection. Affection is the form that truth takes as they express themselves. And when this is done in the proper order it’s magnificently beautiful. It’s a part of what makes women angelic and affable to be with, and is what allows the church to be approachable and accessible to members, children, and newcomers alike, and the very reason why the church is symbolized by a woman — it is the celestial aspect of the church in touch with the highest heavens.
The Lord, while speaking to Dante, said:
Vita Nuova, by Dante Alighieri, (published by the Folio Society)
Anyone of subtle discernment would call Beatrice “Love”, because she so greatly resembles me.
—Vita Nuova, by Dante Alighieri
Swedenborg often spoke to women in his spiritual experiences, who conveyed insights about conjugial love. They were careful, however, to teach from their discernment of love rather than wisdom (Conjugial Love #293). Men, however, are inwardly forms of goodness (aka, of affection), and externally of truth, so truth is the form they take when they express themselves. By truth, we mean logic, that which is more stoic and doesn’t give way or bend as easily regarding reason.
Here is one of those truths that some women aren’t going to want to hear: much of the problem causing the propagation of the sodomitic lie today is that women are often preaching their own ideas of the truth in church and social media that hasn’t been derived from this divine order. Whenever this is the case, they shouldn’t be preaching (Spiritual Experiences #5936).
When Swedenborg was speaking to angelic women, they said:
Take care you do not interpret the delights we have mentioned to mean the end delights of conjugial love. We never talk about these, but only about the delights of our hearts which constantly correspond to the state of wisdom in our husbands.
In fact, in that section, they were somewhat pointed with Swedenborg for merely asking a question that could be inferred as otherwise, as for angelic women, being in tune with their husbands’ wisdom is a point of the highest honor regarding their own wisdom.
When women want to be loving, if they are not united to the truth of the men in their lives, and if they are preaching about what they believe to be the truth, they will overlook the actual truth for the sake of people’s emotions. As was mentioned above, when this happens, what is true gives way to what sounds pleasant. As a result, they risk damaging the people who they are preaching to, because they are giving them false advice for the sake of amenability. Even if they mean well, this is still the outcome.
This is why women are not supposed to be interpreters of the spiritual aspects of the Word, which is spoken more than felt, as what is felt is the heavenly aspect. They are not supposed to preach from an isolated state of life, either in church or in the public sphere (Conjugial Love #175). They can “pray and prophesy” when their “head is covered,” which means symbolically covered by their husbands’ wisdom (1 Corinthians 11:5), but not “preach” as advisors from their own ideas (1 Corinthians 14:34-35). When they do so, it causes havoc among the church because the systematic order the Lord has established on heaven and on earth is for his Word to enter first into the mind of the husband, and then into the wife. And in the church broadly, first into the clergy, and then into the congregation. And just as men are the first receivers of wisdom from the Lord, women are the first receivers of love, and men need women to receive it. See Conjugial Love #125, which talks about how a husband and wife act together in the Lord as loving companions that form the church, but that the order of truth begins in the husband’s intellect. And so, likewise, if a husband lacks truth from the Lord because he isn’t leading an honest life, he cannot lead his wife in truth either.
For this reason, a child will generally go to his mom for comfort and to his dad for advice; that is, if he wants the best comfort, or the best advice; yet ideally, he’d go to both of them at once, so that he doesn’t get swayed too far left or too far right, that is, too far into truth, or too far into good, but finds that perfect combination of them both.
If women, in an attempt to be loving to their children who have come out as gay, pretend that their child being gay is acceptable, because they do not want to alienate the child of their womb, whom they gave birth to, raised, and love dearly, and by not adequately deferring to the hard truth of the father, they are hurting their own children, setting them on a path towards hell, by denying them a life of happiness they would otherwise experience within heaven’s light.
If such affection is not tempered by a father, it is destructive.
This is why only a mother and father united in the spirit of the Lord can raise a child towards heaven, because conjugial love is the principal love which forms it. This is why the father is, and must be, the intellectual decision and rule maker of the family, and the mother must live within his truth, and never usurp his intellect on these and similar matters; nor he, her will, when her will is good. This is also why single-parent households are a bad idea whenever they can be avoided, and one of the primary reasons why the Lord forbad adultery and divorce.
Children need both affection and truth united together to get to heaven. Affection becomes the aim, and truth, the way. Goodness, or affection, is the destination, and truth is the road and the map. This is why the Lord said he is, “The way, the truth, and light,” and that “Nobody comes to the Father, except by Me.” (John 14: 6) The “Father,” here, meaning the inner affection towards good; and the Son, or “Me,” (when the Lord is referring to Himself as the Son), meaning the inner discipline towards truth, of which his qualities of good progressively instill in him. The Lord Jesus Christ is the perfect man because he embodied both these inner and outer qualities of humanity, and humanity became the likeness and image of God because it’s the means by which we are directed towards heaven.
After all, disciples are made from discipline inspired by love, but not love alone.
This thread about goodness and truth and how they interoperate runs throughout all of Swedenborg’s works. Because men are embodiments of truth, and because truth leads to goodness, they are meant to be interpreters of the Word, because otherwise, as I’ve said above, you don’t get true love at the end.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
—Matthew 28: 18
This means that once the Lord came into the world, that going through the Son as the Truth was the only way to the Father, which means that truth must be married or joined to love, and lead it, in order for it to become effective.
The Lord Loves Variety of Culture and Religion, But Not Variety of Sin
About variety of culture:
Variety in worship of the Lord from the variety of good in different societies is not harmful, but beneficial, for the perfection of heaven is therefrom.
Regarding racism, many people have turned the concept on its head, by judging inclusion or exclusion based solely on race, rather than looking totally past race — as we all should — and judging solely by a person’s character. A person’s color, ancestry, and country of origin doesn’t matter one way or another. It’s a person’s character that matters to the Lord: his values, intentions, and life.
While recognizing this fact, we must be careful not to conflate a love for variety of culture with a love for variety of sexual behaviors. The United States has a dark history of mistreating people of different cultures, and perhaps we’ve overcorrected for that mistake in recent times, by conflating homosexuality as simply another culture or identity, making it about inclusion, as we would a race culture, but those two categories of variety are completely different subjects. Race isn’t a choice, but a person’s sexual behavior is. Race is merely external, whereas sexual lifestyle decisions are internal.
The Lord doesn’t love sin at all, and so we should not be teaching that a variety of sexual deviancy is a doctrine of the Lord.
I plan to write a few more articles about topics where sexuality and Christian theology correspond, but the reason I’ve started with the topic of homosexuality — perhaps the most taboo of them — is because it is such a point of confusion in our modern society and because it has been a topic of division among Swedenborg’s readers. At the same time, from what I’ve seen, few people in the churches that have formed around his books are talking about it in a rational way. And from my research, many people from many other Christian churches have fallen into some of the same modern false narratives surrounding this topic as well. It’s an issue that’s pervasive among all denominations of Christianity.
Which the Lord warned us about:
For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Swedenborg explained that divine election or “being chosen” doesn’t mean something given by virtue of one’s race, family, or country of birth:
People’s only understanding is that “the elect” in the Word mean people who were chosen by God and predestined for heaven, either before they were born or afterward. The thought is that these people alone are granted faith as a token of their having been chosen and that rest are rejected and left to themselves to wander whatever path they like toward hell.
I know, though, that there is no “choosing” that takes place like this, either before birth or after it. All are chosen and predestined to heaven, because all are called. After they die, the Lord chooses those who, upon being examined, turn out to have lived good lives and to have believed the right things. Much experience has taught me that this is the truth.
The Lust for Sexual Variety
A lust for sexual variety — meaning sex with several people without an intention to find true love with a single spouse, also know as the “player” or pickup culture — is spoken about in Swedenborg’s writings, from Conjugial Love #509:
This lust (for sexual variety) totally annihilates any conjugial love in it. It totally annihilates any conjugial love in it because this love is utterly opposed to conjugial love - so opposed that it not only tears it apart but also grinds it into powder, so to speak, and thus annihilates it. For conjugial love is love for one of the opposite sex, whereas this lust does not continue with one, but after an hour or a day is as filled with coldness toward her as it was before with heat. Moreover, because the coldness is one of loathing, any compelled cohabitation and faithfulness causes it to mount to the point of nausea; and it thus so consumes conjugial love that nothing of that love is left.
It can be seen from this that this lust is deadly to conjugial love, and because conjugial love forms the inmost element of life in a person, that it is deadly to his life. It can also be seen that in consequence of its progressive thwartings and closings of the interior elements of the mind, this lust at last becomes one of the skin and so merely appetitive - yet with the faculty of understanding or rationality remaining.
Here, and in his journal, Swedenborg described the pitiful state of the demons in hell, who, because they’ve abused their sexuality for so long, seek out new and novel ways to abuse it further. No longer is sex with one partner interesting to them, but then they need many partners, and what eventually follows is a disinterest in the opposite sex entirely, and then an interest in the same sex, the same sex becoming like a corrupted image of the self.
Those who do not even find any difference between these acts and marriages encounter coldness, distaste, and nausea, first for their spouse, then for other partners, and finally for the whole other sex.
He described these as,
…forbidden enticements that not only deprive married love of its happy pleasures but take it away besides and turn it into coldness and thus into loathing.
And again, when he mentions anything “forbidden” or “unmentionable” he’s referring to the types of violations enumerated in Leviticus 18 and 20.
In an earlier passage, he explained what conjugial love is supposed to look like:
I know that few will acknowledge that all joys and delights from first to last are gathered into marital love. For the marital love of which alone this is true is so rare today that it is not known what it is, and hardly that it exists, as was explained and shown above (n. 58-59). As this marital love is so rare on earth, we can only describe its surpassing felicities from the mouth of angels, who possess it. They have said that its inmost delights (which are of the soul, into which the marital inclination of love and wisdom or of good and truth from the Lord first flows) are imperceptible and hence ineffable, because they are at once things of peace and of innocence. But these imperceptible joys as they descend become more and more perceptible, in the higher reaches of the mind as beatitudes, in the lower as satisfactions, in the bosom as joys from these, and from the bosom are diffused into each and all things of the body, and finally unite in the ultimates in the delight of delights. Angels have related wonderful things about these joys, also saying that the variety of them in the souls of partners and thence in their minds and thence again in their bosoms, is infinite and also eternal; and that the joys are exalted according to the wisdom with the husbands; and this because they live in the flower of their age to eternity, and because there is nothing more blessed to them than to become increasingly wise. But still more information from the mouths of the angels about these delights may be seen in the Memorabilia, especially in those which follow some chapters farther on.
Only those come into this love, however, or can be in it, who approach the Lord, and love the truths and do the goods of the Church. Only those who approach the Lord come into this love because monogamous marriages, or those of one man with one wife, correspond with the marriage of the Lord and the Church, also because marriages have their origin in the marriage of good and truth (of which above, #. 60 and62). It follows from both source and correspondence that true marital love is from the Lord, and that they have it who approach Him directly.
In heaven, a rainbow in a blue sky represents Divine Truth on the natural plane of creation within a regenerate person, including the variety of truths that led to his rebirth. An image of this rebirth can be seen in the shared life between one man and one woman spiritually in love.
In the Bible, every symbol has both a heavenly and a hellish correspondence, depending on its context and use. This is true, too, for the symbol of the rainbow. The heavenly correspondence of the rainbow has nothing to do with homosexuality or sodomy, but instead, it has to do with the Lord’s Divinity on the natural plane of creation (Apocalypse Revealed #466) and of a regenerate (repentant) person (Arcana Caelestia #1042) in the variety of ways that he has accepted the truths and goods of faith (Arcana Caelestia #1052).
The symbol of the rainbow, however, has been highjacked by the LGBTQIA+ community so that it represents something opposite of that, that is, adultery in its several forms. We need to realize, as a society, that this is not the symbol of the rainbow that we should be first associating it with, and no longer hang or display this symbol publicly in that context. Regarding rainbows, it’s a shame that if you use them now, some people may immediately infer a sodomitic meaning, because they aren’t even aware of the heavenly symbolism, only having attached themselves to the symbolism of adultery in reference to adultery, which they consider permissible and in fact, good.
Homosexuality is Involved with the Evils of BDSM, Child Abuse, and Abuse of the Innocent
Homosexual behavior is not as innocent as many in the homosexual community would have you believe. Allowing it into our culture is not a matter of mere kindness or inclusion as they’d like to pretend that it is.
The movie, The Sound of Freedom, by Jim Caviezel, exposes global issues about child sexual trafficking and abuse.
Swedenborg wrote in many places that evil spirits often make themselves appear as if they were innocent, or as angels of light, when in reality it is merely a deception. Evil spirits’ influence upon people in the world sometimes causes them to act in manipulative ways in order to deceive others, sometimes children and others who are innocent, into abusive sex. In my opinion, there is an element of this taking place when homosexuals dress up their appearance to look immaculately white and clean, when behind closed doors, we know that what they’re doing is anything but clean.
The Netflix documentary, Keep Sweet and Pray, about the FLDS Church, talks about examples of this brand of deception and to beware of it.
Swedenborg wrote, “Therefore their sexual intercourse is far more abominable than that of the Sodomites,” (Spiritual Experiences #3768) because they compound the love of dominating the innocent, which is sodomy, on top of the guise of holiness, which is blasphemy.
But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.
The Lord obviously takes this subject very seriously, because the damage done to a child in this way causes untold emotional, spiritual, and physical pain, and is carried into his or her adulthood, as well as because of the severe danger regarding the state of that person’s soul into the next life if he or she becomes so wound up in same-sex and forbidden relations that he or she continues to choose it willingly. Blasphemy imposed by abusers mixes evil within their mind with the Lord’s reputation for good, which damages his reputation. The Lord’s reputation is important because people need to know that they can turn to him for healing. When children are conditioned to mistrust the Lord and his church, not only is grave damage done to them via the evil acts forced or coerced upon them, but also because it makes it very difficult for that damage to be healed by the Lord as they grow older, because they don’t know where to turn and who to trust.
When researching this topic, as well as when speaking with homosexuals about these issues in the past, I noticed a theme, whereby they inferred, or outright said, that they’d been through some sort of abuse as a child. It’s unspeakable to imagine the horror of this happening to a child who hasn’t gone through puberty yet and doesn’t know anything about sex, or a child who is just transitioning into adulthood and learning about it. Imagine how that may confuse the mind of such a child, especially at an age when he or she is very impressionable? Being dominated or molested in this way, especially at such a young age, creates a psychological and spiritual imprint. This could cause him or her to believe that homosexual sex was normal and to grow up thinking it was, and even defending it as such, because that was their first introduction to sexual activity. This is, in my opinion, the primary reason why Swedenborg often didn’t mention such details explicitly, instead calling them, “unmentionable evils too horrific to be named.”
I think part of the problem, too, is that people often feel like they’re not loved by the opposite sex and that homosexuality is a solution. For example, perhaps at a young and impressionable age, their love interest rejects them, and then they watch a culturally influenced movie and think, I must be gay, that’s why I’m not loved by the opposite sex. But how do we or they really know whether this inclination is actually their biology or if it’s the result of their environment, assumptions, or abuse from friends, relatives, or acquaintances? In light cases, it may be nothing more than that they’re impressionable and buying into the cultural narrative, but in severe cases they may be confused because of abuse of some sort or another. And the current cultural “wisdom” when a child says that he is gay is just to go with the flow and in fact to encourage it, rather than to help him realize it’s not true and connect him with a wise counselor.
It may be the case that many in the homosexual community are victims of sexual abuse from their childhood, but if they then go on to abuse others and themselves, because this is all that they know, it creates a downward spiral that only leads others into the same disfunction. For this reason, if they are seeking repentance, that needs to be accounted for, but the continued behavior should not be championed regardless.
Swedenborg wrote:
That this love (of dominating others) is symbolically meant by Sodom is unknown in the world, but remember it and recall it when you come after death into the World of Spirits and you will be completely convinced.
It should be known, however, that a love of ruling springing from a love of self and a love of ruling springing from a love of performing useful services are two different things. The latter love is a heavenly love, while the first is a hellish one. Consequently, when one is in first place, the other is in last place; which is to say, when a love of ruling springing from a love of self forms the head, then a love of ruling springing from a love of performing useful services - which is a love of serving the neighbor originating from the Lord - forms first the feet, then the soles of the feet, and finally is trampled underfoot.
On the other hand, when a love of ruling springing from a love of performing useful services - which, as we said, is a heavenly love - forms the head, then a love of ruling springing from a love of self - which, as we said, is a hellish love - forms first the feet, then the soles of the feet, and finally is trampled underfoot.
Still, these two loves can hardly be distinguished by a person in the world. That is because in outward appearance they are similar. But they can be told apart by this, that a heavenly love is present in people who turn to the Lord and live in accordance with the Ten Commandments, while a hellish love is present in people who do not turn to the Lord, and who do not live in accordance with the Ten Commandments.
About Howard Storm’s Near Death Experience and Improper Methods of Domination
As mentioned above by Swedenborg, there is an improper form of ruling or domination, which exists within a person who has no love of being useful, when he only wants to get his or her own way. Additionally, Swedenborg mentioned there is an alternate, proper form of ruling or domination whereby the person has usefulness as his or her goal, and thus is a position someone holds with authority but without acquiring it by force or cruelty. The word domination actually comes from the Latin word, dominus, which means master or lord, and is also used in Latin Bibles and by Swedenborg to define the Lord, as a proper noun.
The general concept of being dominant, can, therefore be very good — as the Lord is — when the position is held with usefulness in heart and mind and with upmost respect for his subjects’ free will, in other words, with love. When there is no use in it, however, or when it violates another’s will, it becomes the opposite of the Lord, which is the evil of hell. In heaven, there is mutual reciprocity in loving the neighbor, but in hell, nothing by forcefulness.
Howard Storm recounts a story where, while traveling in Paris, and due to a life of heavy drinking, he suddenly suffered a perforation in his duodenum (the lower tube of the stomach leading to the intestines) that forced him onto the ground in terrible pain. Gradually, stomach acids began to dissolve his internal organs. Although he was taken to the hospital, he wasn’t able to receive immediate care, and several hours later he died. After death, he was tricked into following demons into a hellish realm within the World of Spirits. Once they had moved him away from where he may have otherwise been safe, they attacked and raped him, and although he doesn’t mention the details, it’s clear from his story that he was violated in several ways. From his story, he mentioned that this is the way that most people bound for hell are first hazed and brought into a state of hell like those of their community there. Thankfully, Howard had a remnant of goodness from his childhood that allowed the Lord to find him and carry him out of hell, but his experience while he was there can tell us a lot about hell so that we can recognize it for what it is and not be deceived like he was when he was first tricked into entering it.
Howard wrote in his book, My Descent Into Death, that when he was in hell it felt to him as if he was sludge that had slipped into a sewage tank, because that was what being in that place and among those evil beings felt like.
Howard mentions that the demons there are “people” like he knew in the world, some of which he had known and had spent time with in life. Swedenborg wrote that he observed the same thing in his life, whereby people he knew, who he hadn’t suspected of being demonic, were later revealed to him to have become demons in hell after their death. In the spirit world, people are not allowed to act a lie and appear different outwardly than they are inwardly. There, where people don’t have the same restrictions upon mortality holding them back, evil people act without restraint. As such, there are people in hell who you may not have otherwise expected to be as evil or false as they really were when you knew them on earth, because while living in mortality, they kept their true nature a secret out of fear of the law, their life, and their reputation.
Although this may seem hard to believe, it’s a behavior that has been documented many times in humanity’s past in instances where law and order break down or are not in force, such as after an army destroys a city and the soldiers rape and pillage the villagers. In these instances, the soldiers do this, even if they would never have acted this way under other conditions, because having obtained a momentary upper hand in war they don’t fear for their lives any longer.
Angels have been horrified that the human race is like this. For as soon as men see lines of troops strewn and streams of blood flowing over the whole field, their hearts are full of joy and their spirits are elated; yet they feel no joy that their country has been set free, only that they are hailed as mighty ones and heroes. Yet such men call themselves Christians and even believe that they will go to heaven, where however nothing but peace, pity, and charity dwell.
Swedenborg wrote that after death, since now everyone lives as a spirit and in the spirit world where there is no more physical death, the restraints upon people’s actions for the sake of their own mortal lives are no longer held, because they no longer fear non-existence, seeing now that they are immortal. As a result, they rape and pillage all the more freely than they did during their mortal lives. And this is why, after death, people’s true colors become visible. Whereas on earth they may never have been able to get away with this behavior because of their fear of losing their mortal life, in the spirit world, they can get away with it while going on existing, and this reveals who they really were all along.
From all that has been stated about perceptions and also odors it is evident that in the next life everyone’s life, and consequently everyone’s affection, are in full view. Anyone therefore who thinks that his previous character and consequently his present life are not known there, or that he is able to conceal his intentions as he could in the world, is much mistaken. In that life also not only the things that a person recognizes in himself are in full view but also those he does not recognize, namely those which through his repeated use of them come at length to be immersed among the delights of his life; for in that case they fade from his view and reflection about himself. The actual ends in view contained in his thought, speech, and actions, which for a similar reason have become hidden from him, are fully perceived in heaven; for the sphere and perception of ends obtain in heaven.
Additionally, when Swedenborg wrote, “keep this in mind and remember it when you come into the World of Spirits, as is done after death, and you will be fully convinced,” I think he meant that the reader, as a future spirit, if he first needs convincing about the evils of sodomy while he is learning about the difference between heaven and hell in the World of Spirits, will likely be shown what happens in hell, and there he will he see what happens. Hopefully, without going through it himself like what Howard went through, but simply by being shown for the sake of understanding, so that he knows the state of the damned, and chooses to turn away from it out of horror and disgust.
The evil of Sodom, overall, is violent, malicious, self-love, without any care for the Lord or the neighbor. This evil leads to all forms of cruel behavior, whether homosexual in nature or not. This doesn’t negate the seriousness of the sin of homosexuality, but simply makes clear the root from which it and other sins stem. Swedenborg wrote that there are as many types of regions of hell as there are of heaven, and that for every good type of love there is its opposite in some form of evil underneath of it. Each type of hell needs to be rooted out of us so that none of it can touch us in the next life.
The Condition of One’s Will Matters
About this, Swedenborg wrote:
On one occasion when I was thinking about the government of the soul within the body and about the influx of the will into actions, I noticed that those in the hell of excrement, which at that time had been opened for a short while, thought about nothing else than the soul’s control of the anus and about the influx of the will into the voidings of excrement from there. This revealed the kind of sphere created by their perception in that hell and the stink produced by it. Something similar happened when I was thinking about conjugial love. In this case those in the hell where adulterers live were turning over in their minds nothing else than the kind of shameful acts and nasty practices that go with adultery. And when I was thinking about honesty, those given to deceit thought of nothing else but committing what was criminal by fraud.
Because demons have a love of dominating others, they love the idea of “inserting their will,” so to speak, in the other, in a way that goes against divine love. Anal sex, because of its very mechanics, which are not designed for sex, would be a common choice of those who wish to control another’s will because of the potential pain inflicted in addition to their desire for improper control over them. And it has an element of uncleanliness to it which makes it naturally repulsive for obvious reasons. One may then encounter the argument: doesn’t pain sometimes occur with women during penetration of the vagina as well? It can, but when everything is working according to proper order between the couple, both spiritually and physically, this is not the situation. Whenever a woman is raped or mistreated, whether with the vagina or with the anus, the same sin of sodomy occurs as it does between men engaging in that behavior with each other. For this reason, some dictionaries also define sodomy as oral sex. The act of oral sex isn’t evil, but if a woman doesn’t want to perform it, or if it’s used as a means of demeaning her, then it becomes a method of improper control, thus sodomy ensues within the intent of the person subjecting her to it, and the same is true if similar forms of humiliation are done to a man.
Swedenborg goes on to write elsewhere:
There is also a certain form of intercourse, because it is an effect of love, that delights heaven in like degree when it comes from chaste love; conversely it angers them to the extent it comes from adultery.
Even though it isn’t stated here, I think that he means oral sex, not anal sex, based on what he’s written elsewhere, where it’s suggested that anal sex is profane:
In a manner not to be remembered they (certain evil spirits) join themselves and copulate. Thus joined together they go away, and sit; but later they are separated. The way they sit joined together, and are separated, is not to be committed to memory, because it’s profane.
As was explained above, the literal sign of a heavenly will, or correspondence, is within a straight coupling (one man and one woman), because of the intention to birth children, or, in the spiritual sense, goodness and truth. Yet, beyond that inner will, how the couple expresses it is up them them, and the methods of sex that lead up to it. Subsequently, you might come to the conclusion that anal sex doesn’t necessarily infer sodomy when done between married couples. From a scientific perspective, it’s easy to discern that it would be more difficult for anal sex to occur without damage or pain to the person being penetrated than it would for straight sex. It goes against the pattern of heaven because the point of pain or humiliation which may occur with the other person is what people with self-serving motives get off on, who love dominating others for the sake of themselves, and because it accomplishes nothing and is unproductive.
It should only take common sense to piece together the fact that it isn’t wise behavior, and Swedenborg only ever mentioned it in connection with stories about demonic entities.
He wrote that the region of the intestines and the colon correspond with people who are contaminated with earthly loves, but yet they are not within hell itself. Hellish people themselves correspond with the excrement that actually leaves the body (Arcana Coelestia #5392), but he mentioned certain female spirts who, because they were idolatrous during life, after death they perform one of the lowest uses within the body in the Spiritual World, yet are a part of it, and the role they take up there is what he called “vile” even though they are nonetheless important to its functioning. That might suggests that sometimes spirits (and perhaps their associated behaviors during mortal life) that one would assume to be outside of heaven are actually within it (the human body representing what is heavenly) even if they are located at the very border of it nearing hell, at its furthest boundary — however, this isn’t the full story. Swedenborg wrote that these spirits are located in what’s called the Lower Earth, a part of the World of Spirits which isn’t within heaven outright. He wrote that after death, they suffer torments for several millennia before being admitted into the lowest region of the human body, narrowly escaping hell, where they continue to be regularly contaminated with it. In my view, this is not a lifestyle anyone should emulate or aspire to (Spiritual Experiences #4281 - #4283, #5764).
What about homosexual couples who don’t have anal sex, and who, for example, only engage in oral sex, mutual masturbation, kissing, or sensuality?
Although it may seem like I’m nitpicking while explaining the details of this subject, I think it’s important to think through it, as uncomfortable as it may be, because unless Christians understand where lines are drawn, atheists will use them as arguments to convince themselves and others that Christians are incorrect and merely superstitious rather than wise. These arguments, for example, may say things such as, “there’s no harm in it,” when in fact, they’re overlooking the spiritual aspect of each person, which should have eternity in view.
Note that, I’m only talking about homosexual acts here, not solo masturbation by people with a straight orientation (a subject that requires a separate article to adequately explain). With an eternal view, to make the argument that it’s okay for homosexual couples to engage in the above is problematic because of the broken correspondence with conjugial love. In order for that correlation to hold true, there would need to at least be the potential for natural insemination in order for the birth of a child to take place. Full sexual consummation and impregnation corresponds with the formation of goodness and truth, like a seed in the ground; a unity between the couple that allows life to continue forever through future generations.
In the Latin and Greek the word for church is ecclesia, which means assembly. Each married couple, once united, is a spiritual assembly that eventually concludes, where possible, with the assemblage of their DNA on the physical, external level. This corresponds to spiritual unity between a married couple, because where there is unity between the couple, there is social unity in the family, and then in the church community, and then in the country, and then that affects the entire globe — all beginning in a godly element between a man and woman that begins with God in them.
However, because in the form of a homosexual coupling, the genital components of the opposite gender are missing, then insemination becomes impossible not only in practice but in theory.
Unity between straight couples allows life in the physical world to continue onward forever (as well as in the Spiritual World, because angels are from the human race), and it isn’t rational to break the argument that the continuation of the human race is important for the good of humanity’s future, even if you don’t believe in an afterlife. The fact that the human genome is eternal even in the natural realm of life is one of the clearest proofs of God’s existence.
Addressing the Argument that Homosexuality is no Different Than the Use of Contraceptives
To distinguish between the two, what is merely natural, and what is spiritual, oral sex between straight couples, although this doesn’t always lead to the insemination of the female body, can spiritually unify the couple, and act as foreplay, which can help to facilitate the later germination of her body, and as such, is good when and if it’s done between a straight, married couple voluntarily, with loving intention and without coercion. If done in this way, the connection with heaven isn’t broken, because of how it correlates with each partner’s willingness to unify in love (Spiritual Experiences 6051 [13]). The same is true for mutual masturbation, kissing, the use of contraceptives, and so forth, because even if insemination doesn’t occur every time they have sex, and even if they can’t have children, it unifies them spiritually.
This, of course, contrasts with the Catholic view that contraceptives are wrong between married couples. But the New Church is more enlightened regarding this matter than the Catholics are, while holding to the doctrine of straight marriage as a principal, because acts in marriage are based first on one’s ultimate goals and on the state of the internal man and woman. The key point that allows it to retain its holiness is that it’s done between a husband with one wife, whose marriage has been sanctioned by God.
As we know in the New Church, in heaven, angelic men cannot literally impregnate their wives (Conjugial Love #52), because in heaven they are in spiritual form, but their sexual activity remains holy because of its correspondence with the germination between goodness and truth on the physical realm, where it is possible.
As evidence of this, Swedenborg wrote in Conjugial Love:
All the delights of truly conjugial love, even the end delights, are chaste. This follows from the foregoing considerations explaining that truly conjugial love is the essence of chastity. And delights make the life of this love.
I have indicated earlier how the delights of this love ascend and enter heaven, and on the way permeate the joys of heavenly loves experienced by angels of heaven. I have also recounted how these delights ally themselves with the delights of conjugial love in angels. Moreover, I have heard from angels that they perceive these delights to be heightened in them and to become fuller as they ascend from chaste married partners on earth. And in response to some bystanders, who were unchaste - in reply to their question whether they also experienced the end delights - the angels nodded and quietly said, “What else? Are they not delights of conjugial love in their fullest expression?”
It is enough to know that love truly conjugial has immediate communication with the third heaven, and also that love itself with its celestial delight is there preserved in all its variety, and also its acts, such as kisses, embraces, and many other things which delight that heaven, for that heaven is in the communication of good affections, when the spiritual heaven is in the communication of the thoughts of truth; hence it is evident that filthy affections and thoughts altogether close both heavens.
With homosexual couples, however, such sexual acts can’t lead to an eventual impregnation on the physical realm, unless they use a surrogate, in which case the child would only contain the DNA of one of the gay men or women, the other half of the DNA coming from that of the sperm or egg donor outside of the partnership. As you can see, this again breaks the correspondence of unity with heaven, as their DNA is not essentially unified, nor has the potential to be. Children of sperm donors often express a feeling of hurt and disappointment that they didn’t know their biological father growing up, or at the very least, confusion, and perhaps disgust. There are spiritual reasons the heavenly pattern of marriage shouldn’t be broken, and these children sense this, even it they can’t express it yet while they’re still young.
Because of this correspondence, surrogacy is adultery if another man’s sperm, or another woman’s egg is used, regardless of how it’s implanted, since two male chromosomes, or two female chromosomes, can never merge into one (you need both a male and a female). A sperm or egg donor from another person’s DNA of the opposite gender will always be necessary for unity to become possible, which leads to the conclusion that homosexual couples can’t be truly united according to the Lord’s precept for unity carried through to the outermost level of creation (Matthew 19: 5-6). For heaven to be linked with earth there needs to be an end-to-end link between all of the realms of heaven, which terminates here on earth.
Refuting Lee Woofenden’s Article
In an article by Lee Woofenden, he makes an argument that homosexuality isn’t a sin, so long as it’s consensual. I, of course, disagree, and although I’ve found some insights from reading his articles, on this issue I discovered we’re at odds.
Let’s examine Woofenden’s points, one-by-one.
Homosexuality is rarely mentioned in the Bible.
Not true. I’ve shown many examples of it mentioned in the Bible, above.
It doesn’t need to be mentioned more than once for it to be true (even though it is), because every letter of the Word is intentional and holy (Arcana Coelestia 9349 [2]).
The Old Testament prohibition on men having sex with men was culture-specific.
I’ve shown clearly that Swedenborg stated that it isn’t culture specific because it’s a stipulation under the definition of adultery, which is a part of the Ten Commandments. He explained in True Christianity that the Ten Commandments are the laws that we’re supposed to be following as Christians on each level of meaning in the Word, because the wisdom within it forms a basis for loving the Lord and the neighbor, whereas denials of the Ten Commandments form the opposite.
I showed that Swedenborg wrote that, especially when it comes to sexual morality within Christians, there is a direct correspondence between the natural and the spiritual realm. He wrote that natural adulterers are also spiritual adulterers.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosexuality.
I’ve also shown that this isn’t true. Yes, Sodom means self-love, but sodomy is one of the many forms of sin that is derived or “wells up” from self-love, as the story itself makes clear.
Swedenborg wrote that a single particular in the literal meaning of the Word often forms many particulars in the inner meaning, but this doesn’t negate the literal meaning, so long as that point is understood, at least where the Ten Commandments are concerned.
I’ve shown that the 18th century term “sodomy” was understood to include homosexual behavior because of the story of Sodom, and that Swedenborg was aware of this and used the same term in his journal, where he said it exists in hellish regions where the people there are involved in the misuse of the function of the anus (Arcana Caelestia #4632).
The Lord and the Gospels say nothing about homosexuality.
Not true, since we know that homosexuality is a form of adultery as listed in Leviticus, and the Word is the Lord. He also had a lot to say about adultery in the Gospels, which he prohibited in all its forms (Matthew 5:28). The Lord taught that marriage is exclusively defined as the unity between a husband with one wife and that adultery is the exact opposite of conjugial love, and conjugial love is heaven.
Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality is also culture-specific.
Again, not true, based on the fact that in his journal, Swedenborg reiterated Paul’s points about how homosexuality is not allowed in heaven (Spiritual Experiences #1976 - 1977).
Paul’s writings were considered by Swedenborg to be useful books for the church that were not meant to be discarded, but simply to be understood correctly (Letters #2, Apocalypse Explained #815 [2]).
There is no demonstrable harm from faithful homosexual relationships.
There is spiritual and emotional harm done to the people practicing it.
There is harm that includes more than we can see in the physical realm.
There is harm done to the person’s true soulmate, who, even if he or she is waiting patiently in the Lord, is denied conjugial love so long as his or her partner rejects them while absorbed with the wrong person.
Most homosexuals are acting according to their conscience.
That doesn’t make it right if their conscience is misguided.
Their conscience in that case is built on false ideas from the world rather than truth from the Lord.
We are commanded by the Lord not to be of this world (John 15:9, John 18:36, Romans 12:2).
Homosexuality cannot be “repented from.”
Yes, it can be, because as I’ve shown, it is environmental rather than hereditary, and can’t be proven to be hereditary.
Statements claiming that heredity is a valid reason for it are lies meant to deflect blame and excuse a sinful lifestyle. Blaming it on heredity is gaslighting the issue. Heredity isn’t an excuse for straight men or women to adulterate, either.
Marriage has great spiritual benefits for homosexuals just as it does for heterosexuals.
Spiritual benefits need to be based in usefulness, that is, the ends and ultimates upon which conjugial love is based, which acts as a foundation for marriage love.
Part of the ultimate delights of marriage include having children, if possible, and the psychology of having children when it’s not possible — but the ultimate delights need to align with one’s essential biology and DNA.
Even for straight couples who cannot have children, as well as couples in heaven, the psychology of birthing goodness and truth corresponds in heaven with child bearing. If this correspondence is broken, so is the unification process of goodness and truth.
About Waiting Patiently for Your Soulmate
Imagine a hypothetical scenario where there is a young adolescent just learning about sexuality. In this example, we’ll assume it’s a girl, but the story could just as easily apply to a boy. Imagine she has a love interest in high school and often fantasizes about marriage and conjugial love with him. They’re moving too fast in their relationship, as many young people do, and ignoring the advice of their parents and mentors. One day, surprisingly, she is harshly rejected and cheated on by him. Perhaps this happens multiple times to her, by various different boys. She’s devastated, depressed, and feels worthless and unattractive. At this point, the sodomites, whether presumably straight or gay, would have her, “reexamine,” her sexual identity. “You’re not worthless,” they’d say, “you’re just different; you’re gay.” She may then think or sense something along the lines of, “Oh — I’m worth something to this group. I have an identity here. I’ll try this out, I’ll become gay. In fact, I must have been gay all along and just didn’t know it.” After all, her school is promoting gay lifestyles as an appropriate expression of her sexuality. TV promotes it, too. Even her government and church either promotes it or at worst considers it normal. Her parents aren’t around and her friends think it’s fashionable and some of them want her to try sexual things with them. So against her initial feelings of hesitancy, warning her against it, she tries it out, and thinks, “What do I have to lose?” It seems wrong to her, at least at first, but she’s now found a new, “identity,” not realizing that it’s not her true identity, but an identity of sin. This new lifestyle then becomes like the next best thing in her mind. It’s not conjugial love, but at least she’s expressing her sexuality without getting her heart broken, or so she thinks. As she grows up, the boys are now men, and one day, after she finds herself longing for the nostalgia she had for a boy from her past, she tries dating men again, but like before, she gets her heart broken and is hugely disappointed. “Men are not worth it,” she thinks, “I can take care of myself, and I don’t need them, not even for sex.” This then becomes her mantra and her coping mechanism. She’s given up on men. In time, this lifestyle becomes so commonplace that she gives up on the idea of conjugial love altogether. She no longer even wants it. Now, even if she found the perfect man, she would reject him, just like she was rejected. As far as children, she has her pet dogs and cats, and that then becomes enough for her.
As we’ve described above, upon death, unless she is able to turn around from this way of thinking and back towards a desire for conjugial love again, this attitude then prevents her from entering heaven, since heaven is composed of conjugial love, and homosexuality is opposed to it. But, so long as she doesn’t want conjugial love, she doesn’t want heaven either, and so rejects it, even if it’s offered to her by the most perfect and upstanding man.
In every person after death, love for the opposite sex continues to be what it was like inwardly, that is, what it was like in the person’s inner will and thought in the world. All a person’s love goes with him after death, because love is the inner being of his life. And the dominant love, which heads the rest, remains in a person to eternity, along with other loves subordinate to it. These loves remain, because love is properly an affection of the spirit in a person and is felt in the body from the spirit. And since a person becomes a spirit after death, he consequently carries his love with him. Moreover, since love is the inner being of a person’s life, it is apparent that a person’s lot after death becomes such as his life was in the world.
This symbolism could be applied, perhaps, to what has occurred between the Lord and his church, the church being “the woman,” who, being broken, has chosen everyone but the one man who truly loves her. This was the case with the old Christian church, the one that existed after the Lord’s death until Swedenborg’s day.
Rather than seeing this sad story play out, I want to encourage anyone going through similar forms of heartbreak to hold onto hope that you will find your soulmate and conjugial love with him or her, even if there ends up being a long wait ahead of you. Some people, in fact, go through their entire mortal lives and never find it. Swedenborg was among them. But he wrote that every person who wants conjugial love in heaven, and holds to this hope while in the mortal body, will find it, if not in this life, than in the next, so long as they turn away from evils and accept the Lord’s message, that creation is possible, as is happiness, and that whoever seeks for it will find it.
For people who desire truly conjugial love, the Lord provides similar partners, and if they are not found on earth, he provides them in heaven.
If it is possible for married partners to live together (after death), they remain partners. But if it is not possible, they separate, the husband sometimes separating from the wife, the wife sometimes from the husband, and both of them sometimes from each other. The reason separations occur after death is that unions formed on earth are seldom formed on the basis of any internal perception of love, but as the result of an external perception which conceals the internal one.
An external perception of love takes its cause and origin from such things as have to do with love of the world and love of one’s own person. Love of the world is concerned primarily with wealth and possessions, and love of one’s own person with positions of rank and honor. In addition to these, there are also various other attractions that entice into marriage, such as good looks and a pretended elegance of manners. Sometimes even a lack of chastity attracts.
Furthermore, marriages are also contracted in the area, city or town of one’s birth or residence, where the only choice possible is confined and limited to the households one knows, and there only with people of a station matching one’s own.
As a result, marriages entered into in the world are for the most part external marriages, and not at the same time internal, even though it is the internal union or union of souls that makes a real marriage. And that internal union is not discernible until a person has put off his external character and taken on his internal character, which happens after death.
That, now, is why separations then occur, followed by new unions formed with partners of a similar and compatible nature — unless unions like this were provided on earth, which happens in the case of people who from their youth had loved, desired and sought from the Lord a lawful and lovely partnership with one, and who spurn and reject roving lusts as an offense to the nostrils.
Following His Advent the Lord will revive conjugial love, such as it was among ancient peoples. For conjugial love comes only from the Lord, and it is found in people who are made spiritual by Him through His Word.
