God Already Forgave You (Here's the Proof)

So a lot of people are worried about God. They think, "Is God going to forgive me for what I've done?" I want to clear this up. What are all the things that you can do that God will not or cannot forgive you for? Actually, nothing. There's nothing you can humanly do in your whole life that you could not be forgiven for.

Well, so then that's it. We're done, right? There's no problem. I, I go do whatever I want. God forgives. We're clean. Well, um, no. It's a little more complicated than that. Um, some people think that, oh, if the Lord forgave it, it would just melt away. He forgives it. He's already forgiven it. But there's another process beyond forgiveness that needs to be added. Forgiveness is essential, but it doesn't do the whole [Music] job.

Hey everybody, welcome to Sweden Morgan Life. Today we're going to be talking about, uh, forgiveness and repentance. A lot of people think that God is the problem. Like there's life, and we go through it, and we do things, and the danger in it is God. And what I mean by that is that the hammer that's going to fall, the other shoe that's going to drop, is God is going to see what you did in your life. He's going to tally it up and nail you for it. Like the, the thing we're afraid of is hellfire or the punishment of God, whether or not we've offended God. That's the problem, right? Don't you think a lot of people carry that around?

Yeah, yeah, I do. And, um, I don't know if part of the fear is that you might die on a day when God's in a bad mood, or or didn't like the last three people who went through, or or something. In other words, I think some people fear that's sort of arbitrary, you know? Yeah. You just don't know if he doesn't like the look of you, or or something, and so you're going to get slammed. And then the person next to you, who you think did something worse, it gets off.

So what we want to say today is that there is a problem. Like there is work to do, and there's, there is danger in life. Don't worry, there's danger in life. That's right. But the danger doesn't come from God. So here, I want to open up reading Sweden Emanuel Swedenborg's Divine Providence. This is from number 280, because this is the idea of God and God's wrath, and are we forgiven for what we've done? This is not, we're not new. It's not new to be worrying about it today. This is like, there's been a proud tradition of people quaking in fear about this for. That's right. Yep.

So this is what Swedenborg says. After having had his encounter with Jesus, having seen heaven and hell, how it really works, according to him, the Lord opens up, shows him the meaning of the, the spiritual sense of the Bible. This is so, this is what he says about the true character of God. Okay. The Lord forgives everyone's sins. He does not accuse us or keep score. Wow. I have to admit that I, I have thought that there's a score. That there's a tally somewhere. Yeah. And you got some things in the good column, some things in the bad column, and how do they weigh against each other? So the idea that he's just not even keeping score, like the score is always zero or something. I don't know.

When does it, if God is the best person, if, if everything that's noble or that's admirable in a human being, everything that you would look at and say, "I, that's inspiring." If that is, that's because you're kind of approaching the character of God. When do, do people ever admire someone keeping score? If, if it's in a, a movie and it's a relationship and it's like, "Wow, you've been keeping score." They never say that. Like, "What? You're keeping score?" It's, it's petty and it's legalistic. Nobody looks at that and is moved and, and, as if that's the measure of a great heart that you're keeping score. Yeah, I admire that you remember that from elementary school and you're still holding that crud. Yeah, that's really impressive.

According to Swedenborg, that that is not a characteristic of divine love and wisdom. Yeah, that that is not how the infinite being of God operates. However, then this is Swedenborg going on. He says, "However, he cannot take our sins away except by the law cause of his Divine Providence." So there's rules to how this removal of sins work. There's a system. And it's not, what's nice about that is that it's not the mood that he's in at a given moment. There, there's just a system. And, and how far do you get through the system?

How do you, like that word, "sins"? What, what, when, when you hear "sins," what, what comes up in your mind? I think people have a, a wide range of reactions to that. What are we talking about here? That's a word that you very seldom hear outside, except in maybe a joking context, outside of pretty hardcore Christianity. Yeah, don't you think that that's the, you know, that that's a hard word? Um, Swedenborg just throws it around all over. To him, this is actually, this is essential component of life is to be able to identify these things. And what he's saying here is that there's a problem. That it's not, it doesn't rest in God. The first two sentences, "Lord forgives everyone's sins, doesn't accuse us or keep score." There's not the danger in God. However, if there's this stuff, these sins, that need to be removed, I mean, that's what is implied in the text here, that there's still a problem. And it's that these things are hanging around, and God wants to remove them, but can't except by whatever the laws of the Divine Providence are. So that, I think this is so important that it shifts it from, "Oh no, what's God going to do to me?" to, "We need to not have these things in us because they are inherently destructive." Whatever these sins are, they are the problem.

Yes, yes. They're the problem. And, uh, God being God, there's this divine blanket of mercy and forgiveness all the time. So our progress is really, fortunately or unfortunately, to some extent within our control. I mean, there's things that we're supposed to do. And if we're working our part of it, then the process will go well. If we're not doing anything, we're already in that blanket, but we're not getting the benefit of it because we're not doing our part of the partnership. Because there's a reason. It's not that God is just sitting there and he gets his, um, with nickers and a twist, "Oh, you're sinning." I, if he could just let it go, we'd be fine.

I saw this, I saw this, it was some video here on YouTube of it, some an atheist was critiquing the idea of of this of Christian judgment for sins. And he, it was the idea that, "Oh, God was so mad that he had to see Jesus get sacrificed, but that plated him so he wouldn't have to destroy everyone." And the person in the video was saying, "Can't you just not destroy anyone? Can't you just stop being so angry at people? If you could come down there right then, we'd be..." Why do you need something horrendous to sort of change your mind? That this whole existence is us just walking on eggshells around God's temper? And some people say, "Well, it's righteous. He's so mad." But the, the fact is, if that was the case, God could just, if he calmed down, everyone would be okay. Like, what is this sin that it's so terrible that it is worse than the eternal suffering of people in hell? It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And it certainly smacks of imposing a human sort of anthropomorphic idea from some bad childhood experience on God, you know? I mean, God sounds like he's got rage issues or alcoholism, or, you know, there's something he's brittle in some way. And, uh, so that's not in the nature of what is divine. That's, that's not a good understanding of who the Lord is.

Well, people will sometimes comment on our show and say, like, "You're just making this up. This is not what the Bible says. The Bible says that that God is full of wrath and venge and everything." Okay, he's not this. Like, you're just saying, "Forgive everyone because that's what you want." It's not actually what God says. All right, here's how Swedenborg continues. So that can't do it except for the law of his Divine Providence. For when Peter asked him, "How many times should I forgive someone who had sinned against me? Whether seven was enough?" He said that Peter should forgive him not seven times, but 70 times seven times. What does this tell us about the Lord, who is mercy itself? Chances are, the divine bar is even higher than than that, right?

So if Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh, is saying to Peter, "If somebody has, what did it say? Sinned against you or or done something?" Yeah, sinned against you, forgive them. Forgive them 70 times seven. And yet God is going to throw you into hell for your sins. It's absolutely, you're ignoring Jesus if you have that theology. You're just ignoring what Jesus said. You don't care what came out of his mouth. Like he's going to pick one or two things and that's enough to trigger permanent condemnation. Yeah. Why is he sitting here telling us to forgive if he doesn't forgive? Jesus, Jesus is saying, "Forgive." Yeah. "Turn the other cheek." Um, oh, he tells the, the parable about the guy who had a debt forgiven him, and then he turned around and raged against the person and was not forgiving at all. Why, why would God tell, why would Jesus tell you that story if, in truth, he has a totally different character? Yeah. If, if Jesus says, "Look, it's not good when somebody forgives you a big debt to then go around and and rage against someone who didn't." But yet he's going to surr. Okay. All right. You see what you see the problem is.

And so many people go through their lives terrified of God. Yeah. Like the thing I'm scared of in life is God is going to crush me for not living up to his expectations. Yeah. And as you approach death, you're, you're terrified because there's going to be this judgment. And, yeah. And, um, yeah, despite what Jesus was like and, and is that what you, if you're, if you're a father, is that what you want? If you learn that my, my kids, their entire life were terrified of me, is that, you feel like you're a good? It's hard to have a relationship with that. I, it seems impossible. Like, how, there, there's fear. Uh, there might be like some sort of begrudging respect because somebody's more powerful than you are. There's not love. It's not like a warm, loving relationship if that's the way the other party is. And is God interested in love? I mean, "Love one another as I have loved you. Love your Lord your God with all your heart." And no longer do I call you servants, for a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. I've called you a friend. Jesus seems very interested. Yeah. In love. That's right. And it says in the Epistles, "God is love." If you know love, you know God, because God is love. So that, that's the actual definition. And so it's, how do you reconcile God being love with this kind of snarky image of this judgmental, uh, divine being?

Swedenborg says in Heaven and Hell, that, and in other places, that your idea of God makes or breaks your entire worldview. Everything is dependent on that. That's why we're sitting at the top end of this episode, which is really about the process of regeneration. We have to establish who God is, because if you don't know who God is, nothing else makes sense. If you think that God has this vindictive, distant, uh, if he's the, he's the thing around which our fears should orbit, everything else crumbles around that. You have to understand who God is. And God is love. God forgives everyone's sins, does not accuse, does not keep score. And Swedenborg pleads with us to look at our concept of God, um, and says that after death, we're going to an honest world. And one of the things that other people can see is who we think God is. In this world, we sort of feel like that's our own private drama, you know, whether we're scared of that judgment or how we feel, or we think there's nobody there, or whatever. That's public information in, in the afterlife. And, uh, so trying to adjust that concept or get to a better place with it. God loves you. God loves you. God forgives. It's already done. You're no, I'm not, I'm not mad. I'm not mad. However, that's not the end of the story. No. God cannot take the sins away except for the laws of the Divine Providence. So what are these laws of Divine Providence? And what are these sins that are still a problem? Okay, that's the, that's the core of what we need to get to here too. Because God's not just sitting there like, "I don't care if people do evil. I don't care if people make their life about that. Knock yourself out." Because the other stuff that Jesus is constantly saying is, "Repent. Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Repent." Uh, all the time he's telling you, "Here's how you should act. Here's how you should not act." And, and this is consistent throughout the Bible. "Ten Commandments. Go and sin no more. I'll heal you, but don't do it again."

All right, continuing in Divine Providence 280. "When sins have been set aside, they are forgiven." Oh, okay. No, no, let's, let's stop there because this is in the same number as we just read. Yeah. So he's talking about how God has forgiven everyone's sins, but here he, there's like a, what is it? A, like a sub-definition of what it means to be forgiven. Yes. Because it's not that, "Go forgiven" the sense that God doesn't care. It's not that God is mad at you for it. However, they're not gone until they've been set aside. Right. And once they're set aside, then they're in that second level of meaning of forgiven. That they're not forgiven, forgiven until they're dealt with, until they're not an issue anymore. Yeah.

Well, it says, "Repent." Then it goes on, "Repentance must precede forgiveness, and apart from repentance, there is no forgiveness." That is why the Lord told his disciples to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and why John preached the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Gosh, Swedenborg sort of knew his Bible there. I mean, he's got some good passages, right? It's true. That's what he says, right? "Repentance for the forgiveness of sins." So, yeah, that I see that in a new light.

So let's talk about what's a sin. Because I feel like we keep saying "sin." Let's, let's give a, let's give a concise definition of it. Yeah, I've never been concise in my life, but this is a good time to start. This is going to be a document. Good challenge. Concise, like within 30 minutes? Yeah, okay. Good. Good. Know that I can fit in. Yeah. The, uh, one thing I want to say about it is that Swedenborg himself, when he's just writing, he seems to use the word "evil" more than "sin." Yep. You've seen that, right? Like he talks about evil and falsity and that sort of thing. "Sin" seems to be like the biblical terminology that picks up and will use in a, in a Christian context or theological context. And it is something he talks quite a lot about, but he defaults to the word "evil," which is interesting to me. Because as far as I can tell, in what he means about evil, evil is the doing of harm to someone else. But what's in your heart? I mean, even our legal courts, weren't we talking about this recently? That it's a huge difference whether you intended, "Oh no, I just left the iron on. I didn't realize it fell on and it burned, you know, whatever." Well, yeah, your intent. Was it premeditated? Did you sit around thinking, "I want to do as much harm as possible here," or not? So the harm is, is the evil. Where the sin comes in is specifically the idea that some sort of evil is actually against God. It's not just something that'll make my relationships worse, yeah. You know, it's not just something that people will be mad at me about, or that might lose my job or something. Oh, it's the fact that there are divine laws that have been communicated. And so sin is going against that. And I think particularly for Swedenborg, it's specifically deliberately. Like, "I know this is wrong. I'm going to do it. I'm diving in with both feet." Or, yeah, "Do you dive with your feet?" I don't know. I, I'm no, I'm no, uh, diver. You know, I'll have to, I'll have to watch some YouTube videos.

What, what a definition that Swedenborg gives of, I think, to, to, yeah, sin and evil. He will use almost interchangeably. That's right. And he will do the same thing with hell. He'll say that hell is evil. You know, is sin. That's right. And at one point, he gives a definition, I think it's of hell, which is that, um, hell is the enjoyment of doing harm. There you go. It's when you, enjoyment. People, yes. So if you feel horrible about doing harm, that's different. Uh, the, the hell comes in where it's just like, "Oh, did you see their expression? Yeah. Oh, they were really, really horrified by that." Yes.

So in the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not murder." Swedenborg talks about, and this is something that Jesus has started to unpack, the Ten Commandments. Like, yes, he'll say, you know, you've heard it, "Don't murder." But don't, don't hate your, yes, your brother without, right? It gets more psychological. So an example of a sin would be if I carry around something in me which is, I enjoy, uh, cherishing hatred against people. That I, I just, something somebody does something who crosses, that crosses me, and I start to ruminate on that, right? And I have an enjoyment in thinking hateful thoughts towards them. And then maybe that I start to plot things that I can do to somehow get back at them, to harm them. We got some that, then, then, and especially if I put it into act, that's what we're talking about. That's a sin alert. And maybe thinking about clever ways to do it so that someone wouldn't realize it was you. Yeah. And, and you could seem innocent, but it's still, "Oh, you, you got them. You got that satisfaction." So that is a problem. Yes. Doing that is a problem. And it's a problem for a couple of reasons. Uh, one is, none of us want somebody doing that to us. True. No, that would be unpleasant. I don't want, I don't want people scheming and trying to, um, bring, bring harm into my life. Um, gosh, there's a great little arbiter for how important forgiveness is. That as soon as you think about, "Well, in my case, I would certainly want forgiveness from somebody else. I don't want somebody holding a grudge for 50 years and coming back hunting me down or something." Second of all, that is toxic to you. Like the more that you, according to Swedenborg, the enjoyment of ruminating on this hatred of this person, that's coming from hell. Like the people who have made that their life, who have died and are now in the afterlife condition, self-imposed, that Swedenborg calls hell. They, that you sit in there and pouring over that, you're communing with that hell. You're, you're getting more and more to be one of them. And that, that is a deadly disease to your spirit. And the more that you get used to it, the more you act it out, that becomes more and more part of who you are. And it will destroy you in that it will lead you away from the life of heaven, yeah, and the happiness there, and into the life of hell and all the misery and complications that are there.

So even if God is sitting there looking over your shoulder, watching you scheme and rage against another one of his children, and he's not looking at you and saying, "I, I am very mad at you for that. I can't believe you're doing that. Just you wait till I, till my hammer of judgment comes down." Still, he is saying, "We need to get that out of you." Yes. Because that, because the problem is that sin, that is going to, that's going to kill you. And it's going to kill other people. We, that, that we have to get rid of. Yeah.

And, uh, I'm thinking of the fact, it's a strange thought, but not the first one I've had, uh, that, uh, we don't have eyes on the sides of our heads. Like, pray, we're built like a predatory animal. We, we have eyes in the front. And so we fa, when we're facing one way, we're facing away from from something else. We, we can't see behind us. Okay. When we're facing evil, one of the problems with that is we're obsessing. We're thinking about it. We're going to sleep. We're planning things. Oh, we learned something. Oh, that's good. I can use that, you know, uh, we're ruminating that whole time. We're facing away from heaven. There are angels who are with us who want to get into the conversation. And it was hell that originally suggested those things, you know, when it first comes, it says, "Well, you know, here's an option. You could, you could take revenge in some way. I mean, that, that, that would feel good, wouldn't it?" Um, but the more you go down that route, the more present they are in your mind, the more absent the angels are. And you're not seeing them. You're not feeling that, that input. And therefore, you're not putting love out into the world. You're not a nice person to be around, etc. Yeah.

Well, and the sum total of everybody doing that, every, according to Swedenborg, I would not want to live in a society where that's what everybody is. To a certain extent, everybody is doing that here in the world. You and me, everybody else, like we, everybody's got their particular sins that are in them. And the sum total of everybody, even if you don't act on it sometimes, acting on other times, is all the suffering in the world. Yes. That's all coming from that. So that's why it's so important for us to try to do the work of, yes, uprooting that. Yes. That's right. Sure. God is not angry at the human race. God does not need to forgive us. However, it's a mess. Yes. There's a lot of, there are a lot of things to be fixed. There are a lot of, um, there is a lot in the human heart that needs to come out. It's a funny idea that God would create us and then be mad at us for kind of being human, you know? Like, "Well, wait a second. Well, you made. You're like, how could you be that upset?" There's a wonderful passage somewhere in Secrets of Heaven where Swedenborg says that the Lord looks down at us and just knows that we're just these frail pieces of dust. Like, why would he even bother getting mad at us, you know? He knows absolutely what our frailties are and weaknesses and, and knows how we're prayed on by the hells and, and everything else. Like, it's not a subject to get, get mad about. But he would love to help us. His whole game is to save us. He wants to create that heaven from the human race where he can give us unbelievable joy and blessings. Swedenborg says, "All unrest is from evil and falsity." If you look at your life and why is there any unpleasantness in your life, all of it traces back to evil and falsity. These are the things that destroy human happiness. He, God wants everyone to be in a state that's called heaven. Heaven is happiness. So what God wants, and this is what anyone would want who loves you, cares about you, true, is looking at you with like a parent, slash life coach mentality of like, "Ah, I, you know what? You could be so much happier than you are. I really want to help fix you. I really want to help get you to where you maybe you realize you want to go there. Maybe you don't even realize how good you could have it, but I see you in this relatively wretched condition, and I want to get you out of there." Yeah. Yep. That's what God is doing. It's a rescue. Yeah. And so that's why this process of repentance and reformation and regeneration, that we're about to get into, is so important. So let's look at how you do that.

All right, I'm ready. So repentance is this way to God's already forgiven you. This is how you get the sins out of your life. This is from Sweden. Now we're switching over to Swedenborg's New Jerusalem. "Confessing sins is to recognize things that are evil, see them within ourselves, acknowledge them, accept that we are at fault, and condemn ourselves because of them." Wow. Okay, that's a handful, isn't it? Five, five things.

Yeah, let's go step by step. Yeah. "Confessing sins is to recognize things that are evil." Okay, so the recognition is important. And I think a big part of the recognition is just to learn enough from various different sources to figure out what evil is. Because when you're growing up, it can look the same as, "Oh, my friends got a huge kick out of it when I beat up that kid." You know, I mean, they, they loved it. Did you hear them? They're so excited. You don't necessarily know right from wrong. And so being able to learn what that is, right?

What was the second one? "See them within ourselves." Yes. Okay. So you're just recognizing the abstract. It would be wrong for somebody to do that. And then, so, "Oh, I look at myself. I did that thing." You know, I, I, I see that myself. But you still don't have it until you get to that third one. Okay.

Before we get to the third one, "Recognize things that are evil." Some people might say that's, that's all this religious condemnation. Recognizing things that are evil is so great. It is so great. And we do it in every other discipline freely and joyfully. I know people are so interested in what's really healthy for a human body and what isn't. And people scour through and they're like, "Oh, look at these studies. Seed oils. Turns out you should not be eating." Yeah. If you eat those, that's going to, something, something inflammation. Guess what? You should take a walk and do the. Everybody is pouring through everything trying to figure out, even though people don't always agree on what it is, they're trying to figure out what's evil and what's good. Evil meaning what works against, yeah, the health and homeostasis of the human body. And good, what supports that and leads you towards feeling like you want to feel and living a life. So we pour over that. In, in electronics, it's like, "What, what is going to make this battery last longer? What drains the battery?" That's evil. What makes it so that it holds its charge longer? So we'll try to figure that out. We'll do all these things. Everybody in psychology, people are trying to see what, what's good. How do you teach a kid? What's effective? Yeah, parenting. People get so into that. And they'll say, "Actually, did you know that when you criticize your kids, it's not going to have the effect you think it's going to have? It's actually going to have this effect, which is not good." Everybody's trying to root out evil and do good in the way societies are run, not using those terms, but that that's exactly what it is. That's right. So all we're trying to say is there's something like that in human motivation and behavior. There are certain things that you think about and love and dwell on that are good for you, that will make you happier, will make you a better member of society, will make other people happier. And there are certain things that are toxic to that. Yes. Why wouldn't you want to know which is which? Yeah. It's like evil is whatever is against ultimately happiness. And good is what promotes happiness. How could there be anything you wouldn't rather see more in a clear-eyed way than the difference between those? That's what it is. When Jesus said, "Cease to do evil, learn to do good." How could you not want to do that? Why, why wouldn't you be thrilled to know the difference between good and evil? Yeah. What world-class athlete would get where they are paying zero attention to diet or exercise? You know, of course, they have a very, very refined sense of what's wrong. And, you know, even things that normal people do all the time, they say, "Well, you can do that. I can't do that. That'll shave a tenth of a second off my time, and I can't do that." Yeah. And they would be overjoyed to find out, "Oh, did you know actually I can't be doing this same workout two days in a row? We just learned that doesn't build up this. I'm not going to do it. Do this." And that we want to get like that with this process. Expertise. That's right.

"Recognize things that are evil." So, and this is not something that I can tell somebody at home, this is what's evil. And they have to, everyone's got to figure this out for themselves. Use your rationality and your heart to figure out what, what you believe and what you think is true. I, nobody can force you to that. But if everybody was earnestly in the pursuit of that, it'd be good enough. And our own self-centeredness is a help here, in a way, because you can feel it when it's coming at you. I mean, some, they, I know their heart was in the right place. I, I know that they, they meant something sweet when they brought that up. Actually, that was devastating to me, and I had trouble sleeping last night. You know, like, that was not, they didn't see it, but that was not good. Yeah. Oh, so maybe I should, when I'm in that situation, be careful. It feels like a loving thing, but don't go there. You know, whatever it is, there's, there's a nuance to all this. And, and yourself is a good way to, to learn. You know, the Golden Rule, "Treat others as you would have them treat you." The Golden Rule is a compass in the wilderness because your mind can, and according to Swedenborg, that your love of self, which is fueled by hell, will go to every length in the world to justify whatever you do. Yes. Right. Well, this, this, and especially if there's something that has pleasure in it. If you, like, if you think, "I like pointing out people what's wrong with them," then of course there's going to be these ideas that are pouring in, like, "Well, people need this to improve," or "If they don't hear it from me, they'll hear it from someone else. I'm just, you have to have standards." You, all that stuff will just pour in, and you'll never escape it. So you have to have revelation. Part of revelation is, yes, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Yeah. And that, to me, even, even in my own head, I'll be pretty far down this trail of justifying in myself some behavior that, that I think, "This is great. This is fine." And then I'll think, "Oh, wait. No. I hate when people do that to me." Yeah. It doesn't feel good at all, and it doesn't help me. And the revelation is so valuable because you could really pursue everything that the world told you was a good thing to do. You know, "I should be rich. I should be good-looking. I should get this. I should get ahead. I should be dominant in this area," or or whatever it is. You could do all those things, but as the Lord says, you could be sacrificing your own soul. Like, you don't necessarily know what's good for, okay, that was good for your earthly life. What, what, how's your soul doing? You know, it's not that those things are in, you know, you can be a successful person as a spiritual person, but, knowing what the spiritual piece is has to be revealed to us, otherwise we would just charge ahead with our earthly project. How something feels is not the barometer for whether or not it's good. And this is something again that's true across every discipline. If you were, let's go back to professional athlete. I, I love that you brought that in, because they, nobody can just say, "Well, I'm just going to go and see what feels good, and whatever feels good, I'm going to do it." Because does it feel good to eat McDonald's? Yeah, it feels great. Yeah, it's wonderful. Do, does it feel good to not go to the gym? Right? No, wait, I'm too tired. I shouldn't go to the gym right now. Oh, this feels magnificent. You, you cannot, um, navigate that way. And even if you look at, uh, for example, uh, athletes in the National Basketball Association in the United States of America, if you look at them today versus, and actually, this is true, athletes across anything. If you look at them today versus 20 years ago, people are so much faster. They are so much stronger. Oh, because of advances in sports medicine and training. Yeah. And, and that is not amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Cycling, all those kind of things. They're just, it's amazing what they found out. I don't even know this, but you remember Usain Bolt, who ran those races? And I assumed the way that he was winning those races, those records will stand forever. I will be able to tell my great-great-grandchildren, "Did you know that they were already beaten?" You know, for that. That's what I heard anyway. That, that there was all this time when nobody could run a four-minute mile, and now people do that without even noticing that they're running. Yeah. Yeah. The guy who first ran the four-minute mile only held that record for 43 days. It had never been broken. And once it was broken, somebody beat it like a couple of weeks later. And that, that people have gotten there not through just kind of winging it. It is, you have to have the truth and have the truth guide you. And the more in the truth you are, the more you can get those results. So you can apply that same thing to this revelation. The reason why there is the word or divine revelation at all, it's the sports medicine, yes, for ridding yourself of evil for your spirit, yeah, for the eternal questions. That's right.

So what you got to do is confess your sins, which means recognize what's evil, sharpen that blade, figure out what's good and what's evil. It's a quest you've got to be on by yourself. See them within yourself. It's not just, you can, it does almost nothing to look out and guess that you can identify evil in people. As enjoyable as that is, it's the best sport because first of all, it doesn't, you can't repent for them. It doesn't do anything. Second of all, you don't know. You don't know what their motivation is. You don't know what the, what intention was. It just, it's total. The Lord said that too, like, "You don't know what's in." Only the Lord knows what's in our heart. Only the Lord. But see them within ourselves. Acknowledge them. Oh, and the seeing within yourself also involves some sort of exercise of reflection, journaling, or or just, you know, focused thought. But you have to really be willing to take a look. Let me look back over the day that I just had, or this last year, or or whatever. And do I see these, what, what do I see in there that, that's troubling to my higher self or my angels? Notice how personalized this is. He's not saying confessing sins is when a priest tells you what's wrong with you. Yeah. This is incredible. Everybody files it and they all go, "We are sinful. We are sinful." Yeah. "We've done wrong." Which I think is a shameful thing. We're about to focus on that. But this is something, this is something that happens inside you. And look, because it even says, "Accept that we are at fault and condemn ourselves because of them." Condemn, meaning, yeah, this is not good. This is leading me into hell, and it's a hell I want to get out of. Right? This is, this is damnable. Like, if, if in a just world, I would be thrown into hell for this thing. I already am in hell over this. Or even like, yeah, this thing is terrible. I wouldn't want anyone to do that. If, if your example before, I went and I beat up this kid, my friends thought it was fun. To come later in your life to be like, "That is such a horrific thing to do. Like, I feel terrible that I was ever a part of it. That, that behavior should be expunged from the face of the world." Yeah. That's right. That, that has no place in human society. That's when you're making some progress. Yeah. It doesn't even mean like, you and I, I feel like there's something cool about saying like, "No, I'm not just going to say it's okay. I still, I feel bad about that." When it's you, because you care for the person who is harmed, and because you detest the behavior, and it's you putting the pressure on. It's not somebody outside. No, that can be great, as long as it's not, it's classic Swedenborg, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You don't get thrown into hell, but you can sentence yourself. Or you can say, "Yeah, that's, that was hellish behavior. It absolutely was." So, "Condemn ourselves." God isn't condemning you. Condemn yourself because of them. "When this is done in the presence of God, it is confessing our sins." Wow. What a definition. That's really interesting. And so that presence of God is an important element. That this is not just a psychological self-help exercise, although those are great, but it has a divine or spiritual component to it. That you think, "Before God, I've read the rules. I know who God is. I really fell short here." And doing that in, in that presence, and in the presence of God, saying, "I condemn myself." It reminds me of that, is it Luke 15, with the prodigal son? Where he comes back, and he's going to tell his father, "I, I've been a fool. You know, I'll just be like one of the hired servants." Yeah. And the father comes out, forgives him before he even has a chance to say his little speech, you know? Yeah. And I'm proud of him for, he does say a speech where he says, "I've sinned before you and before God." I, I think he says something exactly like that. Uh, he, he still says his piece, you know? And that, that's part of the nature of forgiveness. So think about if there's somebody who has wronged you, and you already are trying to say, "All right, I, I forgive you for that." Hearing it come out of their mouth that, like, "I, I don't even deserve to be your friend anymore because of what I did." Like, "I feel..." Even if you were already going to forgive him, that completes it. There's something about that. That if, if I've, if I've done something that hurt you, and I still don't really, "Okay, well, I, you know, I'm not that bad. I, right? You know, I did. You should just get over it." Yeah. That's okay. Maybe we can still hang out. But there's not going to be reconciliation. Yeah. And healing.

"After we have confessed our sins in this way and have prayed for forgiveness with a humble heart, repenting is to stop doing them and to lead a new life that follows the principles of caring and faith." This is why that first part of that number is why it's so important to have the correct picture of God. Oh, because Swedenborg is saying this is done in the presence of God. This process. If you don't understand who is looking at you, if you think it is somebody who is judgmental and, um, vengeful, it closes you up to a point where you're never really feeling the actual remorse or regret for anything that you've done wrong. And in this process, absolutely takes place in near-death experiences. So near-death experiences, when they first came out, and Raymond Moody's "Life After Life" and all these accounts, one of the six primary features of a near-death experience was the life review. Life review, which is where you go and you watch your entire life unfold, and you see how it's affected other people. Other people. That's right. And not what it was like from the inside, what was the actual impact of those things on others. And not to as to a one, but overall. I've read so many of those, and they all say, "I was there with the light," or they say, "It's God and angels, and we were watching this, and there was no judgment, but I felt bad about what I'd done. I was the one judging." Isn't that great? That I, it's the only way it could work to really form that relationship. It's not that God is the one who's angry or upset or frustrated or, "Just, I can't believe you did that again." Yeah. Uh, it's that you, in, in that divine loving presence, feel like, "Wow, I really fell short there." You know, it's like, "That was mean. That was, I, I feel terrible that that person felt like that when I did that." That's, that is so cool to feel like that because what that is is saying, "We shouldn't hurt each other." Yeah. It's not good to do evil to people. That is, that is suddenly you're seeing things from a God's perspective. Because if God is somebody who loves everybody and and only thinks good and only wants to do good, and and everything, again, that we see in human behavior that's that's inspiring and loving and nurturing and true, understand that's a bit of God. When then you understand what a sin against God is, it's like, "I went against that. I went against love. I went against love. I went against love." And to be able to say, "I, you know what? I could do either one, but I don't want to go against love because that's so stupid." Then, then we're talking about confessing sins. That's what that is. And, uh, my sense of going through this process myself is that, uh, really after the process, my view of God changed even more. Because when you get to that, and you really feel that bitter sense of like, "Wow, I, I really, I really blew it here. Like, that was really bad." And then you feel this, this love and acceptance that's right there. You realize, "No, God is not that, that judge, that harsh judge." You know, that there was love and support taking you through this process, wanting you to see it because that's important, but also just, "Okay, let's move on." Because that, and that is a feature of love. Is a feature of love is to say, if there's something that is going to destroy your happiness, destroy the happiness of other people who also are worthy of love, we got to address that. And actually, for love not to address that, it's not really love at all. It's like to say, "It's okay. I'm going to think of some useless metaphor. It's like if, if I have a baby in a playpen and there's a sharp object in there, and all I do is kind of herd them away from that sharp object instead of reaching in there, getting that thing out." Do I really love him? No. No. You're just worried about cutting your hand. And especially if it's a toy that they want to play with, but I know, and I don't want to make them cry, so I'm not going to. No. Love would go in there and it would say, "I know you're, I know you don't get it right now. I know you're going to cry when I take this out, but actually, then you can climb around this whole thing. You can have your, your hands aren't cut." Like that. That's what love would do. Yeah.

So in the spirit of that, after we've confessed our sins, repenting just means don't do them anymore and lead a new life that follows the principles of caring and faith. Okay. New life that follows the principles of caring, faith. Yeah, that's, that fits so well with what we were talking about a moment ago about the New Testament of, "Go and sin no more," kind of thing. That the Lord is absolutely forgiving, but also is not sort of like, "Okay, I got you off the hook. Dive right back in. Knock yourself out." No, no. It's like, "I got you out. Please stay out. I, you know, I don't want you in there." And, and you have some control over this with your own will, whether you're going to jump back in that swamp or stay out. If you're a coach of a professional athlete, and it turns out that that professional athlete didn't stretch before they, something, so they're increasing their risk of injury.

Yeah, yeah. You don't want to, if they didn't, especially if they didn't really know, or were. You don't want to lay into them. That's not, that's not productive. That's not going to get them to where they need to be. However, you want to say, "Next time, don't do that." Because if you keep not doing that, and and you tear your Achilles, that could be the end of your career.

Yeah, right. Hey, if you're enjoying watching this, leave us a tip. There's that little button there. Remember that $2 on that thing. We're not for profit, so all of the cameras, equipment, the editing, the research, everything that goes into making this show happen is funded by viewers like you. If you feel like it's great and worth $2, give us a $2 tip. Thanks.

Back to the show. This is important. This next part of New Jerusalem, because I think that the reason this conversation around what evil is and what religion is gets so cloudy is because the history of people's concepts around sin or concepts around the judgment of God. Yes. So here's, here's some clarity on that. New Jerusalem 162. If all we do is make a blanket acknowledgment that we are sinners and declare ourselves guilty of all evils, but without examining ourselves, that is, seeing our own particular evils, we are making some kind of confession, but not a confession that leads to repentance. Since we do not know what our evils are, we live the same way afterwards as before. That seems to be the key of it. This is supposed to be a life change. And isn't that what everybody's craving? Like, you, you want to actually get free of these things, get unstuck, and and move on. If your life is exactly the same afterward, it didn't work. Cuz it was supposed to have that life change in there. That comes from a "God is the problem" mindset. So if you say, "Well, what I know is that God is angry at us, and so what we have to do is say, 'We're so bad, we're sinners,' and then God will say, 'All right, well, as long as you know, uh, then I'll let you go.'" And that was the problem the whole time. Is it's about placating God? Yes. Then, then that would make sense. However, if the actual problem is the sin, the evil that we are latched on to. And again, you, something churches will do is say, "You're guilty of all evil. You've broken all the Commandments." When you haven't really. And that makes people say, "All right, this is dumb. I'm out of here. I'm not doing religion anymore." It's not, that's not true. There is a particular problem that each of us have, different particular things that are evil, me. They will destroy our happiness. That we need to get after for ourselves. That's what matters. God doesn't care about you whether or not you've said you are a sinner. He's looking, and he can see, "Here's four things that are blocking you from heaven and are going to kill you if, if you don't get them. I want those things out. I don't care about how you feel about your." No, let's get those things. Do you want those things out of you? That's what I care about.

Swedenborg has an experience where he sees someone in the other world who's making exactly this kind of confession. "I am filthy. I was filthy from my mother's womb. I'm covered in sin from head to toe." And Swedenborg goes up and asks him, "Can you name one evil? Like, like what's, what's your worst? What, what's the big one? What's the one you're really working on?" "Um, I, I don't, I don't know, actually." You know, the person. And and Swedenborg says that their confession was accurate, you know, like it was spiritually accurate, but they couldn't name anything because they hadn't done some of those steps in there of being able to see it. And then didn't it also say, "Recognize it in yourself"? Like, like, not just see it, because maybe what you do the first time is you see it and then you say, "But it's not so bad. Everybody does that." I mean, everybody's like, "Right." But no, you see it and you go, "Oh, that is actually the thing that that commandment is talking about." Yeah. "I might, you know, I didn't kill anybody, quote unquote." You know, but, "Oh, well, I did do something that sort of harmed their reputation and they lost their job or something." Yeah. "Okay, yeah, that, that's murder in a sense." Yeah. Being able to recognize that. And and, uh, so being able to name. "Can you name one?" Just. I think Swedenborg is funny sometimes. He goes, "So, okay, great. What, what's head? What's top of your list?" You, right, right. We're trying to make progress. We're trying to make progress. Um, and if you are, if it's not about keeping score in the beginning, we heard God's not keeping score about sins. If it's not about keeping score, if it's actually about rolling up the sleeves and getting the work done of ridding ourselves of those things, then the only thing that matters is a particular uncovering and self-motivated, uh, "I'm gonna, I'm going to work on this stuff." Yeah.

Isn't this like the things we've talked about in other podcasts? That that out of love, I think the Lord wants to situate this in us. If it's just something that God does by some voodoo off stage, you know, it's all magically taken away or something, then we didn't really participate in it. And in a way, would we really be grateful? Like, if we just said, "I'm covered in evil from head to toe," and then God said, "All right, I absolve you. It's all gone." We wouldn't know what a miracle was done for us. When you actually identify a trait in yourself that's reprehensible, and then you actually see God take that away, or you see that reduced in your life, it's a miracle. You know, like that was part of your personality, you know, something you loved. And and to, and to watch that go, then you really start to understand something about your relationship with with God that you didn't know before. If you've been like, "I'm trying to get rid of this thing, I'm trying to get," and I can't, and then you notice it's gone. "Whoa. God. God is." But also, God cannot get rid of that thing. No. Without you doing this process. That's it. If God could, if God could remove those evils from you, but just doesn't until you look at them, then it's, it's back to being the scorekeeping judge. In the very beginning, he said, "God forgives you." God cannot take those evils away except by the laws of Providence. This is this process is the laws of Providence. Right. And it's a good system. And it's, it's the, it's the system that it has to go through. It's just like if you were to say, "Ah, my, um, my sports analogy, my knee hurts. Can you take that away?" Yes. But here's the things we have to do. One, you have to rest for a week. Two, we're probably going to have to do some surgery on this part of you to get that. And then you're going to have to do these rehab exercises. And otherwise, you just can't. That's the only way it happens. Yeah. So God, God is not saying, "I just need you to realize this before I do what I could have done, done all along." If he could. No. Right. God, God loves you. That's why he's forgiving you. You think that this is not first thing on God's to-do list? Yeah. Right. It's like, what, what's my top of the list? If on his like, um, vision board of like, what would I really want if I got everything? It'd be, you free of this stuff. Yeah. Um, you think, you think if it was in God's power, he wouldn't do it? Yeah. That God, the limits of God's power, according to Swedenborg, end at your free will. Like he has carved out a space for you where unless you open that door, "I stand at the door and knock." Unless you open that door, God literally cannot take that out of you because, um, you would be destroyed. And and because God is that system, is that system. Go. God is that order where where you do it because that's the best for us. That's the best for society. I think that would be the claim that Swedenborg makes is that ultimately, as whoever said this, "is the best of all possible worlds," that that system whereby we can actually be people that are conscious on our own and can live our own life with the potential to have the happiness of of love, uh, that's that's the best existence we could have. But it comes with these inviable, invulnerable rules. Yeah. We make choices about how, in effect, you're sort of choosing how evil do I want to be? Or or who do I want to be about this thing that I did?

So this might seem fairly dramatic. Everything we're talking about, people at home may be wondering, like, what's the utility? How, how do I? What's it feel like to do this? Is it, is everything, is there organ music in the background of my life? I walk through the alleyways between Gothic cathedrals as I contemplate my sins? Essentially, this is just about trying to live a thoughtful and caring life intentionally. As Swedenborg continues in New Jerusalem, "If we are leading a life of caring and faith, we repent every day." Oh, we reflect on the evils in ourselves, acknowledge them, take precautions against them, and pray to the Lord for help. Every day. It's just a daily thing. When you first hear about it, and he does talk about sometimes something that you just do once or twice a year, you know, but, uh, in, in sort of a more ritual way. But once you kind of get the engine going, it's running every day. And so you notice yourself. You notice, "Whoops, oh, I lied about that. Why? That was sort of a self-serving lie. Why, why did I say that?" Yeah. You know, and, and you're monitoring. And you're going, "You know, let's not do that." And you do it because you love to do it. Yeah. You do it because it brings you excitement and joy at the idea of being free from these things, improving yourself, moving closer to God, getting the benefits of heaven, uh, having a good impact on people. There's, there can be a stage in which you're crushed by guilt and fear about it. That's not really, you're not really going to make any progress there. When the machine is actually running, there's a sense of, "Let's go. Oh, another thing I can do to improve my routine and my outcomes." Yeah. I, I really love that point about being a better person in other people's lives because that's what you see. You start to see, "Oh yeah, this was a big negative, my jealousy or my, you know, whatever quality it was that was getting in the way." You realize their life is better when I'm on top of that. It's, man, that can be, if, if you can, sort of isolate, these are the people that I impact. I try to think about like my wife and my daughter. Oh, these are the people that I impact a lot. There can be a sense of excitement. It's like, "I can, I can make their lives a lot more happy by doing good." And sometimes I've had the experience where I feel like I'm getting nowhere, and they'll say, "Oh, no, you seem, you know, like they're, they're getting it, even if I don't realize." "You're not nearly as bad as you used to be." "No, not nearly as bad." Yeah. There's an excitement. Or or your co-workers, whatever, or your, your customers, whatever area you're in. And they realize, "Oh, I like, I can make this better. I can make their day better. I can try." It can be exciting. I like, I like here too, where it says, "Take precautions against them." Yes. If I, if I say, "Oh, I'm not going to walk down that street 'cause there's a bar there and I've been struggling with something." You know? Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot because it's kind of pragmatic. And and it does imply there's situations where you're more prone. And if you can avoid those or figure out some workaround, uh, you can avoid something.

Swedenborg continues, "You see, on our own, we are constantly falling down, but the Lord is constantly raising us up and leading us toward goodness." So if you're wondering, "Am I doing a good enough job?" The bar is constantly falling down. That's pretty much what you do. Because there's this, there's this illusion that we can, we can do anything without God. Yeah. That's not how it is. And it is something that, that I feel like I experience a little bit more over time of that, that falling down of realizing, "Oh, I was doing okay. No, self-centered." You know, or whatever. You just dip down in there. And then you realize somebody will cross your, your path that just lifts you up. Or you, you see the Lord lifting you up in ways that you couldn't lift yourself up. But something, some quote, some interaction will, well, you know, get you back up. And it almost seems to me like being a toddler where you have a parent who, you know, you're falling down all the time, but they, "Oh, now I'm back up on my." Don't, I don't know quite how that happened, but here I go. And they don't know you, they don't know they're holding your finger when they're walking. They just feel like, "I'm, I'm going. I'm doing it. I'm doing it." It's, it's the same things can be happening. You're just putting a different interpretation on them happening because you've seen behind the curtain a bit. That these these things that I do, I couldn't do without God. And I've had that very viscerally in my life. Even things like writer's block for work. We make these videos and content here. And I know if it always was easy and went well, I just think, "Well, this is just something I can do. I can just do this." But I know the difference of having this drought of, "I cannot for the life of me think of a single insight that might be helpful to somebody who's watching." And then after you've kind of suffered through that a bit, then when one comes in, because of the, the theology Swedenborg's put in my head, of to realize, "Oh, that's, that's from God." Then I realize, "I could never have thought of that. I would never have, never done that." You know, you were, you were empty a second ago. Yeah. And also with, uh, one of the upsides of, I've had, you know, my struggles with mental health. It's like, I can't even function. I, I can't even keep my own fears out of my living room. Right. I, I've had, I've been completely, pretty close to completely incapacitated. Oh, yeah. And I've seen full, full scale, you know, what I can't even do the basics unless there's something propping me up that I didn't realize was there propping me up. I can't do any of this. And and that's not God trying to, "Haha, look at you, you can't do anything." But this is an incredibly useful gift because once that's in your hand, and you know, "I couldn't have got through any of this without God." The next time hell's coming at you and they're trying to tell you, "You're not going to be able to get through this. This thing might happen." You're like, "Well, I know that. I, I'm not in control of this at all. This is God does this." And that's real enough to you that it saves you from that experience the next time.

One of Swedenborg's words for happiness can also be translated "fortunate." Sometimes Lisa Hayak Cooper will translate it that way. And I think "fortunate" is a great, like, there's a happiness in knowing that, "Wow, I just fell over and I'm back on my feet." And that's, that's miraculous. Or I had no idea whatsoever, and boom, it it showed up and it went well. It went better than I expected. Or some prayer that I said about how I want this thing to go, what my intention is, even though I have no idea how to achieve that. I, I put this prayer out there. And when I look back, I realize, "Oh, I think that prayer was answered." Fortunate is is a great word because it's not, "I carved this out of rock. I hewed this. I made this monument." Well. And do you know why that's good? Do you know why it's good to have that torn down in you? Is because what that does is it makes space for you. Love everybody. M. Because if you realize, "I ain't no better than anyone else." Yes. That, I, I depend on the Lord like everyone else does. Get in that state and look at your neighbor and how do you feel about them? How do you feel about their thought, their flaws? Yeah. You feel. This is going back to that scene I'm imagining where we're saying, "Oh, I can't believe I was mean to those people early in life." That should not be done. It opens you up to feel the love that God has. Because that's how God is looking at everyone. God is ego-free. Even though he's done all this, he's got all the power, and everything that's not crossing his mind at all. Yeah. He's sitting there just loving people. And the more you become like that, the more that's a much happier life.

Okay, Swedenborg continues. "This is our state. If we devote our lives to doing good. If we just spend our lives doing evil, then too, we are constantly falling down." So this first, "constantly falling down" is when you're trying to do good in your life. If you devoted our lives to evil, then we're constantly falling down. And the Lord is constantly lifting us up. Still. "I'm not judging you. I don't hate you. I'm lifting you up." But the result is only that we are steered away from falling into those most serious evils to which we instinctively tend with all our might. The "with all our might" is quite a punch line at the end. Because it's not just like, "Well, I have a tendency." No, I am trying with everything in my power to get to this lower hell, possibly can. The danger is not God. God is always helping you up. The danger is that there's certain character traits that we have that are very addictive and very seducing. That if you're not allowing God to pull you away from those, those will consume your life. Yeah. And lead you into misery, make you a shell of what you could be. That's the danger. That's why you got to do all this repentance. And repent is as much about thoughts and feelings as it is about actions. Aha.

So we were talking about sin before. Yeah. Like, like actual wronging people and doing things. Yeah. But you're saying there's also a thought and feeling component to this. Jesus said, "You have heard that you shouldn't do this. Actually, don't have this in your heart." That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Just even lusting is is a form of adultery. That kind of thing. He already spiritualizes these.

Swedenborg goes on in New Jerusalem 164. "If we are practicing self-examination in order to repent, it is important that we examine our thoughts and the intentions of our will and note what we would do if we could get away with it. That is, if we had no fear of the law or of losing our reputation, our job, or our wealth. Our evils live in our will. That is the source of all the evil things we do physically. Therefore, if we do not search out evils in our thoughts and our will, we will be unable to repent because afterward we will have the same thoughts and intentions as we had before. And intending evils is the same as doing them." This, therefore, is what self-examination entails. Wow. So it's not just the same act. Like, what you don't want out of repentance is that your actions, your life doesn't change at all. But also that your thoughts and feelings, like, you're the things that you're hooked on or obsessed with or or whatever it is, that that hasn't changed either. Because that's where those actions come from. If you really want to do some exciting work, if, if you really want to clean that up and reap all the benefits of having heaven in your heart and your mind, the way to do it, you could look out at your life and say, "Well, yeah, I don't, I don't murder. I don't steal. Yes, I don't commit adultery. I'm good." Right. However, there's a lot of reasons why you can still be nurturing that in your will. There's a lot of reasons why, as he says, you, there's laws and you don't want to go to jail. You don't, you also, you don't want to lose social stat. You don't, you can't afford it or something. You can't afford that. That's fine to be there. What's really exciting though, is if you look in and see, "Not all these things would I do if I could." But it might be that there are some that I, that I think that would be fine. And if I could get away with it, I would do that. That's where, you know, that's like your mining, your, um, prospecting. And you're like, "We found oil or gold or whatever." You prospect for that. That's in there. Because if you can identify, "Oh, this is, this is something I actually do suffer from." Now I can get to work, apply this simple process, and start to be freed from that thing. Which, which you don't even realize how that's impacting your life and sabotaging your happiness because it's so deeply in there. But as that stuff starts to get out, then you start to, "Oh, this is how now this love can flow through and I can feel great." And this is, "Oh, this is where heaven is because that thing's out of the way."

It reminds me of Einstein's thought experiments, which he got so much. It was wild that he would just sit there and think and he could get so much understanding from just thinking. Just to think. To do a thought experiment. Let's say there's no rules. Or let's say I'm invisible. I get an invisibility cloak. Nobody can see me. Nobody will ever find out. What would I do? What if, if truly, if nobody would ever find out, what, what would I do? What do I still think is is okay? Or in another passage, he talks about even what you think you might say, "Well, I would never do it, but I think it's perfectly fine for them to do it for other people to do that." You know, because it's trying to get at what your inner compass is is set to. What, what do you think is right and wrong in there? Yeah. You said Einstein's, yeah, thought experiments. What's that? He did. He did a bunch of thought experiments. Well, partly how he came to the speed of light thing was he just tried to picture, "Okay, I'm on a, I'm on a light beam, and how does this go?" You know, it's just a mental act. You know, it's amazing. He's not, he, it doesn't have, you don't, doesn't require a lab. You, you just have a comfy armchair and maybe a pad of paper. Or that's, that's the same way I figured out the speed of light, actually. I've always felt like he and I were kind of peas in a pod. Yeah. That's right. So, exa. Yeah. What, what you're trying to do is sniff out like, what's my will really like? What's the state of my will? Which is the same thing as like, "I don't want to go to the doctor. I don't want to know." Like the state of my health. Okay, let's, let's take our blood pressure. You know, let, let's see. Look, what, what's really going on with me? Self-reflection is the key to that. And especially self-reflection from this, uh, perspective of, "I want to pursue what's, what's right and good." And how can I get there? This is, that's like inner work. It's just between you and God. But this is the great work of the human race. And what I found as I've gone along is, I'm not trying to say I'm any expert on this, but, but the, um, it's still got a long way to go. But, um, sometimes when I'm just willing, uh, then I'll, I'll wake up in the morning and I'm suddenly thinking about these five or six incidents in my life that all showed a certain kind of, you know, arrogance or that, you know, whatever, cold-heartedness or whatever quality it is. And it really feels to me, after a while, the process, it's really the divine hand. But the, the process sort of working me. Like it's earlier on, I had the feeling like, "I've got to get in there and work this process." Yeah. But then when you just wake up in the morning and something's going, "You know, here's something to look at. Good morning. Here's, here's your sins, breakfast in bed style."

Swedenborg continues, saying that "we repent but not changing the way we live is no repentance at all. Our sins are not forgiven." When we say we repent. Again, this is, he's being confusing because he says God forgives everything. Like of forgiveness. The sins are not forgi. It doesn't work. I think he's assigning forgiven two different meanings here. Yes. And kind of, and kind of like, "Okay, we've gotten rid of the God thing." But if you're talking about not having them with you anymore. Yes. And I may even have to drag Greek in here because there, there's a Greek root from the New Testament where the exit of forgive, which is aphiemi, which literally means to send away. So I think that, and then that's used for for forgiveness. But so there could be one kind of forgiveness, which is just the Lord's, "I, I've, I've already forgotten about it." But then, is it actually sent away? If it's still in your life, it's not sent away. You know, you're not over it. It's like, "God, God forgave you. You haven't forgiven yourself." Really. Which is not to say like, "Oh, do I feel fine?" But, but you haven't pushed it away. You haven't pushed it away from yourself. Yeah. You haven't distanced yourself from it. Okay. "Our sins are not forgiven when we say we repent. They are forgiven when we change our lives." "Our sins are of course const-" Here we go. "Our sins are of course constantly being forgiven by the Lord because he is mercy itself. Nevertheless, despite what we may think about how our sins are forgiven, they actually still cling to us and are not put aside from us unless we live by the precepts of true faith. As we live by these precepts, our sins are put aside. And as our sins are put aside, they are forgiven." There. We, we just need to give him a moment in edgewise. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. He actually has pretty good things to say. Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. That whole sequence. Like, there's a blanket forgiveness that comes over everything, but it's not dealt with. And, uh, and I noticed that language of "set aside," "put aside." It's removing it. You know, he said in other passages, it's never totally gone. Like the things that you did, they're, they're still a part of you in some sense, but it can be not in the center of your life anymore. There's something else in the center of your life, which I think is is doing good things for for other people or having sort of a mission of what you're working on. Is rendered inert. Yes. He, there, he outlines, "God forgave you." God, God already forgave you. That's fine. He's mercy itself. However, that stuff is still clinging to you until you stop doing it. It's like almost so obvious it doesn't need to be said. Yes. And that word "cling" is kind of scary because it's not that you're clinging to it, it's actually clinging to you. Yeah. Like that, that spirit from hell, whatever you want to call it, that thing enjoys being part of your life. It's like the ancient Egyptians didn't want the Israelites to go. They're getting free labor out of them, you know? No, it resists that effort to, "No, let my people go. I'm going to go worship in the wilderness." Well, there's a, I think a pretty clear correspondence with the way that, let's say, viral disease works. So you can be there, and the doctor, who's God, is all about just you getting healthy, and that's all he cares about. He's giving you this medicine for it. You, that's what your body is trying to do. Even if, let's say, you got this virus because you put your hand on a subway something and licked your hand. You, you didn't try, but it's, it's there in you. The problem is the virus is in there and it's replicating, and it does not want to leave your body. It wants to stay and multiply and consume as much as you can. So the forces against that is the, your immune system, medicine the doctor is giving. The problem lies in the thing itself. That's how it is with the, the teams are you and God against this sin or this evil or this destructive behavior, thought pattern that is trying to destroy your heaven. It's a great analogy because there's some of these things that just lurk, you know, some spyro or something will just lurk in your system, and then, you know, it flares up again because you thought you got rid of it. Uh, but was still lurking in there. It can come back again. Something that's cool about this is there's a, there's a reinforcing process that when, when we're trying to do what's good, God makes it easier to do what's good. Yes.

This is New Jerusalem 166. "People believe that when our sins are forgiven, they are washed away and rinsed off the way dirt is rinsed off with water. However, our sins are not washed away, they're just put aside." You were just talking about that. That is, we are held back from doing them when we are kept focused by the Lord on doing what is good. Oh, I like the fact that it's that focus on doing what is good. That's what becomes central to your life. So then this other thing is peripheral. Because before you were focused on, "How do I get revenge?" You know, and now that that's out of the way, now you're thinking about, "How do I do good?" Yeah. It's like people who are in recovery. They will say, "You know, I'm this many years sober." And it's, it's that I've changed my life. And I changed what I focus on. And I know people say, "I'm still in recovery" because I know under the right circumstances, that would return. But I intentionally make these circumstances to not indulge in that. And so that's why I stay where I am. You focus on recovery. Yeah. You direct that energy that used to be going into the addiction into the recovery. Yeah. And now that's the central thing that you're working. And people that are that are in recovery, you just, they just have this like depth about their soul where they're like, "I've been through the trenches and I, I've seen myself do some." Yeah. And I, I'm following this. There's, you can see the good that God has brought out, you know, in the spiritual growth that's come of it. Yeah. "Focused by the Lord on doing what is good." And when we are focused on doing good, it seems as though our sins are gone, therefore that they have been washed away. "Further, the more we have been reformed, the more capable we are on focusing on doing what is good." If we think that our sins are forgiven in any other way, we get better at it. In other words, right practice. Let me, that's cool. Let me, "Further, the more we have been reformed, the more capable we are of focusing on doing what is good." H. Okay. I'm going to read. We're less distracted, I guess. Yeah. I'm just going to read the end of this because I, I don't want to leave it hanging out there. "If we think that our sins are forgiven in any other way, we are sadly mistaken." Okay. But that's one of the benefits. Why are you so excited? As I was saying before, why are we so excited to find something to do this work on? Because the more we've been reformed, the more capable we are of focusing on doing what is good. Do you? That's something valuable. People want, people want to be a good person and want to be able to understand, understand how to do good in life and focus on that. The more we've been reformed, the more you've got that stuff out of your will and identified it and gone through this whole process, you get, that's the, that's the payoff. Is you get good at focusing on what's good and doing that. And and that gives you energy. And and all that other nonsense is depleting. Yeah. You know, it, it really like, it just draws energy out of you. And and and it's just wasted effort. I can be on my, man, I deleted an app on my phone because I was, I was like in it so much. And like, what does everybody say? It's like social media and like, what are they doing? And I'm going to. And and I thought, like, "This is good. I'm learning about life." And this is like, "Get that thing out of there." And you, out there, you realize, "Oh, actually, my life has improved with this thing not around. My life is better." And now I actually have a more clear picture of reality without that thing constantly pouring in. I can better focus on what is good. That's great. Such a simple step. That's great. It's a good process. It's also a gradual process.

Swedenborg writes, continues in New Jerusalem, "Some signs that our sins have been forgiven, that is, put aside, are the following." Here, here's the perks. "We sense a pleasure in worshiping God for God's sake and in helping our neighbor for our neighbor's sake." Okay, a pleasure. So one pleasure replaces another. Like we've changed pleasures. Yeah. It's, yeah. Right, right. No, it's, it's an actual thing you enjoy. Yeah. You get something you enjoy, which is, uh, whatever worshiping God is. There's, there's a lot of nuance around what that is, you know. He'll say in other places that you, living a good life is worshiping God. That's right. So you enjoy that. Also, you enjoy doing nice things. You're Ebon or Scrooge after the spirits came and you're like, "You lad, go buy that turkey. I want to help Bob Cratchit. I'm going to help you. I'm going to help all these people." And not 'cause I'm scared that those spirits are going to come back, but I love this. I love this. I'm so excited. I'm still alive and it's Christmas. It's a pleasure to think of surprising Cratchit. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's such a good, such a good movie. I'm thinking of the Muppet version, of course. Which means, "And helping our neighbor for our neighbor's sake." Which means in doing good for its own sake, and speaking truth for its own sake. We do not want credit for our caring or our faith. We reject and turn our back on evils like enmity, hatred, vindictiveness, adultery, and even the very thoughts that go along with intentions in such directions. Ah, even the very thought. So those activities, but also the thoughts. Yeah. I like when he, when he lists it out because it was fun to have the list, isn't it? Because you, because often they are like cruelty and things like that. Yeah. I understand that enmity. I understand with that is hatred, vindictiveness, adultery. I get that stuff. I get why. Because you can have people who look over at religious people and they say, "They're talking about sin and not doing that, but they're so mean." Right. Those people. And you can list off, "Here's, here's all the things that they do." But to say, "What is so just like you got to have a picture of God that dictates everything." Your picture of what sin actually is changes everything about this process. Especially sin is the opposite of God. So if God is love and forgiveness and everything, of course the opposite of that is enmity, hatred, vindictiveness, adultery, so on, so on, so on. Yeah. So don't do that. And, and you, you're able to. A lot. Nobody who's wallowing in that stuff, usually we don't really want to be wallowing in it. You feel like you're trapped in it. What you get out of doing this process is you get to reject that stuff. And even the very thoughts that go along with intentions in such directions. That's pretty good.

In contrast, "Some signs that our sins have not been forgiven, that is, put aside, are the following." I, by the way, I love the signs thing too. Like, here, here's, you, you did that process. You did the thought experiment. Now here's a little mental checklist. Just have, have a look at this to see whether you're making any progress. Here's your mental checklist. "We worship God, but not for God's sake." So even it's not like, "Oh, we don't worship God anymore." And I think in Swedenborg's time, there was sort of a societal compulsion. Everyone should go to church. But you could be in there just like, "I'm just trying to keep up appearances." Or even Swedenborg loves to harangue people who, "I'm going to ascend in the church so that I have power," even though I don't care one lick about loving the neighbor. And that's right. We, uh, we help our neighbor, but not for our neighbor's sake. To, to look good or to, right. We got some other motive. Which means that we do not do good for its own sake or speak truth for its own sake, but for self-serving and worldly reasons. We want credit for what we do. We do not find evils like enmity, hatred, vindictiveness, and adultery at all distasteful and entertain these evils in our thoughts with a complete lack of restraint. Okay. That's a very important last point that he makes there. That if your mind, like looking at what your mind does when it's a neutral kind of thing, when the car is not running, where does your mind go in those spare moments? And if your mind is just constantly and with no sense of like, "I should probably not be thinking about this." It's different. It's different if you're spent 10 years, you know, contemplating how to get revenge. But I probably shouldn't be thinking. It's, I get it that there's such a thing as intrusive thoughts. And I, there's plenty of people who are fighting these long, grueling battles against whatever breed of. How many, how many young men are like, "I'm struggling with lust." Like something that, like it's, I'm not trying to say if that stuff ever shows up in your mental field, you're not good. But it's the, it's, it's, "I'm not even putting up a fight. I don't mind this at all." And look at how complete restraint. Like, "I'm just happy to go, 'Oh yeah, wouldn't it be fun? This is fun.'" And look at how these two different people that he says, the person whose sins are not clinging and on so outward appearance, they're living the same life. Yes. Doing the same things. Going to, going to church. They're helping their neighbor. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's all about, um, what do you enjoy? And what are you indulging with in your private life without restraint? So that's the difference. That's right. And it doesn't mean if your sins are not forgiven yet, doesn't mean you can't. It just means now's a good time to start. Now's a good time to start that process.

Okay, to close here again. The reason why God doesn't just do all this for us right away is because about the free will. That we, we have a space in our heart that we have absolute con. We make the rules there. We, we choose who we let in and who we don't let in. Swedenborg says, "When we repent in a state of freedom, it works. When we repent under duress, it does not." The following are states of duress: a state of sickness, a state of mental depression because of misfortune, a state in which death seems imminent, as well as any state of fear that robs us of the use of reason. Sometimes people who are evil and in our state of duress do things that are good and make promises to repent. But when they find themselves in a state of freedom, they return to their old life of evil. It is different for people who are good. Yeah. That's an interesting little caveat at the end there. Well, and that's goes back to in the beginning, "Will God forgive me for what I've done?" What if what you're afraid of is God is going to throw you into hell? That you cannot help but repent in a state of duress. That's right. That that itself is a state of duress, which is fine. Sometimes. And it just doesn't work. I love that he just says, "It just doesn't work." That's all. It's not going to. The only bad thing I can say about it is it doesn't work. It may stop you from doing some things internally, but it's not going to change your heart, which is what God's really after, which is what really matters. Because through this process, it's not going to bring you from hell into heaven and get those sins to not cling to you. I love that. I love anything, uh, that speaks about real change. You know, there's so much of where you feel like you're stuck in things, you can't get anywhere. I love this system and this theology because it talks about real change that people can actually become angels. You know, that people's nature can actually change from from being something sort of, uh, you know, nasty and awful that other people don't be around, want to be around, to something nice and a and a blessing to be around. I, I love that change. And that's what God wants all of us to experience. And you can never have so much debt, like evil debt, that you can't start this process right now. Yeah. And improve. Then this is not just us saying that. It's not even just Swedenborg saying that. Jesus Christ says this. This is from John 8. This is the famous story of the woman caught in adultery. Who doesn't it say? Didn't Swedenborg in that list say adultery? Adultery was in the list. Absolutely. So, so let's say God, who we all have been told is this ultimate judge. What if he encounters someone who is doing the very thing that he hates? The hammer is going to come down. Absolutely. Here we go. No question. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left with the woman standing there. And this is after Jesus has said, "He who was without sin, cast the first stone." Yes. So he puts the sin on on the other people who are he's saying like, "Stop judging." Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. And this encapsulates the entire episode. Here. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin." God will never judge you or condemn you. And you got to repent and get out of this because otherwise this sin is going to ruin your life. And "go" doesn't mean leave me. It means leave what you were doing. Yeah. Leave that life behind. Yeah. "Go" means, "Okay, let's begin a new life." Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's. I'm, you know what? Let's get off this podcast. I got to go and lead a good life. Man, I'm pumped about that. Now. Thank you so much for hanging out. It's been so fun as always. Thanks everybody for watching and listening. Hopefully, this is something that's useful to you and you'll, you'll, uh, think back on it as you go and live your life and embark on this process. [Music] Oh.