One of the most difficult tasks a human being ever has is one we most often don’t even know about, much less understand. The Rev. Dr. George Dole, wrote a little book that explains another book. His little book is entitled A Book About Us. That book about us is the Bible. In its deeper, true meaning the Bible is about us from beginning in Genesis up to its last verse in Revelation.
We tend to think of the Bible as a history book or a religious book. It tells us what has happened in terms of God’s interaction with the human race on this planet, especially with his so-called “chosen” people, the nation of Israel. Given the history of the Jewish people on this planet, it is hard to avoid coming to that conclusion. Looking at what’s happening in the middle east today, we have to wonder if it isn’t all coming to a head once again.
But when we understand the Bible in this literal way, we run into all kinds of problems. And yet, we can’t seem to get past thinking in those historical terms when reading the text. Understanding what the very first chapter is telling us can help us to move inward in our comprehension of the Bible’s true meaning, and the more we can get beneath that surface of the literal text, what the Bible itself refers to as the ‘clouds’, the more we can understand the true meaning of this Book About Us.
In our last four sermons in this series we have been looking at the meaning of the Creation story as it appears in the Holy Word’s first chapter. Let me quickly summarize.
In the beginning, on the first day, the Lord said “Let there be light.” Our immediate mental response to this is likely to be that the stars were created, or something along those lines. But it doesn’t refer to the stars that light up the physical universe surrounding them. As a book about us… the first chapter of Genesis is referring to the awakening of consciousness within us. Let’s be cautious here. I’m not saying that the literal meaning isn’t intended also. That could be, maybe there’s a double meaning, but the important thing to remember is that beneath that literal meaning there is a deeper meaning that contains the real wisdom we are searching for. We have to get past thinking in terms of the literal meaning in order to understand that deeper meaning.
If we begin to grasp this inner meaning, in day two of the Genesis creation story we begin to see the difference between what is inside of us and what is outside of us and we begin to distinguish between them. Here the division in our minds, represented in the internal meaning by the expanse that separates the waters, is about the levels in our minds and the fact that the higher levels are separated from our lower, conscious level.
On day three plants yielding seed, trees bearing fruit, are created. These are ‘seeds of goodness’ within us and they produce ‘plants’ that nourish us and others within ourselves. Unless we grow we cannot become fit for a community in heaven, where only love is acceptable. We must grow these plants that produce the fruits of love within us.
On the fourth day we read about the sun and moon, but not the sun and moon in the sky. Swedenborg tells us that in the spiritual world there is a corresponding Spiritual Sun where the Lord resides, radiating His Divine Love out into the heavens and down through them to create this physical world. His Love goes forth from Him in the form of Divine Wisdom, information that forms the heavens and the earth, or the natural level of existence. The fourth verse is about moving our understanding inward and beginning to understand that the wisdom that we receive within our spirit is wisdom that helps us recognize that there is more to us than our physical body and our interaction with this physical world. Our very life is carried in the Divine Wisdom flowing into us from the Lord. Divine Wisdom is the form Divine Love assumes when creating the world and all that is in it, including us.
And so, this brings us to the fifth day. Let’s read through it once more. “And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the water is swarmed, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning, the fifth day.”
We are now reading about the phenomenon of regeneration. Different religions have different words for it. Enlightenment, illumination, transformation, reformation. Some religious traditions completely miss the point. The idea that faith alone saves us is just such a misunderstanding.
I experienced this during the therapy I received back in my forties. My therapist was a former Lutheran minister. I knew him as Bill. In the course of our discussion one day I questioned something he recommended. From my own understanding of things like the Ten Commandments, what he was proposing seemed contrary to what is good and true. I challenged his suggestion and the former Lutheran minister said to me, “But aren’t we taught that it is our faith that saves us?”
That whole idea seemed so strange to me that I really couldn’t respond, but I kept thinking about it. It just seemed somehow wrong. When I discovered Swedenborg and his interpretation of the concept of faith alone saving us, I understood why faith alone cannot save us. It is too shallow and does not require a change in our behavior, just what we say is true. Words versus deeds. We are changed if our behavior changes, not just what we say. What saves us is genuine Love for the Lord and our fellow human beings expressed in our actions. In other words, we have to change into a more spiritual being than we naturally are to begin with. This is called regeneration. This is what starts in the fourth day and develops in the fifth day of creation.
There are two related ideas within Swedenborg’s interpretation of the inner meaning to consider here. One is that Being is Becoming. Unless we are growing and developing internally we cannot become spiritual beings. The other is that Existence is Relationship. We cannot regenerate in isolation. Changes in us are not real until they are put into actions. Actions coming out of love require a recipient to receive the loving action, so relationship with the Lord and other people is required for regeneration. Faith alone, simply believing, won’t do it. We have to express genuine love and caring in our actions. Our brain can’t do it alone. Our hearts must also be engaged.
How does this change take place in us? This animation of our feelings of Love is represented in the fifth day of creation as the fishes, creeping things, and whales. These represent all the new ideas, new understanding, that grows within our minds. Edward Sylvia, in his book Proving God points out that this cognitive function in our memory is what we call our imagination. By this he means more than making things up. It is more like drawing conclusions from the information available to us. We have to actively think about this. Maurice Nicoll writes about “thinking in a new way.” We must think more deeply, more broadly from the higher levels of our ability to think that are not on this basic physical, natural level of being.
Swedenborg calls this ‘thinking with the rational mind’ which he says is represented by the “flying fowl” in the account of the fifth day of creation. The rational mind soars above the literal mind with its memory the way birds fly above the earth. Birds eat worms and insects, little creeping things. Within the bird these become new life on a higher level. In the same way the rational mind can soar above our pedantic mind with its emphasis on meaningless minutiae and discover new possibilities and deeper love of being and life. This wider, deeper understanding is represented by the great whales, the enormously expanded vision that thinking in a new spiritual way can bring us.
This is preparation for living in a spiritual or heavenly community where angels reside. We begin the process right here on the earth when we allow God to plant seeds of his Truth, His Divine Love in the form of Divine Wisdom, in the rich soils of the upper level of our minds. Here is the garden in which we can grow into useful beings, contributing to the perfection of heaven, God’s purpose in creation in the first place.