Spiritual Freedom: From “Divine Providence” by Emanuel Swedenborg (vegetarian), Part 2 of 2

In today’s program, let us continue with selections from “Divine Providence” by Emanuel Swedenborg (vegetarian), where we learn that true freedom comes when we align our thoughts and actions with what is good and true, guided by our love for eternal life and our recognition of God’s Wisdom.

“Rational freedom is from the love of good repute for the sake of standing or gain. The delight of this love is to seem outwardly a moral person. Loving this reputation, the man does not defraud, commit adultery, take revenge, or blaspheme; and making this his reasoned course, he also does in freedom according to reason what is sincere, just, chaste, and friendly; indeed, from reason can advocate such conduct. But if his rational is only natural and not spiritual, his freedom is only external and not internal. […]”

“Spiritual freedom is from love of eternal life. Into this love and its enjoyment only he comes who regards evils as sins and therefore does not will them, and who also looks to the Lord. Once a man does this he is in this freedom. One can refuse to will and do evils for the reason that they are sins, only from an interior or higher freedom, belonging to his interior or higher love. This freedom does not seem at first to be freedom, yet it is. Later it does seem freedom, and the man acts in real freedom according to true reason, thinking, willing, speaking and doing the good and the true. This freedom grows as natural freedom decreases and serves it; and it unites with rational freedom and purifies it.

Anyone can come into this freedom if he is willing to think that there is a life eternal, and that the joy and bliss of life in time and for a time is like a passing shadow to the joy and bliss of life in eternity and for eternity. A man can think so if he will, for he has rationality and liberty, and the Lord, from whom he has the two faculties, constantly enables him to do so.”