into which we have been created, and which we are invited to affirm.
Note, in choosing evil we are not stepping entirely out of the Lord’s life.
That would be impossible. We are, rather, abusing what He gives every human
being – and must continue to give – if His goal of reciprocal conjunction is to
be achieved.
But why would anyone choose evil?
Why would a person choose to love self and the world more than other
people and God? Why would people choose to insist on the appearance that
life and power were their own, once they realized that they came from God?
Why would they choose this, when God created us with an entirely different
purpose?
The simple answer is that every love has its delight. There are real delights
that accompany these lower loves. The delights are orderly when they serve.
Yet because they are delightful, they can be chosen and preferred above higher
delights. That is not the Lord’s fault. It is something He must permit, if the
choice of higher delights is to be genuine.
All of us have experienced the allure of natural delights. I don’t think it is
difficult for any of us to understand how others might choose them, and fall
into states of evil. We’ve all done this. Yet in the face of our experience of the
consequences of choosing the lower delights – conflict with others, dealing
with all the barriers to indulging them that the Lord’s order and life among
others pose, etc. – we learn over time that evil has a price tag.
More significantly, we all are given to experience the delights of heaven
– of serving others with integrity, effectiveness and good will, of cooperation
with others, of mutual enjoyment, of feeling others’ joy as joy in ourselves, etc.
These higher delights weigh into our choice of which delights will govern our
hearts and behavior.
For many people it is difficult to imagine that everyone wouldn’t eventually
choose spiritual good. How could they not come to see that it is better?
But there is no accounting for choice. This is true of people’s preferences for
natural foods and what activities they enjoy. Isn’t it difficult to understand why
someone relishes something that we find distasteful? We simply must accept
that it is so. It is true of the deeper mental activities that we find pleasurable.
Swedenborg testifies to the power of the delight of ruling, i.e., of exercising
influence over other 2