New Church Life Mar/Apr 2015 | Page 78

new church life: march/april 2015 The Lord, who is goodness itself, condemns no one who has homosexual inclinations. It is those who willfully act upon such inclinations who condemn themselves by fleeing from heaven and the Lord – “Because the Lord cannot be in anything except good.” self. Neither can a female psyche bring to another female what she needs to bring herself to true fulfillment. Therefore the nature of homosexuality cannot but be essentially self-serving. That is simply the reality. It is regrettable that some do not find their true other half to whom they can contribute during their life on earth. But I find Swedenborg’s testimony very consoling that in the Lord’s merciful providence single people who have sincerely desired a genuine marriage do find their longed-for partner after death and then enter into a wonderful marriage in that eternal realm where we remain as the man or woman we inwardly were here on earth. (See Marriage Love 54) Moreover, the pleasures of same-sex relationships can never be those of genuine love. “Love,” as it is so lucidly put in Divine Love and Wisdom 47, consists in willing what one has to be anothers, and in feeling the others delight as delight within oneself. That is what it is to love – to will what one has to be another’. In contrast, to feel ones own delight in another and not the other’s delight within oneself is not to love; for this is loving self ….. These two types of love are diametrically opposite each other in nature. Both indeed conjoin, and to love what one has in another – in other words, to love oneself in another – does not appear to undo that conjunction; but in fact it does so undo the conjunction that the more anyone has loved another in this way, the more the other eventually hates him. For such a conjunction gradually becomes undone of itself, and love then turns to hatred to the degree that it does. (Emphasis added) It is deeply regrettable that same-sex marriage is almost glamorized today as somehow being good, when the grim reality is that homosexual relationships generally have injurious outcomes, including promiscuity and drug use. The brimstone and fire that rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah are certainly a Divine warning of the devastating influence that such indulgence can have on human relationships and society. It is not surprising that since ancient times there have been proscriptions against homosexuality throughout the world. 188