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.
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