A Parable for the Future

Its difficult to summarize what Dylan does in this piece. You should probably just read it. The whole thing has the tone of challenge and asks New Church people to expand their thinking, to not assume that they are entitled, and to expect the manifestation of the Lord's presence on earth to keep evolving and out pacing any of our own expectations. He also promises us a sequel.

The world is still evolving. 

I think those of us steeped in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg tend to lose sight of that. We're understandably focused on the 18th century, that great event some two-hundred and fifty years ago when Heaven bent down and touched the Earth for only the second or third time in its multi-billion year life span; that brief embrace that left us with a tangible impression of the beautiful, spiritual reality perched just beneath our time-and-space mammalian existence. And yes, it deserves such focus. Cryptic only in its girth and intellectual rigor, a careful study of the Writings promises its readers a consistent, comprehensive blue print of the Lord's intentions for the human race. It fills in historical and theological gaps that the Christian world has fought with for millennia. It offers hope, and a plan of action. Freed from dogmatic constriction and endlessly interpretable parables, the Writings also feel true. And we have them now. Awesome.

And we've had them now for two-hundred and fifty years.

And a lot has happened in that time. Electricity happened, for one. That was a big deal. Democracy happened. As a result of both, the future happened: globalization, computers, satellites, horseless carriages powered by Japanese magic, and hand-held machines that can draw from a virtually infinite pool of the world's collected knowledge while simultaneously beaming videos of Korean babies playing Beatles songs on acoustic guitar. We went to the moon. We went to war as a planet, twice. You, whoever you are, can contact me right now by calling 814-DYLAN-84. We could be talking to each other ten seconds from now, from wherever we might be on the planet. You, in an airplane thirty-thousand feet over the Atlantic, and me riding my bike over the Golden Gate bridge. That wasn't even true when we were born, but it's true now.

From the very futuristic vantage point of the year 2010, I think it's safe to say that the world is still evolving. It didn't end with the Writings. We're still going.

But again, I think we tend to lose sight of that. Looking back into our personal organizational history, we find a Swedenborgian community borne out of long-standing Protestant traditions, a direct hand-off from the spiritually defunct Christian church of the middle ages to the truth-seeking worldview of Swedenborgian theology. We also find a world increasingly disenchanted with organized religion, where those same Protestant traditions are migrating from the mainstream to the side-streets, and terms like 'Christian' and 'God' have become hot button words that seem to vilify and polarize as much as they harmonize and unify. They're political words now, and carry heavy political gravitas. They're words that everybody knows, and that everybody's already made up their mind about. And rather than forming a united spiritual community bolstered by the plain truth of the Writings, it looks sometimes like the last two-hundred and fifty years have left us more fractured than ever—more world-focused, more spiritually ambiguous. And hey, let's address the elephant in the room: the New Church is not growing. Organizationally, it's dying. With all of the world's technology and future magic at our command, there are fewer 'Swedenborgians' today than there were a hundred years ago. That's scary, right? What are we supposed to do with that?

Well, I'd like to suggest something. Something challenging.

And not challenging in the way that we like to be challenged. Not challenging like 'let's reach a million people' challenging, because hard work has never been that threatening to us. It excites our Protestant work ethic, gives us clear meaning and direction. That's how we want to be challenged. It's too easy, and I think deep inside we know that. What I'm suggesting is much more personal, much closer to our carefully protected egos and communal identities. Much closer to our deepest fears. Ready?

We're not entitled.

We're not the chosen tribe.

The Lord did not intend for the Truth to be accessible only to those with minds capable of reading and assimilating 18th century Latin (which should actually be something of a relief).

There is a very good chance that the Lord's plan for the human race does not involve New Church banners hung from every patio terrace. It likely does not involve globally recognized veneration of Emanuel Swedenborg. Bryn Athyn, PA will probably never be a major center of world culture.

And scariest of all: we do not need to wait for the world to come to us. It's evolving very well on its own, faster and more ambitiously than ever before. It's crazy out there. Changing, growing, evolving.

And the good news? The Lord is still there. He's still running the show.

He still speaks to us through the three testaments. But He hasn't stopped evolving either.

If a two-week timespan in the 1750's did not herald the end of the Lord's communication with the human race, maybe it just heralded the last communication that we specifically noticed. The last interjection that required words we'd never heard and ideas that had been lost. The last intervention that required a plan so ambitious and crazy that it set in motion a wholly new path for the human race. A series of events that started with a man in Sweden and led our species through the most dramatic cultural and technological upheaval in our multi-thousand year life-span. A series of events that have only picked up speed since that time, a growing snowball with now two-hundred and fifty years worth of momentum and accumulation: electricity, democracy, Korean babies, the future.

And maybe the Lord doesn't need us to focus so much on that original snowball. Maybe He doesn't foresee a perfected world where spirituality is so distinct from people's daily lives that it requires special terms, special services and officiations.

Maybe His plans are even bigger than we thought.

In my next article, I'd like to suggest a potential path for the next twenty years, a parable of hope and solace for the future. But in the meantime, I'd like to leave you with this: the world is full of uncertainty right now in every conceivable way. And amidst the countless confusions, there are just two observations that I would like to not just suggest but to emphasize. These are constants, the things I know to be true.

The world is evolving. And the Lord has a plan.

Dylan Hendricks

I think Dylan still lives in San Francisco...but he is Canadian.

Comments

[Roger]

Dylan, The New Church serves the Lord's purpose of disseminating the writings via, for one, the internet. You'll be surprised how many folks like me who are neither Protestant nor New Church have had their theological questions answered via the Swedenborgian literature on the internet. So what if all of who have imbibed the light of the Second Advent are not officially members of the Bryn Athyn "Academy" denomination? We can't join and swell the ranks for the New Church for several reasons - one, I am comfortable and embedded with family and friends in the Roman Catholic community of my baptism. Second, Swedenborg did not start a denomination. He partook of the life and ritual of an established church (the Swedish Lutheran Church, in his case). Mind you, I am grateful that there is a Bryn Athyn and there other General Church centers as lighthouses that propagate the clarifications offered during the Lord's Second Coming. Bryn Athyn answers my intellectual questions to an extent that the Vatican does not. At the same time, my emotional ties are with the Roman Catholic church. It is as if my intellectual left brain belongs to puny Bryn Athyn, and my emotional right brain belongs to the mammoth Vatican. However, I am not torn between the two - I am at peace. And there are others like me. That might be part of the Lord's plan. A miniscule New Church sending rays of light laterally into other Christian communities in a quiet, effective, non-confrontational, non-disputational manner - rather than asserting itself as the 'crown of churches'. Roger

[Chara]

Thank you, Dylan. This essay touched me. I love your final assertions, the things you know to be true. Even just the last one is a place where I can rest. Thanks for reminding me.

Thanks also to Roger for his response. Very well articulated and also very touching. Beautiful evidence that membership roles are not the only measure of the effect of the New Church in the world. Very encouraging to someone who spends her days in the aforementioned 18th Century Latin. :)

[Adriaan Braam]

Hi Dylan,
Thank you for sharing your frustration. Or is it not that what you are sharing? Maybe the elephant you mentioned has a different color :) I do think the New Church is growing very well, but maybe not in North America.
I do however share your view that it is about time we did something more than just call our Source "the Writings for the New Church." Any organization needs time to set-up shop, to get the basics right to reach a stage in which those that lead it can say: "Now we can stop looking at and focussing on ourselves, now we can do what we are in this world for."
My hope is that we have reached that point or are very close to it.
At some point also, those that run this organization should have this same shift in focus and represent (and sometimes defend) this organization to the outside world. Not just to have the end-product received and used, but also to give those that are not at the top of this organization the feeling that their involvment is a worthwile effort and that 'we' are making a difference in this world. Something to be proud of, however little we may have control over the use of the final product.

If whatever we believe makes us a better person, believe it. However many churhes we go to or belong to is not the issue. We are here, and the Lord came here for those that do neither. If I had not been raised in the New Church I'm convinced I'd be in jail right now. We all need direction and guidance but sometimes we need a 'higher power' who throws over our tables.
I have no knowledge of how many suicides are committed in one day, how many divorces take place etc. but things are not getting better and that makes me very sad when no real outreach seems to be done. How about spending one hour on Larry King Live and reach 30 million people?

For several years I have contributed and answered questions on discussion forum sites (Craigslist and Athiast sites) but always felt alone and very inadiquate. My English is bad and the spelling is worse, but it is better than nothing..
Regards
Adri

[Bronwen]

Dylan. I love this article. I found myself shouting 'amen' at various points. I'm ready for the next installment! I recently read a book titled "The New Christians' (go figure!) by Tony Jones. I highly recommend it (it kinda seems like you already read it or when you do read it you will nod constantly). Thanks for conveying this great message with passion and clarity.