Every love has a purpose. If you understand all this in the right way, you will be able to see the universe as a coherent work from beginning to end, a work holding purposes, means, and results in indissoluble connection. (True Christian Religion 47)
Every now and again, I drive to some familiar place, and ask myself, “How did I get here?” I’ve driven it so many times that the turns, the traffic, and the surroundings are tuned out. I don’t remember hardly a thing about the drive, but nevertheless I made it to my destination. This happens to us as well with our whole life. We have certain mental routines that drive us to various places, often without us remembering why it is we do these things. The fact is there is a reason why we do what we do.
To search for that reason, I started at the top, with God Himself. New Church theology states that God is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. That sounds abstract, but it can be better understood when we look at what love does. What it does is make things happen. It motivates us, it drives us, it is our will. God’s love is perfect, so He desires only good things, and His wisdom guides that love for the best results.
We are told in Genesis that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Unlike eastern religions, the New Church teaches that we are not actually little gods, but rather we are cheap knock-offs in the same way that a Rolex bought out of the back of a van in New York City isn’t a real Rolex. They may look similar, but the former does not function as perfectly as the latter.
What is similar is that we are governed by our loves. So let’s say I love ice cream. I love it because it gives me great pleasure; it delights the taste buds and cools the body on a hot day. I then think about ice cream. I go to the store and buy it. Then I start eating it. I love it so much I just keep eating it until I am just like it: fatty. We are our loves, and after death we find that our spirit is our love as well. The problem is that our loves are not perfect, our ancestors saw to that. By nature, we love hell, and all its filthy pleasures. Our job here: to freely choose to change those loves.
It is hard to do because when you love something, you naturally follow through with the thinking and the action. When that happens, there are even greater repercussions because now you have created spiritual associations that are of similar love, which help you in the same way your teenage friends pressured you into doing stupid things. Stupid things that give you pleasure. So we start doing these things over and over again until doing them just becomes a matter of routine. Maybe we gossip, or enjoy taking apart other people’s ideas, or trying to take credit for other people’s work. After a while, it just becomes routine. So too does the result. If our life isn’t the way we would like it, it is because we surround ourselves with people like ourselves. For good or bad, we create a reality for ourselves that we desire, whether we realize it or not.
How do we get out of this destructive cycle? How do we create a better reality for ourselves? The key is foresight. We need to see that our evil loves, despite their immediate pleasure, always result in pain and suffering in the end. We must mentally remove the pleasure from the love! Then we will cease to do the love and since love must act—it must do—the love will cease to exist if we stop doing it. This gives the Lord the opportunity to give us a new love, the love of joining with Him in His reality that will provide eternal happiness.
So next time you are unhappy with something in your life, ask yourself, “How did I get here?” What pleasure created a love that guided you there? Are you willing to give it up?