A Home for Love

Ronnie Schnarr takes the fourth slot in the series on Women as Ordained Priests (or Not). However, acknowledging his current lack of firm conclusion on the subject, Ronnie sidesteps debate and takes a different approach to the subject. He paints a picture which conveys the beautiful blessings we might pursue by rethinking our priorities as a society. -Editor.

First of all, I would like to say that my opinion has not been fully solidified on this topic so I would I hope I wouldn’t be tied down to my opinion, but for the sake of balance I thought it would be useful to make this post. I think the most important thing about this question is the context in which you look at it and here is a context that I would offer for your consideration.

Here is a question for you and a quote to ponder:

How does love come into the world?

(From Secrets of Heaven 2039.) There are loves of three kinds that constitute the celestial things (love predominant things) of the Lord's kingdom, namely, conjugial love, love for infants, and the love for society, or mutual love. Conjugial love is the principal love of all, because it has within it the end of greatest use, namely, the propagation of the human race, and thereby of the Lord's kingdom, of which it is the seminary. Love toward infants follows next, being derived from conjugial love; and then comes the love for society, or mutual love.

It can be really hard to see love in the world. Where is it? And how does it enter us? At times it seems so intangible. We know it exists between people, but it doesn’t exist between all people and many times we even see the opposite of love between people. The Lord tells us in Secrets of Heaven 2039 the secret to how love enters into this world. The Lord’s love finds its “principle” resting place in married love, the love that exists between a husband and a wife “the principle of all love,” this in turn flows into the love of offspring which married love produces. Next this love flows into the mutual love or the love of society which can be seen in the fostering parents give in raising their kids to offer something to society when they grow up.

Now from this passage we can see the way that love flows into the world. This is illustrated in the way domestic uses (uses of the home) flow into forensic uses. And so married love flows into love of children which flows into mutual love or societal love. The family is the core unit which the Lord uses to gather and reflect love and bring it into the world. In one sense you might call it the “principle” use of all uses. Marriage love is at its core and it flows into the uses of raising children and building families. When children are old enough they go out into the world and perform societal uses of their own and parents help facilitate that transition.

Something that is often not seen is that forensic uses all look to domestic uses. Whether it is the church, the government, or a business, you name it, they are all here to serve the principle use of having a place where love can be fostered and grown in families protected and spiritually inspired. This is often missed when we look out and see forensic jobs being given all the glory when these are only here to serve the principle use of making angels from little children (Divine Providence 323).

In fact the first church did not have a need for many of the forensic uses we have today. Church was held in each home where a father would prepare messages to be given by an influx of perception from heaven. Government was minimal since people really only interacted with their extended families. And business consisted of gathering food from the natural world (Secrets of Heaven 414).

Today we live in a much different world. There are so many uses outside the home, important uses, but still the uses of the home are what it is all about. All uses look to the married love, the “principle love” which holds love to the Lord.

So if love is the point, how do we nurture love and where is its realm of expertise?

So you see love flows into the world through families. But now for the hard question. How do we best form society to make this possible?

Well we are told that love oriented (celestial) people are all called “priests” and while they are the closest to the Lord, they do not fulfill the use of preaching. Heaven and Hell 226 tells us that all preachers are appointed by the Lord, and have therefore a gift for preaching. No one else is allowed to teach in the temples. They are called preachers, but not priests. They are not priests because the priesthood of heaven is the celestial kingdom, for the priesthood signifies the good of love to the Lord, and those in the celestial kingdom are in that good.

In other passages we are told that celestial people need to have visiting preachers come to them from the spiritual kingdom. This is because it would be hurtful to their nature to preach and they don’t want to preach. Something to note is that when the spiritual preacher is preaching, the celestial people are performing a useful function by showing agreement or disagreement with the preacher as he preaches. They are facing the preacher when they perceive he is preaching the truth and when they don’t perceive this they turn away. In a certain way the celestials actually give the sermon its direction and its inspiration without preaching.

So the real priesthood are those people who are love oriented (celestial). They don’t preach, but they are called priests. I believe this is because they are really living the truth and don’t want to talk about it. They live spread out, family to family; they don’t need governments because the Lord governs them through their hearts. Still they receive teaching from the truth oriented (spiritual) folks which they very much appreciate.

So we see that love must be nurtured by particular uses and also that love's expertise is not in the realm of preaching.

So how do we best promote domestic uses?

In the Writings we are told that both men and women have love and wisdom inside of them, and that women are forms of love while men are forms of wisdom each having their predominance (Conjugial Love 319, Conjugial Love 90-91). This seems to suggest that women have a greater expertise in marriages and family life. In fact we are told that married love can only flow through the female sex to the male. From this love also the love of offspring flows, and I believe because of this we are told that children up to five years old are supposed to be with their mothers. So it seems for love to flow into the world it is integral for women to be involved in marriages and the raising of children whenever possible.

This world depends on forms of love being brought into homes, families, and marriages, and I am thankful for all the gifts the Lord has bestowed on women who excel in providing these.

So with that said I am not so set on how hard we push people to align with their gifts, or if there are exceptions to this general picture, but I do think this perspective is where we need to be looking from. The uses of love are seeming less and less of value in our culture, and I think it is time that the uses of love be raised up to a level of greater importance than they have been. Love needs a home in this world and let us turn to the Lord’s wisdom about how He made us to best form our uses to support this cause.

Ronald Schnarr

Ronnie is living in Boulder, CO and is currently serving as an assistant to the pastor at the New Church of Boulder Valley. Ronnie is also doing some traveling ministry in Palo Alto near San Francisco and in La Crescenta near Los Angeles. In recent years Ronnie has led teen camps, managed NEXUS' (a camp for New Church teens), traveled in Africa, played rock music, and generally kept it real.