The Fabric of Consciousness or Jesus Christ?

When searching out paths to happiness, do people need to choose between Christianity and a more modern approach that locates the source of joy and consciousness within them? Ronnie doesn't think so. He finds the two knit seamlessly together in the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg and elaborates on those concepts below. -Editor

Many people these days are skeptical of God because they have been told that God is some guy who died on a cross 2000 years ago with a set of arbitrary rules that we must follow to get to a prize at the end of our lives. Many of us have found this picture lacking. Because of this, a different kind of salvation has been defined by many post-modern philosophies, self-help books, and even recovery programs. These philosophies have led people to look within and discover the process involved in being “saved.” Not the “saved” we were taught as children, but instead a process in which peace, joy, love, truth, and connection to Divinity could be found, not outside ourselves in the walls of a musty old building, but inside ourselves, a kingdom we were taught little about as children.

Yet with all this I have found many in the post-modern world look back to the Christian roots of their childhood, and wonder if there wasn’t something good that went on between those stone walls of their church that was left behind. Maybe they even think fondly of the promise of that magic land that was offered at the end of their lives that was called salvation and heaven.

How do we reconcile this new salvation that our post-modern experience has taught us of, and the Christian religion of our childhoods? Do we leave behind Christianity and never look back? On one side something seems so important about Jesus Christ, and on the other side we have learned from experience that the fabric of consciousness seems to be woven of something much different than what traditional Christianity has focused on.

Well I believe the New Christianity, presented by Emanuel Swedenborg, a new revelator for the Lord Jesus Christ, has some of the answers we have been looking for that tie what is most important about both these worlds together. The New Christianity teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ is the God of heaven, and at the same time that He is the fabric of consciousness, that Jesus Christ became Love Itself through His own process of spiritual growth, and that He offers us this same process. His teachings, if seen in a new light, speak of a process which is universal, a process in which peace, love, joy, wisdom, and connection to the Divine can be found, not only at the end of our lives in heaven, but within us right now as well.

A flat interpretation of salvation is not the message Jesus Christ or the Bible preaches. No message is more common in the Bible than the one telling us that salvation is about life. Jesus said “bear fruits,” meaning to live well. Jesus said "feed the hungry, give to the poor, visit the sick and imprisoned," and that this is what gets us to heaven. He also said “the kingdom of God is within you,” (Luke 17:21) and that He would tear down that temple so prized by the Pharisees and build it again in the heart of “true worshipers [who] would worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).

Most importantly, the Lord would come not as a “light” for some select club who had a knowledge of the Word, but as a light for “all people,” (John 1:9) a light which shines in the darkness of the literalism of old religious consciousness, and brings a new universal perspective to the process of salvation.

This salvation that we are to wait for patiently is not a prize on the end of a stick, but the kingdom of God being established in us right now through a process that is universal. Salvation is something each of us has sensed as we have explored the nature of consciousness and life. The Lord came into the world that these rules of consciousness might be revealed, that we might know what will lead to peace, love, joy, truth, and connection to the Divine growing inside of us.

The Lord’s mind, His consciousness, can reform our own if we are willing. We can now turn to Him, not by subjecting ourselves to some blind faith in a God who does not make sense, but by opening our eyes to a light that is brighter than we have ever known, a light that holds the truth of experience in its heart, a light that feels as though it shines on the deepest levels of our being, and a light that is in His very Word that has been born into the world.

So we don’t need to let go of our experience of what has worked to bring true peace and joy into our life, and we don’t need to let go of the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is that joy. If we turn to His teachings and search them for ourselves in the light of His grace and truth, we will find the universal process of salvation, "a light for all people," (Luke 2:10-11; John 8:12; 1 John 1:7) burning brightly inside each one of us.

Ronald Schnarr

Ronnie is currently serving as a teacher at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. In recent years Ronnie has helped lead teen camps, traveled in Africa, played rock music, and generally kept it real. In the future he hopes to stay involved with the New Church abroad and has often thought the Lord may call him into the world of politics later in his life.