The Pro-Love Agenda

Dylan's argument for the equal rights of homosexual people stands on the back of the greatest commandment, to love the Lord above all, and the neighbor as oneself. In a world of nuance and division, this message simplifies the terrain and encourages us to enlarge our concept of the human family. This is the second essay in our series on homosexuality -Editor.

I was asked to write a "liberal" response to the idea of homosexuality, a subject that is being debated here as well as many other places in our culture right now. I don't want to do that. I think these two teams have already done a very fine job of establishing their talking points and worldviews by this point, and all the movements, laws, websites and other armaments are firmly institutionalized to support either position. This culture war is already a war of attrition, each side hoping...I don't know, that the other side will be worn down enough that they'll relent and admit intellectual and theological defeat? Or that maybe the issue will just disappear, and all the detractors with it? I doubt most people even have a strategy for how this should all play out. They have strong emotions, and convictions, and that's enough to dig in and swing away - thoughtfully at times, crudely and aggressively at others. Either way, it'll likely fall to our children to settle this debate, mostly by not being interested in it. They'll have the robot uprising to think about after all, and gay rights will be lumped into the "issues my parents fought over" bucket, along with Facebook privacy concerns and lamentations over the death of paper books.

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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.

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