Blindness: Christians Behaving Badly

Wilful Blindness! The blindness that is incurable.

The will is the seat of our desires, our affections, what we love. It can receive what is good. The will is also capable of receiving the opposite, evil.

The understanding is the seat of our learning, our knowledge, our intellect. It can receive what is true (I think of truth as being an appreciation of reality AS IT IS). But the understanding can also receive falsity.

There is also a relationship between the will and understanding, between good and truth, between evil and falsity. And having a grasp of that relationship is key to understanding the problem that prevents our spiritual growth and development.

Heaven and Hell, paragraph 487: Only from a knowledge of correspondences can it be known into what spiritual delights everyone’s natural delights are changed after death, and what kind of delights they are. In general, this knowledge teaches that nothing natural can exist without something spiritual corresponding to it. In particular, it teaches what it is that corresponds, and what kind of a thing it is. Therefore, anyone who has this knowledge can ascertain and know what his own state after death will be, if he only knows what his love is, and what its relation is to the universally ruling loves spoken of above, to which all loves have relation. But it is impossible for those who are in the love of self to know what their ruling love is, because they love what is their own, and call their evils goods; and the falsities to which they incline and by which they confirm their evils they call truths. And yet, if they were willing, they might know it from others who are wise, and who see what they themselves do not see. This, however, is impossible with those who are so enticed by the love of self that they spurn all teaching of the wise.

[2] On the other hand, those who are in heavenly love accept instruction, and as soon as they are brought into the evils into which they were born, they see them from truths, for truths make evils manifest. From truth which is from good anyone can see evil and its falsity; but from evil none can see what is good and true; and for the reason that falsities of evil are darkness and correspond to darkness; consequently, those who are in falsities from evil are like the blind, not seeing the things that are in light, but shunning them instead like owls. But as truths from good are light, and correspond to light (see above, 126-134), so those who are in truths from good have sight and open eyes, and discern the things that pertain to light and shade.

[3] This, too, has been proved to me by experience. The angels in heaven both see and perceive the evils and falsities that sometimes arise in themselves, also the evils and falsities in spirits in the world of spirits who are connected with the hells, although the spirits themselves are unable to see their own evils and falsities. Such spirits have no comprehension of the good of heavenly love, of conscience, of honesty and justice, except such as is done for the sake of self; neither of what it is to be led by the Lord. They say that such things do not exist, and thus are of no account. All these things have been said to the intent that man may examine himself and may recognize his love by his delights; and thus, so far as he can make it out from a knowledge of correspondences, may know the state of his life after death.

Recorded on Sunday 6th March 2022