Britain has lost its church-going heritage. There is a growing voice of atheism led by Richard Dawkins author of the God Delusion, attacking what is seen as religious superstition. If Christianity is thought to be judgmental, hypocritical and blindly accepting irrational dogma, why should anyone still believe in God?
How do you know what to believe? What ideals to follow? Is it what makes sense, or what others tell you, or what you have experienced and felt? Or is it what holy scripture says? Dr Jonathen Rose tackles this issue in this short video from Outer Streams. [youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZijNGxBLSFY]
If doing bad things is caused by environmental circumstances rather than individual moral choice, then surely an eternal punishment after death would be unjust? And if you balk at the idea of evil then you may dismiss the idea of hell.
Do you lack confidence when it comes to certain situations? It could be anything: dancing, playing sport, chatting with strangers, doing your job, making love. Yet, even confident people can get unstuck somewhere along the line. Calamities oblige us to reconsider the bigger picture. So when it comes down to it, in what can we place our confidence? In our own abilities? In the ideas of others? Or in something beyond all of us? One example of the last of these three possibilities is to do with what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called `the whole of Being’.
Turn on the television news and there is an almost overwhelming focus on financial mess, social problems or crime. So what actually is the meaning of life? When I look around me I can’t help longing for a better kind of world. Sometimes I feel we are so used to the unsatisfactory state of things that we have given up hoping for something better.
Is idealism completely out of fashion? Have we become too cynical to have a vision of utopia? Or are we too scared of being tarnished with the same brush as the fanatical extremists who have not been slow in broadcasting their own hate filled criticism of modern life. Perhaps I’m being hopelessly idealistic but surely society could be better. How can I find my perfect society? What follows are the prejudices of an idealist.
Swedenborg’s View of Spiritual History
Extracts from Emanuel Swedenborg with commentary by P L Johnson. Swedenborg Society, 2008; ISBN 978-0-85448-154-5; xv + 243 pp; £11.95 + p&p.
This intriguing book is a selection of quotations from Swedenborg’s writings that relate to his view of different spiritual ages of the world in human history. In bringing together this material, nowhere found in one place in Swedenborg’s voluminous writings, Patrick Johnson has provided a useful service. His added comments are helpful in giving continuity and relevant recent historical knowledge, as well as some of his own suggestions.
Swedenborg can give us little guidance on dating these past ages, for his account is derived from an interpretation of the Bible as to its religious meaning. Despite this, The Five Ages shows how current ways of speaking might relate to both ecclesiastical terminology and biblical figures and events. The claim is that this holistic approach helps us to understand mankind’s psycho-spiritual development across different epochs, despite