{"id":209,"date":"2010-09-16T13:52:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T17:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/colemanglenn.wordpress.com\/?p=209"},"modified":"2010-09-16T13:52:22","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T17:52:22","slug":"the-importance-of-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Context"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Phew.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a busy summer.\u00a0 Now that school has started up again and I\u2019m starting to have a regular schedule, I plan to start blogging more again.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been researching in the Writings<\/a> for a sermon on humility.\u00a0 In my research I was reminded of a passage on humility that used to really bother me but that I\u2019ve gradually come to love.\u00a0 It\u2019s Arcana Coelestia<\/a><\/em> n. 1594<\/a>.\u00a0 It says,<\/p>\n

But mutual love, which alone is heavenly, consists in a person\u2019s not only saying of himself, but acknowledging and believing, that he is utterly unworthy, and that he is something vile and filthy, which the Lord from His infinite mercy continually withdraws and holds back from hell, into which the person continually strives, nay longs, to precipitate himself. His acknowledging and believing this, is because it is true; not that the Lord, or any angel, desires him to acknowledge and believe it for the sake of his submission; but that he may not exalt himself, seeing that he is even such; for this would be as if excrement should call itself pure gold, or a fly of the dunghill should say that it is a bird of paradise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

That\u2019s pretty strong wording, and when I first read it it really made me uncomfortable, because it seemed to devalue human life.\u00a0 I could understand the need for humility, but that passage seems to advocate self-loathing.<\/p>\n

There are other places in the Writings that balance this teaching. \u00a0For example, one passage says,<\/p>\n

The human spirit itself, or soul, is the interior person which lives after death. It is organic, for it is joined to the body so long as the person lives in the world. This interior person \u2013 that is, his soul or spirit \u2013 is not the internal person, but the internal man is within the interior when the latter has mutual love within it. The things that belong to the internal person are the Lord\u2019s, so that one may say that the internal person is the Lord. Yet because the Lord grants an angel or person, so long as his life has mutual love in it, a heavenly proprium [literally, \u201cown\u201d or \u201cwhat is one\u2019s own\u201d] so that he has no idea but that he does good from himself, an internal person is therefore attributed to a person as though it were his own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That passage actually makes me uncomfortable for the opposite reason \u2013 it almost makes it sound like everyone is<\/em> God.<\/p>\n

The thing is, those are actually both the same passage \u2013 the second quote is from the next paragraph of the same passage<\/a> in Arcana Coelestia<\/em>, n. 1594.\u00a0 Taken separately, either part of the passage can give a person the wrong idea. \u00a0Taken together, they provide what to me is one of the most beautiful teachings in the New Church.\u00a0 A person needs to acknowledge that the good things with him do not belong to him AT ALL, that everything<\/em> that is \u201chis own\u201d is \u201cvile and filthy.\u201d\u00a0 But the reason for this is that only then \u2013 only when you\u2019ve completely put aside any notion of worthiness on your part, and any idea that you <\/em>are God \u2013 you can acknowledge that there are things within you that do not belong to you at all, and those things are God<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a frightening (in a holy fear kind of way) and humbling thought that God dwells within you.\u00a0 When I really am able to grasp it, I\u2019m overwhelmed with both gratitude and a sense of unworthiness.\u00a0 As I understand it, humility and gratitude, or humility and praise, are really two sides of the same thing: it\u2019s acknowledging how small you are and how great God is.<\/p>\n

Besides driving home to me what humility is really about, I think this passage is a good example of how important it is to take things in the Writings in context.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to get up on my soapbox a little and say that everyone should take at least one book of the Writings and read it through cover to cover as they would another book that they picked up from the bookstore.\u00a0 The first time I did this was my freshman year of college with True Christian Religion<\/em>, and that experience might have been the single biggest factor in me dedicating myself to the New Church.\u00a0 Seeing the way all the truth in that book fit together \u2013 and made sense of my life \u2013 I knew<\/em> (or at least trusted completely) that these books did not come from the mind of a man.<\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019ll get down off my soapbox.\u00a0 But I really do think it\u2019s helpful to read things from the Writings in context: in their immediate context, in the larger context of the book they\u2019re in, and in the largest context of the Writings (and the Old and New Testaments) as a whole.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phew.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a busy summer.\u00a0 Now that school has started up again and I\u2019m starting to have a regular schedule, I plan to start blogging more again. I\u2019ve been researching in the Writings for a sermon on humility.\u00a0 In my research I was reminded of a passage on humility that used to really bother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[47,85,98,155,200],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-context","tag-gratitude","tag-humility","tag-praise","tag-the-lord"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Importance of Context<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Phew.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a busy summer.\u00a0 Now that school has started up again and I\u2019m starting to have a regular schedule, I plan to start blogging more again.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Importance of Context\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Phew.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a busy summer.\u00a0 Now that school has started up again and I\u2019m starting to have a regular schedule, I plan to start blogging more again.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Good and Truth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/coleman.glenn\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-09-16T17:52:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Coleman Glenn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@colemanglenn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Coleman Glenn\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/\",\"name\":\"The Importance of Context\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-09-16T17:52:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-09-16T17:52:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/#\/schema\/person\/67084fc46a820b2077becdf97870d5e3\"},\"description\":\"Phew.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a busy summer.\u00a0 Now that school has started up again and I\u2019m starting to have a regular schedule, I plan to start blogging more again.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2010\/09\/the-importance-of-context\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Importance of Context\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/\",\"name\":\"Good and Truth\",\"description\":\"Thoughts & reflections of a New Church (Swedenborgian) minister\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/#\/schema\/person\/67084fc46a820b2077becdf97870d5e3\",\"name\":\"Coleman Glenn\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/16569baf5dfcd3892a2dbf985f6d2c9a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/16569baf5dfcd3892a2dbf985f6d2c9a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Coleman Glenn\"},\"description\":\"Rev. 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