God glorifies Himself toward the creature also in two ways: 1. By appearing to...their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations which He makes of Himself... God is glorified not only by His glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart.
Jonathan Edwards

A Man Of Principle

A Man Of Principle

a man of principle

by Rev. Kurt H. Asplundh

“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” (Lu. 7: 24)

The text refers to John the Baptist. Certainly, he was not a reed to be bent this way and that by the winds of popular opinion. Indeed, as the Lord spoke of him, John was in prison for confronting Herod over a matter of the law. John was a man of principle.

In this sermon we will consider the importance of acting from principle. We need to ask ourselves why we do things. Do we passively follow the multitude to do evil? Do we choose to do what favors our love? Do we simply act from impulse or respond to the greatest pressure? Are we reeds shaken by the wind or is there a strength of principle in our lives?

It is remarkable how the Word speaks to life issues. The lesson read concerning the dreams of the butler and baker in Pharaoh’s prison teaches a most important lesson about our life. Yet this would not appear to be so.

On the surface of it, the varied fate of the two servants seems arbitrary. There is no apparent reason for the butler to be spared and not also the baker. How many have found any useful insights into their own life through this ancient account?

Just as the interpretations of their dreams was hidden from these prisoners, so the interpretation of the story of their dreams has been long hidden from us. Without interpretation, much of the history of the ancient patriarchs and Israel is as meaningless to us as a strange dream. Yet, because it is a part of the Word of God we accept it as a holy writ.

Those of the New Church are well aware that the Lord has now provided an interpretation of Scripture through the revelation of His second coming in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Jerusalem. Joseph said to the prisoners, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” (Gen. 40: 8). The Lord reveals the meaning of the Word to us just as He interpreted these dreams to Joseph.

What interests us particularly in this sermon is the meaning of the dream of the baker. Both the butler and baker were servants, but in different capacities. The butler was a wine steward for Pharaoh, king of Egypt. The baker provided food for the king’s table. As servants, both men were to be subordinate to their lord. We are not told the nature of their offense. They had simply acted with insubordination and were therefore imprisoned.

The Heavenly Doctrine which interprets the spiritual meaning of this chapter of Genesis notes that “where several persons are mentioned in the historic sense–as here Joseph, Pharaoh, the prince of the guards, the butler and the baker–in the internal sense they indeed signify various things; but only in one person” (AC 5095). This is a key to understanding what is meant. In one sense this chapter is about us–each one of us individually. Pharaoh stands for a quality of our mind and spirit that should rule; the servants for subordinate external qualities that should rightly minister to higher or more interior purposes of life. Joseph himself represents the presence of the Divine, at first imprisoned and unappreciated in our life, later raised into prominence in the kingdom.

Our individual life consists of higher and lower degrees or parts. We have our innermost purposes and loves, our emotions, our intelligence, and supporting sensory organs in the body itself. Every man is a kingdom unto himself; his parts and functions described by a retinue of counsellors, generals, servants, and citizens all under the rule of that which is king in life–our innermost intent and end. As in kingdoms, so too in individuals, there can be disobedience to the ruler, rebellions, failures. The ruler himself can lead his entire kingdom to destruction.

The butler and baker stand for two important servants of the king. We know these in the church as the understanding, or intellectual part of the mind, represented by the butler; and the will, or affectional part of the mind, represented by the baker. The distinction between these two is implied by the different service of each man: the butler providing wine or other drink, the baker providing food.

He who provides wine is representative of that in us which satisfies our longing for knowledge and intelligence. We thirst for truth. Throughout Scripture, wine is symbolic of spiritual truth, even as the drinking of wine in the Lord’s sacrament signifies reception of truth from the Lord. On the other hand, he who provides food is representative of that in us which satisfies our longing for delight and affectional support. We are satisfied with good. Again, throughout Scripture, bread or food is symbolic of spiritual good, even as the eating of bread in the Lord’s sacrament signifies reception of good from the Lord.

It is this very different function of the butler and the baker in the kingdom of Pharaoh and what this represents in the kingdom of the human spirit that explains how the one could be restored while the other was condemned. Both offended. Therefore they lost their freedom and function for the king. In our life, both intellect and will can betray us. The butler of our life can serve us the sour wine of falsity. Our understanding can be misled, perverted, uninformed. As long as this is the case, it cannot serve truly us. Indeed, we are born in total ignorance as to the understanding. Our inclination is to learn from the appearances of the sensual world around us. So our external sensations teach that the sun rises and sets; that material possessions bring happiness; that God does not care about famine and the destruction of wars, when none of these is true. Appearances can be deceiving. Therefore, an uninformed and misled intellect is a butler we cannot trust.

The baker of our life can serve us the mouldy crusts of selfsatisfaction. Our affections and will can be perverted as well as our understanding. By heredity, it is our nature to incline toward satisfaction and delight in life through all that is self-centered and pleasing to us regardless of its usefulness to ourselves or to others. Our inclination is to favor whatever appeals to our hereditary willfulness. Like a reed shaken in the wind, we incline to every pleasure that beckons, fall into every emotion and feeling that gratifies us, be it a sense of superiority over others, of revenge against those who oppose, or pride in our worldly accomplishments. So an undisciplined will cannot serve as our life’s baker or provider.

In the prison the men dreamed dreams. These dreams tell of the potential for our understanding and will in life.

The butler dreamed of a living vine that grew and flourished, bringing forth good grapes; and how he pressed these into Pharaoh’s cup to provide new wine. Joseph gave this servant the good news that his dream was a prophecy of his return to the service of his master. The spiritual interpretation that relates to our private kingdom of life is that the human understanding can be reformed. The falsities of appearances may be replaced with a living truth that is from the Lord. We may learn the truth about life and our restored intellect can serve to support true ends and purposes. This is the Lord’s promise to His people: “If you abide in My Word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn. 8: 31, 32). There is hope for the restoration of an understanding that truly serves the Lord.

The case is not the same with the hereditary will of man. It cannot be restored but must be replaced with a new will of good from the Lord. This is signified by the baker’s dream. He saw himself carrying three bread baskets on his head. The uppermost was filled with baked goods for the king, but they were eaten by birds. The Writings say these baskets had holes. Though there were three, one above the other, they were open from highest to lowest, without termination in the middle. This is explained as follows: The mind consists of degrees of life from inmost to outmost. The three baskets of the baker signify three degrees in which good from the Lord can be caught and sensed. “Each degree is a plane in which the good which flows in from the Lord rests, and where it is received, ” we are told. “Without these degrees as planes, good is not received, but flows through, as through a sieve or a basket that has holes in it, down to the sensuous, and then, being without any direction in the way, it is turned into a foulness which appears to those who are in it as good….” (AC 5145: 3).

All life from the Lord descends in pure form, but, as it descends, takes on the quality of the receiving vessel into which it comes. This general rule finds illustration in nature. As rain falls from the clouds it may take on pollutions in the atmosphere and, upon reaching the ground, mingles with mud and filth to become dirty water. It is not the water that is dirty or poisonous, but the things of the lower atmosphere and earth that have mingled with it. So, too, with life’s qualities: good in their origin from the Lord, but becoming polluted and defiled as they descend to the lowest sensuous degree of our mind, there mingling with the lusts of hereditary evils. At this termination of its descent, the life flowing in is perverted into a sense of delight from the love of self and of the world, consequently into the delight of hatred, revenge, cruelty, adultery, and avarice, or into mere voluptuousness and luxury. This is the case, we are told, “if the things of man’s will are without termination anywhere in the middle” (AC 5145: 3).

The baskets in the baker’s dream signify the quality of degrees of the human will at this day. They do not give willing service to the Lord, but simply absorb and pervert everything of the Lord’s good. For this reason the baker must be put to death. Joseph told the baker that he would die in three days. The interpretation for us is that our inborn will cannot serve heaven. It has no strength for good but is a reed that can be shaken by every foul breath of hell. The will with which we are born cannot be restored as the understanding can be. It must be put away and be replaced with a new will from the Lord.

The fact is that no man is good of himself. He may carry the appearance of good, seemingly doing many good things for the neighbor. He may have been born with a hereditary nature of a pleasing disposition and may even incline, because of this inherited nature, to please others with good acts. Yet, inwardly, his life is as unregenerate and self-seeking as that of the most criminal of men. “This good is utterly different from the good of the church, ” the Writings say. “They who are in this good do good in the dark from blind instinct, ” we are told (AC 8002). “They…suffer themselves to be persuaded by every one, and easily by the evil; for evil spirits…are in…the delight of their life, when they can enter into the evil affections of any one; and when they have entered into them…entice him to every kind of evil…” (AC 5032: 3). Such is the weakness of the will signified by the baker.

We are told that there are many who enjoy an hereditary natural good “by virtue of which they feel delight in doing well to others, but who have not been imbued with principles of doing what is good, either from the Word, the doctrine of the church, or from their religiosity…” Such persons are not received into heaven they they come into the other life. They marvel at this, saying that they have led a good life. But they are told that a good life from what is natural or hereditary is not a good life, but that “a good life is from those things which belong to the doctrine of good and truth and the consequent life; for by means of these, men have principles impressed on them…and they receive conscience, which is the plane into which heaven flows….” (AC 6208).

Here, then, we see the importance of religious principle and the hidden message for us all in the baker’s dream.. There can be no will of good unless we have a resting place for it in the mind. Acting from principle, acting from conscience, is what builds this resting place. The baker’s baskets had holes in them. Nothing flowing in could find rest in any termination or plane, but flowed through.

How different is the life which has heaven in it. It is a life “according to the truths and goods of faith about which the man has been instructed. Unless these are the rules and principles of his life, ” we are told, he looks for heaven in vain “no matter how he has lived; for without these truths and goods a man is like a reed which is shaken by every wind; for he is bent by evils equally as by goods, because he has nothing of truth and good made firm within him…” (AC 7197 emphasis added).

Rules and principles. We must learn to find delight in a life based on a conscience of what is good and true, or at least of what is just and equitable. Conscience is the plane and receptacle of the influx of heaven (AC 9122).

If we cannot acquire the highest plane of conscience, an internal will of good, the Lord mercifully regards as sufficient the formation of a lesser plane of conscience. There was more than one basket on the head of the baker. “Conscience is twofold, ” we read, “interior and exterior. Interior conscience is of spiritual good and truth; exterior conscience is of justice and equity. At the present day this latter conscience exists with many;” we are told, “but interior conscience with few. Nevertheless they who enjoy exterior conscience are saved in the other life….” (AC 6207).

Building a religious life involves more than avoiding open evils and flowing with the crowd. We cannot expect to prepare for heaven passively. We must make active efforts to acquire planes of good in our life, terminations, baskets without holes, which may receive the activity of the angelic heavens for our protection and inspiration. So the Heavenly Doctrine urges us that we “ought to be solicitous to procure such a plane” in ourselves during our lifetime. And this, we are told, is procured by “thinking what is good toward the neighbor, and by willing what is good to him, and therefore doing what is good to him, and thus by acquiring the delight of life in such things” (AC 3957: 7). We need a sense of “internal obligation” to live a life of Christian good. (See AC 4968). This requires our best and most creative efforts. We should work at this as diligently as we work at our offices and employments. We need to use intelligence, reflection, patience, self-discipline, prayer and strength. We must be ready to face discouragement and failure yet with a sense of trust that the Lord is nurturing every effort we make.

This, then, is the interpretation of the story of the butler’s and the baker’s dreams. The prophecy of the dreams came true just as Joseph had interpreted them. The hidden meaning of Scripture also is true in our life just as the Lord has revealed it. “Those who have not received Conscience in the world cannot receive Conscience in the other life. Thus they cannot be saved, because they have no plane into which heaven (that is, the Lord through heaven) can flow, and whereby it may operate, and so draw them to itself; for Conscience is the plane and receptacle of the influx of heaven” (AC 9122). Amen.

Lessons: Gen. 40; Lu. 7: 18-30; AC 5032: 2-4