Bitterness and the Two Minutes Hate

 As a preacher I will not tell you whom you should vote for. But I will tell you that the 2 Minutes Hate mentioned in Orwell's 1984 happens all around you recurrently. You are regularly invited to hate particular public figures. Be alert for the temptation to hate and thus to break the commandment "Thou shalt not kill"; because this has consequences in relation to your forever home and your forever neighborhood. 

When we arrive at forks in the road in which we get angry at first one person or group than another, we must be alert. For the hells will certainly offer us the poison chalice of hatred, or that of contempt, or that of depreciation, or that of inner false witness which sees only the faults of others the better to dismiss them utterly.

We will be invited by society to hate each President in turn, in one's native land; so that we had or have an Orange Man Bad campaign and a Let's Go Brandon campaign. In each of these cases, we have panderers to the sin of hatred.

How should preaching get political? For surely the Gospel should penetrate to all our systems, all the components of our behavior and civilization. And that includes the political sphere, which should be suffused with the importance of the commandments of God and seen as an arena of spiritual combat; not merely in a culture war sense but within the very heart and thoughts of everyone alive. 

You will be offered the poison chalice of hating each President in turn, and specific celebrities, and various people in the public eye who appear very important but are in reality figureheads for vested interests; who are there to make you angry, there for you to hate, there for you to be outraged by.

This is how preaching should get political. It should not tell you whom to vote for, albeit it might emphasize the importance of commandments in all one's decisions and life. But preaching should point out the spiritual pitfalls of political hatreds that society has normalized around us. This is very important for the welfare of our souls and will certainly be part of the temptations of some of the people listening to this message.

We are tempted by varieties of intrusive thought calculated to offer every one of us personally exactly the sandpaper we need to become more loving people.

We are tempted according to what the New Church calls the 'order of regeneration', a particular order by which God orchestrates the regenerations of particular people. The evil spirits draw near to us, drawn by our very flaws; and we then face a put-up-or-shut-up experience that is very uncomfortable and which decides our fate forever.

It is important to note that these temptations will happen many times in the course of a believer's life, not just in one instance. So there is no need to be alarmed. You will have ample and fair opportunity to choose a forever home and neighborhood worth living in.

That is the meaning of this passage in Exodus:

"28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.

29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land" (Exodus 23:28-30).

Some of the temptations may resemble being angry at all the world, as the devil is said by Peter to be wandering around looking for whom to devour. Some may take the form of recurrent belittling of a particular person over and over again. Or perhaps the belittling will be of a portfolio of persons that keep becoming the butt of sneering and hatred and the like within us.

We do not benefit at all from merely believing that the Israelites ethnically cleansed Canaan. We benefit as believers who use the Word as our textbook from knowing what the driving out of the Hivite, the Canaanite and the Hittite means: the driving out of the Canaan of the soul of sin and error.

We do not benefit at all from merely believing that some particular ethnoreligious group is a chosen people. We benefit as believers looking into our Textbook from knowing what the chosen people represents: all people all over the world who have cleaned and are cleaning themselves with the orchestration of God; all people who have thus received sufficient divine love and divine wisdom within them to go to Heaven after they "die"; ie begin the next chapter.

Where does the sufficient divine love and wisdom fit into our lives? It fits exactly that proportion of ourselves which has been cleansed of sin and error; exactly the proportion of ourselves from which we have driven out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite.

Now, what did Jesus do in the wilderness when tempted of the Devil, the personification of all the evils which lurk in the human soul? the personification of all the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites in the land? He quoted the Word, which represents not only knowing the Word but practicing it in His life. 

How might this look in practice? Suppose you are in fact in a sort of fixed, intrusive thought state in which you recurrently belittle or sneer at someone. So this procedure of Jesus might look like your saying "Thou shalt not kill!" and accompanying this statement with a deliberate refusal to feed the belittling, the hatred, or whatever evil beast or bird it happens to be 

"10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.

13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful" (Romans 7:10-13).

If you as a believer take a commandment of God deadly seriously in both your outer and inner life, then this flicks a switch prepared in you from birth. God put the seed of this switch in you in readiness for testing people who signal their willingness to be cleaned by the water of divine truth as practiced in their lives. 

We will be tempted to hate leaders, celebrities, family members, other members of the same religion, members of other religions, particular countries and races, and all manner of others. In all these cases we are transgressing commandments like "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not commit false witness". We can with confidence sling these stones of divine truth -- for commandments are not just orders but truths! -- at the numerous temptations to be a nasty person inevitable in the spiritual cleansing of the inner Canaan. So that where the Kingdom of Heaven might be may become where the Kingdom of Heaven is. 

It is the same meaning as we see in Jeremiah:

"See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10).

Translation: 

"Understand that the Word has been set over the evils and the falsehoods excusing of evil, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to thrown down, and to implant an abundance of goodness and truth in their places". 

We benefit as believers when our Textbook yields operative ideation useful for genuinely becoming better people; and such a purpose causes the verses of the Word to rush together in healthy juxtapositions like stones standing upon one another in a dome. In no other way does the Textbook of His Word make sense than in the context of our desires/behaviors and ideation/utterances as arenas of spiritual combat. 

"yea and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul; that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:35).

It is thus that we are all in the womb of bitterness, Mary, to whom Simeon spoke those words.

The sword is truth of the Lord combating in our lives against the sins and errors which populate our inner Canaan and stand in the way of our joy being complete.

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11).

This joy is the building and the planting, the abundance of good and truth that are His name, the 7th day double portion of manna baked and boiled during the six days of combat, and the Sabbath rest. 

It is the 7th day of our new creation in Christ.

Along the way to the 7th day, and we are all along the way to the 7th day, we must bake or boil the manna; and must choose love and wisdom in the arena of our hearts and thoughts as the "sin becomes exceedingly sinful within us". In this and no other way will we drive out the Canaanite and the Perizzite from the land. May these indications be of practical use to you as a believer, sweet as honey to the mouth even if they are bitterness to the belly. 

"Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water: but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place" (Psalms 66:12).

These men who are trampling our heads are the very intrusive thoughts wherein sin becomes exceedingly sinful in response to the sword of the Word being taken deadly seriously. 

WATCH and pray.