Why Goats Go to Hell

Why Goats Go to Hell

“Sheep go to Heaven,

Goats go to Hell” – Cake

            “32. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left…  41 Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” – Matthew 25

           

            A passage like Matthew 25 cannot be understood unless we know the spiritual meaning of goats and sheep in the Bible. In The Last Judgment Continued, Emanuel Swedenborg gives such a definition, when talking about those in the first heaven who were sorted into hell during the Last Judgment: “For the most part they were the goats and those akin to them, who are named in Matthew (25:41-46); who indeed, in the world had not done evils, for they had lived well and morally” (LJC 10). So, goats are people who lived good lives but went to hell? Isn’t the point of living a good life so that we go to heaven? Last Judgment Continued has the answer too: they – the goat people – went to hell because “they had not done goods from a good origin, for they had separated faith from charity, and hence had not regarded evils as sins” (LJC 10). While it is a simple answer, to many it is not a satisfying one.

            Before we go further, let us solidify the meaning of goats through an example; what does it look like to be a goat? In our example, we have Timothy and Dorothy. Timothy and Dorothy are next door neighbors, they both pay their taxes, they mow their lawns and they give money to charity at Christmas. Timothy is a successful lawyer and Dorothy is a good nurse. Dorothy though, is a goat, not because she is choosing evil, but because she is not rejecting evil. The problem is that if we are not rejecting evil, it becomes a part of our life, and external moral or good actions do not prevent this. While Timothy is trying to stop losing his temper, and is working on curbing this impulse because he sees how harmful it is, Dorothy is just living her life, and while not being deliberately mean to people because they would ostracize her, also not keeping from thinking negatively about them. She won’t steal, she won’t murder, she will obey all laws and her job will help many people. But if she is not trying to remove evils and turn to the Lord, the only other option is to turn to herself, and so self-love becomes the guiding force in her life. Good actions are then done only to further her reputation, the law is only obeyed for fear of punishment and loss of this reputation, and smaller unkindness’s and thoughts, are not fought against from a place of principle. If the laws and restrictions were removed then, how would Dorothy behave? Dorothy is not directly choosing evil, but she is also not not choosing it. This is a picture of why goats could end up in hell. Keeping Dorothy-goat in mind, we will seek to further understand why being morally good is not enough and why it is not even satisfying on earth, through taking a closer look at what it means to be a goat, our default tendency to evil, and then repentance and use.

            Goats are those who “do not regar[d] evil as sins” (LJC 10), so let’s see why this matters so much. As shown with Dorothy, goats are people who have done good in life, and to all outward appearances, seem like good people. But, Divine Providence explains them as “people who had given no thought to the evil within themselves and who are constantly engaged in it because of this neglect” (DP 101). This seems to indicate that we have a default state of evil that, if not actively removed, will remain and grow, but more will be said about our default state later. However, not regarding evil as a sin is dangerous because it means that “we wind up inevitably not knowing what evil is and then loving it because of the pleasure it offers us” (DP 101). Because evil often feels good and satisfies many of our natural desires, if we are not striving to act from a good place, we will fall into doing merely what feels best which, on a natural level, is evil. Think of some natural things that feel good on a sensory level: sleep, eating, physical affection. Used in the right way, these can all be good and fulfilling, but if we indulge them merely because they feel good, we can very easily become lethargic, overweight and involved in damaging relationships. Since such an empty lifestyle inevitably leaves us feeling empty, there is always the need to find more for me, more to satisfy me. Spiritually speaking, people who are being guided by sensory pleasures, and not shunning evil because it is evil, will become absorbed in self-fulfillment and thus evil (DP 101), like Dorothy. Just because this evil is subtle, does not mean it is not harmful. Furthermore, if we do not regard evils as sins, “we are still doing them in spirit, because it is our spirit that thinks and intends” (DP 101). Whatever our outward behavior, shunning evils as sins is thus crucial to being a good person, let alone a happy one.

            But why the focus on shunning evils; if we’re being morally good people, will we have evils to shun? The simple answer is: yes, because we have a proprium. Since the beginning of the decline of the Most Ancient Church, humans have had a proprium, “soul from [our] parent[s]” (DP 206), a sense of self apart from the Lord, symbolized by the creation of Eve (AC 151). It is from this proprium and hereditary from our parents that our evil desires come, as they certainly don’t come from the Lord. Divine Providence describes prudence as coming either from us or the Lord. We are either guiding our own lives and pushing the Lord out, or choosing to let Him guide us as much as possible (DP 206). Therefore, if we, like Dorothy, are not regarding evils as sins to be shunned, and thus not turning to the Lord, what could we be following but our own prudence, and our own proprium? And when guided from our proprium, although we can be morally and outwardly good, “the good which man does from the proprium is not good, but in itself is evil, because done for the sake of self and the world” (NJHD 82).  Because of our propriums, the options are simply: the Lord or self. Because Dorothy-goats were not turning to the Lord, they were guided by their proprium and own prudence, which is evil.

            In addition, while our free will demands we are held in spiritual equilibrium, our natural tendency and default state is to turn to evil. This tendency is so strong that “in consequence of his hereditary evil a person forever goes panting toward the lowest hell, whereas the Lord by His providence is constantly diverting him and drawing him back from there” (DP 183). Even children, who have not had a chance to choose evil and so are not culpable, “are nothing but evil” and so must be withheld from it (AC 2309). We have such a strong tendency to evil, and evil often feels good, that if we are not actively shunning sins, we are going to slip in to them, as the Dorothy-goats did. Because of our natural tendencies, the goats did not have to be choosing overt evil to be orienting their lives to evil.

            To make matters worse, we not only have tendencies towards evil, but hell is actively attacking us and the Lord can only push it back if we are turning to Him through repentance. Repentance is the only way in which evil can be removed as “sins cling to a person no matter how much he supposes them to have been forgiven… nor are they removed from him except through a life in keeping with the commandments of faith” (AC 8393). This is known as “repentance in life” which is true repentance -- not merely spoken, but lived (AC 8393). Keeping this definition of repentance in mind, consider that “hell attacks us all with diabolical fury” and that “if the Lord did not counter hell and control it, we could not help succumbing” (TCR 123). To illustrate this, note these depictions of the power with which hell attacks us:  it is like “battle against the armies of every nation in the entire world, armed with spears, shields, swords, guns, and cannons”, “someone fighting against all the wild animals in the world” and “resisting the whole ocean after dikes have broken and waves are pounding cities and the countryside” (TCR 123). It is one thing to know the Lord fights hell for us, it is another to see just how helpless we would be without Him, for our foe is unstoppable if faced by us alone. But with the same strength He used when He subdued the hells on earth, “the Lord uses… divine power today to fight against hell in every one of us who is being regenerated” (TCR 123). And as the first steps in regeneration are identifying and then repenting of sins, repentance is necessary in order for the Lord to bring all of His might to fight on our side. Goats are refusing the Lord this power, and while the Lord is still with every created thing, He cannot fight for them the way He desires to. Through her lack of repentance, Dorothy allowed the hells to attack her with all of their terrible power.

            Aside from the power of hell and our tendencies to evil, life as a Dorothy-goat is not even fulfilling in the natural world. The reason for this is again found in Last Judgment Continued: “they had separated faith from charity” (LJC 10). The New Church teaches that happiness comes through use, and you are useful when you act in charity directed by faith: “these knowledges must have use as their end, and when they have use, they have life as their end” (AC 1964). Dorothy did not live this way, but instead, separated faith and charity. Her life then, which contained good actions, was not charitable, as charity that is not directed by truth is not true charity. Since Dorothy was not acting from a marriage of faith and charity and thus could not be truly charitable, she herself could not be useful, even though her job as a nurse helped people. And “without a life of use, the rational becomes as here described, resembling a wild-ass, morose, pugnacious, and characterized by a parched and dry life, from a kind of love of truth that is defiled with the love of self” (AC 1964). Even on earth, life as a goat would have been parched and empty. Dorothy was hitting the right marks externally, but that was not enough for happiness or salvation, since she was not also repenting and growing spiritually.

            So Dorothy needs repentance for happiness, but, can’t she just join good and truth without having to repent? Again, the answer is simple: no, because “good before repentance is not good, nor, before repentance, is charity charity” (Charity 207.7). If we take water from a muddy stream, we would expect the water to be muddy. We cannot act in genuine good if we are following our own evil proprium and prudence. “Before repentance a man is in evil… by repentance, however, the evil is removed and good is implanted,” and it is only then that we may join that good to truth and so live a life of use (Charity 207.7). Without repentance there is no marriage of good and truth, thus no use and no spiritual happiness, and there is also no salvation.

            While such statements may appear harsh and unjust, remember that it is not the Lord who is condemning the Dorothy-goats. “Being Mercy itself, the Lord is constantly forgiving a person's sins,” but we judge ourselves by not casting off the hells that cling to us (AC 8393). The Lord would be waiting, longing to help Dorothy fight back the powers of hell, but because He values her freedom above all else, He will not remove her evils unless she allows Him to. The Dorothy-goats brought about their own judgment long before the Last Judgment took place. During their outwardly moral lives on earth, they did not repent, and thus inevitably turned to their own prudence, and so the Lord could not save them.     

            Why do goats go to hell? Why did Dorothy go to hell? They go to hell because external morality is not enough. If we are not shunning evils as sins, we will inevitably fall in to them because they offer natural pleasures, and we will be guided by our evil proprium and default tendencies towards hell. Without repentance, we do not allow the Lord to fight against the awesome and terrible power of hell that is constantly attacking, and we are not able to conjoin good and truth and thus be useful. Without repentance we cannot even be happy, let alone saved. Goats are not repenting. Bu goats are not the snarling, writhing devils who directly chose evil; they are those who slid into hellish ways of thinking and acting, through not directly rejecting evil. The story of the Dorothy-goats thus illustrates that the path to heaven is an active one. We do not follow the path of life through the pearly gates, we have to fight off the wolves that attack us and try to change our course. Failure to do this does not mean choosing to be a wolf; it just means being a goat who is not choosing to fight them off. But all the goat has to do in order to make it through the woods is see the danger and cry for help; then the Shepherd will come running, and will fight for them with great power and zeal.  

           

“Now, I just want to play on my panpipes,

I just want to drink me some wine,

As soon as you're born, you start dying,

So you might as well have a good time,

Sheep go to Heaven,

Goats go to Hell,

Sheep go to Heaven,

Goat go to hell.” – Cake