The Will - One Leg at a Time

The Will – One Leg at a Time

Phoenix Fritch

How do you put your pants on in the morning?  If you’re anything like me, I’d imagine you put your pants on one leg at a time.  How much do you pay attention to detail?  Would you go the day with wrinkly pants?  If there is anyone that you are trying to make a good impression on, wrinkly pants could be devastating for your image.  Our natural clothing can tell people a lot about ourselves, and close friends can even tell when one another is having a bad week by the clothes they are wearing.  However, much like how our natural clothing casts an impression of us onto others, our spiritual clothing imputes the good or evil nature of our will to others.  If you imagine that any truth you accept is similar to a garment that you wear, you can begin to see how your spiritual garments lead to judgments of your spiritual character.  Furthermore, due to the nature of imputation, by proving that your spiritual clothing is the same as your intellect, it can be proven that the good or evil nature of your will can be imputed to others through the intellect, or rather, your spiritual garments.

To “try on” the idea of spiritual garments, we turn to the parable of the wedding feast from Mattew 22:1-14.  A King is throwing a feast for his Son, who is soon to be married, but when the King sends out his servants with the invitations, nobody accepts the invitation.  The King, after killing all those who didn’t accept his invite, sends his servants out yet again - this time, however, the servants go to the streets and invite everyone they see.  The King instructed the servants to go to the highways and byways, and invite all the people travelling and the homeless.  Many accepted, and the wedding was well attended.  The wedding was going well, until the King stumbles into a certain guest attending the party:

“But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matt 22)

Doesn’t it seem a little harsh to throw out a homeless man for not having the right clothes?  These people came from the streets.  They weren’t rich and did not have the money to afford fancy wedding garments.  Historically, it was common for the wealthy lords and kings of ancient Oriental countries to throw extravagant parties with great feasts.  Servants would be sent out to invite guests, and the guests would pledge to attend the feast.  Upon attending the feast, the guests would be given clothing to wear, and if the guest did not wear the clothing, it would be considered an insult to the host.  Just because the man from the parable couldn’t afford nice clothes didn’t mean that he had a reasonable excuse for wearing the wrong garments.  Therefore, it was not harsh to throw this man out of the feast.

Furthermore, looking into the representation and symbolism present in the parable, we receive much more insight as to why this man was thrown out.  The servants of the parable represent truths from the Lord’s Word.  Everyone who hears or reads the truths from the Lord’s Word are invited to the wonderful marriage feast, which represents the marriage of love (good) and wisdom (truth) in the minds of men.  Those who do not attend are the purely external, and reject and turn away from the King, who is the Lord.  When the Lord sends his servants again, he tells them to invite everyone in the streets, and many homeless, or gentiles, attend the wedding.  Those who come from the byways are those who are on the minor roads between the highways.  Spiritually, if the highway is the path of good and truth, those who are on the byways are those who wander aimlessly without the truths of the Word to lead them.  At the wedding, when one gentile chose to not put on the clothes, he is symbolizing the rejection of the Lord’s Divine Truth, but his choice to remain at the feast symbolizes his faith-alone claim to Heaven.  He is a man who believes he wants Heaven, yet turns away from truth – a man who refuses to reform or regenerate.  He is thrown out of Heaven and his hands and feet are bound for two reasons; those who choose evil are a slave to it, and so he could do no evil to the other guests.  He is cast into outer darkness where he is left with discomfort in his will (weeping) and confusion of his intellect (gnashing of teeth). (Mitchell’s Parables of the New Testament Spiritually Unfolded Vol. II 226-241)

In the natural world, the impression you make on someone is very important.  Crucial moments in day-to-day life merit wearing something nicer and less comfortable than jeans.  People dress to impress on dates, they try to out-dress the opposition in an interview, and nobody wears sweatpants to a wedding.  Spiritually, the same take-away occurs, although this impression is much deeper than a job interview or impressing a cute brunette.  This impression makes evident the good or evil nature of your ruling affections based on the spiritual truths you accept.  In the parable, by choosing not to accept the King’s clothes, the man chose not to accept the Truth from the Lord.  This made the evil in his will evident, and he was cast from Heaven.  The clothing you wear lends to the impression others make of you.  Showing up to a wedding in sweatpants could be just as insulting as showing up to the celebratory feast for an Oriental King’s Son’s wedding in your own, vagabond clothes.  Spiritually, wearing the wrong garments doesn’t always mean rejecting the Lord, but it does represent being in a state of falsity.  Since imputation only imputes will and affections to others, and never thoughts (TCR 658), someone who performs an evil act from falsity may still have a good-natured will, and the good in his will is imputed, not the evil in his acts.  Since the individual has a good will, his evil is only a result of not owning the correct garments, or intellect, and there is no true, purposeful unity of evil and falsity. There is no spiritual judgment on him as an evil being because only the good of his will gets imputed to others, and not the evil of his intellect. 
“Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and so stood before the angel.  And [the angel] answered and said… Remove the filthy garments from upon him… See, I have caused your iniquity to pass away from you, by putting on you a change of garments.” (Zechariah 3:3,4)

Changing the garments represents purifications from falsities.  Through a change of garments, the falsity afflicting a good will can be removed, the individual will no longer be committing evil acts.  However, if the individual wears falsity as a result of rejecting the good, this is falsity from evil, and this evil comes from an evil will.  Here, you have the imputation of evil.  Evil from falsity can impute good, and can be reformed from, but falsity from evil imputes evil, and is the result of an evil will.

On the increasingly spiritual side, angels in Heaven wear magnificent garments based on the truths they hold.  When asked where they acquire their garments, they state that they receive them “from the Lord, and that they receive them as gifts, and sometimes they are clothed with them unconsciously.  They said also that their garments are changed… with their change of state” (HH 181). The garments are most radiant and of the purest white when they are closer to the Lord, and the garments dim as they move further away because “their change of state has respect to intelligence.” (HH 181)  Furthermore, the lack of garments refers to the lack of truth.  When “nakedness” is used in the spiritual sense, it refers to those who are lacking in understanding, or those who do not have the truths that belong to faith. 

Since I can now comfortably say that spiritual garments represent the truths that you choose to accept, I can further explore how those truths impute good or evil based on the nature of your will.

            It is interesting to note that there is a large differentiation between clothing and flesh.  Disregarding appearances, clothing has the same purpose as skin – to protect the body.  However, your flesh is something that you start life with.  Nobody comes out of the womb wearing pants.  Spiritually, your clothing represents the truths that you choose to put on, much like what you choose to wear in the morning, but your flesh represents the highest parts of your proprium that God makes alive.  Being naked represents lacking spiritual truths, but it also represents innocence.  The innocence is added to the proprium so that regeneration is possible, as well as make the proprium acceptable to have.  Much like the flesh has the ability to heal and regenerate, the innocence in the proprium gives man the ability to reform and regenerate.  Spiritual clothing is imputed; flesh is not.  (AC 163, TCR 658)

            In the Most Ancient Church, there were individuals who were spiritually naked, but they were comfortable.  They were innocent, and had no need to worry about truths of faith.  They followed their proprium, and lived as entirely external beings.  Towards the decline of the Most Ancient Church, the innocence began to leave, and people became ashamed of their nudity.  They began to hide or conceal their nudity by putting on spiritual layers, or truths.  This story is well known as the Garden of Eden parable with Adam and Eve.  After the individuals moved from innocence to intellect, that marked the shift from having evil from falsity to having falsity from evil.  Although having evil from falsity is extremely destructive (because it can impute good), it is far less damning than having falsity from evil (which only imputes evil).  Evil from falsity is innocence – it is what is represented by your flesh, and the highest part of your proprium.  Falsity from evil represents an evil in the will and a falsity in the intellect which makes the marriage of Hell.  This is similar to purposefully wearing the wrong clothes to an event just to spite the host.  Spiritually, it is recognizing the Truth, yet still turning away from it and believing and living by falsity that accompanies the evil you have chosen.  Once man is ashamed of his nakedness and innocence, he is being handed the clothes from the King, and he must choose to accept or deny.  Denying the King’s the clothing would be choosing evil over good, turning away from the truth, and imputing the evil nature of your will.  Taking the clothes would be accepting the truth, and imputing the good nature of your will.  The will is ultimately imputed through the actions and speech driven by your intellect.

            In an ideal world, where people are judged by character and not appearances, it would be easy to say that fashion doesn’t matter.  However, since your spiritual garments impute the nature of your will, it appears that fashion DOES matter.  What’s on the outside counts just as much as what’s on the inside (spiritually, of course).  The insight gained from one’s spiritual wardrobe is a much more valuable judge of character than their natural wardrobe.  It seems that the pants you put on in the morning say a lot more about you than you may have previously thought.  In fact, they say if you want to know a guy, you must a walk a mile in his shoes, but I would dare say that you can know him ten times better if you walk a mile in his pants.