Therefore people who live by both sets of laws as one law are truly moral
and live a life of goodwill.
Anyone who wants to grasp the nature of goodwill is capable of
doing so by looking at the nature of outward moral life. Just copy the
outward moral life you have in civil interaction into your inner self so
that your inner willing and thinking parallel the actions of your outer
self, and you will see a model of goodwill.
A Bond of Love That We Form with Others
without Considering Their Spiritual Nature
Is Damaging after DeathA “bond of love” is an inner friendship in which we love not only other 446
people’s outer selves but also their inner selves without investigating what
their inner selves or spirits are like. We should investigate this to see
whether the feelings in their minds relate to loving their neighbor and lov-
ing God and are therefore compatible with angels in heaven or whether
they relate to forms of love that go against their neighbor and God and are
therefore compatible with devils.
Many people form deep bonds of love like this, for a variety of rea-
sons and purposes. This is different from friendship with someone’s outer
persona alone, which we develop for the sake of various physical and sen-
sual pleasures and different types of social interaction. This second type
of friendship can be formed with anyone, even with a jester who jokes
around at a duke’s table. I am calling this latter type of friendship simply
“friendship” while the former type I am calling a “bond of love,” because
friendship is an earthly connection but love is a spiritual connection.
A bond of love like this is damaging after death, as we can see from 447
the state of heaven, the state of hell, and the state of our spirit in relation
to both.
The state of heaven is that it has been divided into countless commu-
nities according to all the different feelings of love for what is good. Hell
on the other hand has been divided according to all the different feelings
of love for what is evil.
After we die and become spirits, we are immediately attached to the
community that shares our dominant love, based on the way we lived in
the world. This community is in heaven if love for God or for our
neighbor was primary among all the things we love. We are assigned to a
§447 goodwill & good actions 531