Sometimes, it seems like the spiritual and natural "worlds" could be usefully imagined as two different TV channels. While you're tuned to one, you're generally not aware of the other.

We've been testing the New Christian Chatbot, working to make it better and better. I thought it would be interesting to see how it would handle a question about the strengths and weaknesses of the 2 channels analogy. It gave a surprisingly good answer, which I've pasted here, and modified only very slightly:

The analogy of the spiritual and natural worlds being like two different TV channels is a modern way to help people grasp the distinct but simultaneous existence of these realms. From a New Christian perspective, this analogy offers both helpful strengths and significant shortcomings.

Strengths of the Analogy:

1. Simultaneity and Distinctness:

Just as two channels exist simultaneously on a television but aren’t seen together, the spiritual and natural worlds coexist but are distinct. Our spirits exist in the spiritual world while our bodies operate in the natural world, yet we are normally conscious of only one “channel” at a time (Heaven and Hell 436).

2. Switching Awareness:

Changing channels resembles the transition at death — suddenly we’re conscious in the spiritual world, just as we switch to and become aware of a different channel. This helps illustrate that the spiritual world is always present, merely hidden from our current perception.

3. Underlying Reality:

Both TV channels are broadcast continuously, whether or not we’re tuned in. Similarly, our connection to the spiritual world is continuous, even if we’re not consciously aware of it (Arcana Coelestia 5849).

Weaknesses of the Analogy:

1. Separation Implied by Channels:

TV channels are entirely separate — you watch one at a time and they don’t interact. In reality, while we’re in the natural world, the spiritual world is not only concurrent but actually flows into and sustains the natural (Divine Love and Wisdom 89). Our thoughts, affections, and very life are continuously derived from the spiritual world; the connection is intimate, not merely parallel.

2. No overlap on TV, but there is with Spiritual-Natural Interaction:

Unlike the strict division of TV channels, the spiritual world interacts continuously with the natural world. Angels and spirits influence our thoughts and affections, and the Lord’s life flows into every aspect of our being (Heaven and Hell 292-294). This interactivity is far more integrated than two TV broadcasts.

3. TV Channels are Impersonal, but the Spiritual Connection is Deeply Personal:

A TV channel is merely received passively. Our spiritual-natural connection involves real, living relationships — with the Lord, angels, and spirits, even if subconsciously. The analogy doesn’t capture this personal, dynamic, and purposeful relationship (Heaven and Hell 600).

4. Does not adequately convey the cause-effect relationship:

Everything natural has a spiritual origin; the natural world is an effect from the spiritual as cause (Heaven and Hell 89– 91). TV channels exist independently of each other, while in fact the natural world can only exist and persist due to the spiritual (Divine Love and Wisdom 55).

Summary:

The TV channel analogy helps illustrate the separate but concurrent existence and the shift in awareness at death, but it falls short in capturing the living, intimate, causative, and interactive nature of the relationship between the spiritual and natural worlds taught in New Christian doctrine.

[Shared from the New Christian Chatbot. Copyright 2025]

55. Everything in the created universe is a recipient of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God. People know that each and every constituent of the universe has been created by God. Therefore the universe with each and every thing in it is called in the Word the work of the hands of Jehovah. ¹ There are people who maintain that the world in its entirety was created out of nothing, and the idea they entertain of nothing is one of absolutely nothing, even though out of absolutely nothing comes nothing, nor can anything be produced from it. This is an immutable truth. Therefore the universe — being an image of God and thus full of God — could only have been created in God from God. For God is being itself, and from being must come whatever is. To create from nothing, which has no being, something that is, is completely contradictory.

[2] Still, however, whatever is created in God from God is not a continuous extension of Him, for God is being in itself, and created things do not have in them any being in itself. If created things were to have in them any being in itself, it would be an extension of God, and an extension of God is God.

The angelic idea of this is as follows, that what is created in God from God is like something which in the case of a person had originated from his life, but from which the life has been withdrawn, which is such as to accord with his life, but still is not his life. This angels affirm on the evidence of many testifications which occur in their heaven, where they say that they are in God and God in them, and yet have in their being nothing of God which is God. (We will report further testifications on whose evidence they affirm this in subsequent discussions. Let what we have said here serve simply to inform.)

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