Here we are in the 21st century. We know that the universe is an enormous place. We're just bursting with scientific knowledge. But how are we doing with the even-bigger ideas? Our human societies seem to be erasing them, or ignoring them - maybe we think we're too busy for them.

Here on the New Christian Bible Study site, we'll buck the trend. We want to explore the big ideas that give us a framework for living better lives. Here's a start on a list of big ideas from a New Christian perspective. For each idea, there is a footnote that lists some references in Swedenborg's theological works:

1. God exists. Just one God, who created and sustains the entire universe in all its dimensions, spiritual and physical. ¹

2. God's essence is love itself. It's the force that drives everything. ²

3. God's essence comes into being, that is, it exists, in and through creation. ³

4. There are levels, or degrees, of creation - ranging from spiritual ones that we can't detect with our physical senses or sensors, to the level of the physical universe where most of our awareness is when we're alive here. ⁴

5. The created universe emanates from God, and it's sustained by God, but in an important way it is separate from God. He wants it to be separate, so that freedom can exist. ⁵

6. God operates from love through wisdom - willing good things, and understanding how to bring them about. ⁶

7. The physical level of creation exists to provide human beings with an opportunity to choose in freedom, with rationality, whether or not to acknowledge and cooperate with God. ⁷

8. God provides all people everywhere, regardless of their religion, the freedom to choose to live a life of love to God and to the neighbor. ⁸

9. God loves everyone. He knows that true happiness only comes when we're unselfish; when we're truly motivated by a love of the Lord which is grounded out in a love of the neighbor. He seeks to lead everyone, but will not force us to follow against our will. ⁹

10. God doesn't judge us. He tells us what's good, and what's evil, and flows into our minds to lead us towards good. However, we're free to reject his leading, and instead opt to love ourselves most. Day by day, we create habits of generosity or of selfishness, and live out a life in accordance with those habits. Those habits become the real "us", our ruling love. ¹⁰

11. Our physical bodies die eventually, but the spiritual part of our minds keeps going. It's been operating on a spiritual plane already, but our awareness shifts - so that we become fully aware of spiritual reality. ¹¹

Бележки под линия:

59. We can conclude from this that Divinity is present in absolutely everything in the created universe and that the created universe is therefore the work of Jehovah's hands, as it says in the Word. That is, it is a work of divine love and wisdom, for this is what is meant by "Jehovah's hands." Further, even though Divinity is present in all things great and small in the created universe, there is no trace of intrinsic divinity in their own being. While the created universe is not God, it is from God; and since it is from God, his image is in it like the image of a person in a mirror. We do indeed see a person there, but there is still nothing of the person in the mirror.

6052. 'For every shepherd of the flock is an abomination to the Egyptians' means thereby a separation from perverted factual knowledge which is opposed to the Church's factual knowledge. This is clear from the meaning of 'an abomination to the Egyptians' as a separation of factual knowledge, for things that are an abomination are separated, and the reason why something is an abomination is that it is contrary and so opposed to ideas that have been adopted and to loves that are present (here it is opposed to perverted factual knowledge, meant by 'the Egyptians', since it says 'every shepherd of the flock is an abomination to them'); and from the meaning of 'a shepherd of the flock' as one who leads to good, dealt with in 6044. Factual knowledge that supports good is what perverted factual knowledge is opposed to. And perverted factual knowledge is what destroys the truth of faith and the good of charity, as well as being what turns order upside down, as magical practices in Egypt did. For there are many things in accord with order that were misused by the magicians of Egypt, such as correspondences and representatives, which existed as factual knowledge more highly developed among them than any other people. This knowledge conforms to order even when the evil make use of it; and when they make use of it to control other people and do harm to other people, that knowledge is perverted because it involves magic. As regards the separation of factual knowledge under consideration here, it is effected by a rearranging; when good accompanied by truths comes to be in the middle or inmost part meant by 'Goshen', perverted factual knowledge that is opposed to it is cast out.

[2] Up to now the subject has been the joining of truths to factual knowledge. Regarding this joining together one should go on to recognize that a joining of the internal or spiritual man to the external or natural man cannot be effected at all unless truths are introduced into factual knowledge. For factual knowledge together with the delights that belong to natural affections constitutes the external or natural man, and therefore unless a joining to factual knowledge is effected, none at all is effected. But if a person is to become regenerated his internal and external must exist joined together. If they do not, then all good flowing in from the Lord by way of the internal man into the external or natural man is either perverted, smothered, or cast aside, in which case there is also a closing of the internal. The method by which that joining together is effected is what the present chapter has described, the execution of which method involves the introduction of truths into factual knowledge.