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

Poznámky pod čarou:

65. The useful functions of everything created tend upward, step by step, from the lowest to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source. As already stated [52], these "lowest things" are all the elements of the mineral kingdom--various forms of matter, some stony substances, some saline, some oily, some mineral, some metallic, with the constant addition of a humus composed of plant and animal matter reduced to minute particles. Here lie hidden the goal and the beginning of all the functions that arise from life. The goal of all useful functions is the effort to produce [more] functions; the beginning of all functions is an active force that comes out of that effort. These are characteristics of the mineral kingdom.

The intermediate things are all the elements of the plant kingdom--grasses and herbs of all kinds, plants and shrubs of all kinds, and trees of all kinds. Their functions are in support of everything in the animal kingdom, whether flawed or flawless. They provide food, pleasure, and life. They nourish [animal] bodies with their substance, they delight them with their taste and fragrance and beauty, and they enliven their desires. This effort is inherent in them from their life.

The primary things are all the members of the animal kingdom. The lowest of these are called worms and insects, the intermediate ones birds and animals, and the highest humans; for there are lowest, intermediate, and highest things in each kingdom. The lowest are for the service of the intermediate and the intermediate for the service of the highest. So the useful functions of all created things tend upwards in a sequence from the lowest to the human, which is primary in the divine design.

100. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Put Aside Evils in Our Outer Nature, Regarding Them as Sins and Doing So in Apparent Autonomy, and That This Is the Only Way the Lord Can Put Aside the Evils in Our Inner Nature and in Our Outer Nature Alike

On the basis of reason alone everyone can see that the Lord, who is goodness itself and truth itself, cannot enter us unless what is evil and false in us has been banished. What is evil is the opposite of what is good and what is false is the opposite of what is true, and there is no way that opposites can mingle. No, when one approaches the other, there is a battle that lasts until one gives way to the other. Then the one that gives way moves off and the other takes its place. There is this kind of opposition between heaven and hell, or between the Lord and the devil.

Is it reasonable for anyone to think that the Lord can enter where the devil is in control, or that heaven can be in the same place as hell? With the rationality given to everyone who is sane, can we not see that the devil must be expelled for the Lord to enter, that hell must be banished for heaven to come in?

[2] This opposition is meant by what Abraham said from heaven to the rich man in hell:

There is a huge, fixed chasm between you and us, so that people who want to cross to you from our side cannot, nor can you cross over to us. (Luke 16:26)

Real evil is hell and real goodness is heaven, or in other words, real evil is the devil and real goodness is the Lord. Anyone controlled by what is evil is a miniature hell, and anyone controlled by what is good is a miniature heaven. How, then, can heaven enter hell when there is such a huge, fixed chasm between them that you cannot get from one to the other? It follows from this that hell must at all costs be banished so that the Lord can enter in with heaven.