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

Notas a pie de página:

325. 2. Consequently, under divine providence everyone can be saved; and everyone is saved who believes in God and lives a good life. What has just been presented shows that everyone can be saved. There are people who think that the Lord's church exists only in the Christian world because only there is the Lord known and only there is the Word found. Still, there are a good many people who believe that the church of God is wider, spread out and scattered through all regions of the world, even among people who do not know about the Lord and do not have the Word. They say that it is not these people's fault and that they cannot help being ignorant. It would fly in the face of God's love and mercy if anyone were born for hell when we are all equally human.

[2] Since many Christians (though not all) have a belief that there is a wider church called "a communion," it follows that there must be some very general principles of this wider church that comprises all religions, so that they do make up one communion. We shall see that these most general principles are belief in God and living a good life, in the following sequence. (a) Belief in God brings about God's union with us and our union with God; and denial of God brings about severance. (b) Our belief in God and union with him depend on our living a good life. (c) A good life, or living rightly, is abstaining from evils because they are against our religion and therefore against God. (d) These are the general principles of all religions, through which everyone can be saved.

10638. 'Behold, I am driving out from [before] your face the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite' means the moving away then of evils and the falsities arising from them. This is clear from the meaning of 'driving out from [before] the face' as moving or shifting something away from the interiors composing thought and affection (for 'driving out' means moving or shifting something away, while 'the face' means interior things, see in the places referred to in 9546; and the interiors of a human being are the things present in his understanding and will, or thought and affection, so that 'driving out from the face' means moving [evils and falsities] away from these); and from the representation of the nations in the land of Canaan as evils and falsities, dealt with in the places referred to in 9327. But as regards which particular evil or falsity is represented by each nation, see in explanations where they are the subject; that is, for what 'the Amorite' means, see 6306, 6859; for what 'the Canaanite' means, 1573, 1574, 4818; for what 'the Hittite' means, 2913, 6858; for what 'the Perizzite' means, 1573, 1574, 6859; and for what 'the Hivite' and 'the Jebusite' mean, 6860. But these things are said in regard to the Word, for 'Moses', from whose face those nations were to be driven out, represents the Word, as may be recognized from what has gone before.

[2] The implications of all this must be stated briefly. When it says that if he observed what Jehovah commanded He would drive out those nations from [before] his face the meaning is, If they carried out the chief commands laid down by eternal truth evils and falsities would be moved or shifted away. Those commands are what come next in the internal sense, the main ones being that they should acknowledge no other God than the Lord, that He is the Source of everything good and everything true, and also that salvation and eternal life come from Him. And when people who believe these things and love the truth of them are reading the Word everything evil and false is shifted away from them, because at that time the Lord enlightens them and leads them. At that time also what they think does not originate in themselves, nor does their affection for the Word originate in themselves but in the Lord. Consequently no evil at all or falsity of evil comes in, for the Lord moves them away. These are the ones who understand the Word, have an affection for the truths derived from it, and also love to live in accord with them.

[3] But when people who do not acknowledge those main commands laid down by eternal truth read the Word they do not receive any enlightenment, and so do not rely on the Lord's help to see the truths there. Instead the things which they see they see all by themselves; and when people see things all by themselves they see falsities instead of truths, or if they do see truths they nevertheless falsify them by means of ideas of their own which they have adopted, or by means of their selfish loves to which they direct and so attach the truths, from which falsities of evil result. These are the things which are meant in the internal sense by the words of the present verse. The reason why those things are meant is that angels who understand the Word in its internal sense when someone in the world reads it do not become aware of Moses, nor of the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, for no names pass into heaven, only the realities meant by them, so that by Moses the Word is understood there, and by those nations evils and falsities.