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:

457. It is different for people who only worship God but do not also perform good actions related to goodwill. These people are like covenant breakers. It is different again for people who divide God into three and worship each one separately. It is different again for people who go to God, but not in his human manifestation. These are the people "who do not enter through the door but instead climb up some other way" (John 10:1). It is different again for people who deny with conviction that the Lord is divine. All these types of people lack a connection to God and therefore lack salvation. The goodwill they have is illegitimate. This type of goodwill forms a connection that is not face to face but side to side or back to back.

[2] I will briefly explain how loving God and loving our neighbor are connected. With all of us, God flows into our concepts of him and brings us true acknowledgment of him. He also flows into us and brings us his love for people. If we accept only the first inflow but not the second, we receive that inflow with our intellect but not our will. We keep the concepts of God that we have without arriving at an inward acknowledgment of God. Our state is then like a garden in winter.

If we accept both types of inflow, however, we receive the inflow with our will and then our intellect - that is, with our whole mind. We then develop an inner acknowledgment of God that brings our concepts of God to life. Our state is then like a garden in spring.

[3] Goodwill makes the connection, because God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; he can benefit us only indirectly through each other. For this reason he inspires us with his love, just as he inspires parents with love for their children. If we receive this love, we become connected to God and we love our neighbor out of love for God. Then we have love for God inside our love for our neighbor. Our love for God makes us willing and able to love our neighbor.

[4] We cannot do anything good if it does not seem to us that our power, willingness, and actions come from ourselves. Therefore we are granted the appearance that they do. When we freely do something good as if we were acting on our own, this goodness is attributed to us and is taken as our response, and this forges the connection.

The situation here is like something active and something passive and the cooperation of the two that occurs when the passive element accepts the active one.

The situation is also like the intention present in people's actions, the thinking present in their speech, and the soul working from the inside on both the intention and the thinking. It is like the originating force that is present in a motion. It is like the prolific power present in the seed of a tree. That power acts from the inside on the various forms of sap that develop the tree all the way to the point of bearing fruit. Through the fruit the tree produces new seeds. It is also like the light in precious stones that is reflected depending on the textures of the interior. Different colors appear as a result, as if they were the stones colors, but they are really the colors of the light.

3016. 'Abraham, being old, was advanced in years' means when the state was reached in which the Lord's Human could become Divine. This is clear from the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord, dealt with in 1893, 1965, 1989, 2011, 2172, 2198, 2501, 2833, 2836, and many times elsewhere; from the meaning of 'old' or old age as casting off what is human and putting on what is heavenly, dealt with in 1854, 2198, and when it has reference to the Lord, putting on what is Divine; and from the meaning of 'day' as state, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, and therefore from the meaning of 'advanced in years' as the point when a state has been reached. The reason why 'old' and 'advanced in years' mean these things is that with angels the notion of old age does not exist, nor that of getting older, meant by 'advanced in years', only the notion of state as regards the life that is theirs. Consequently when getting older or old age is mentioned in the Word the angels present with man can have no other idea than that of the state of life that is theirs or that is men's as they pass through the different stages of life until they reach the last, that is to say, as they accordingly cast off what is human and put on what is heavenly. For man's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death and the actual transition from one life to the next. Burial therefore is also resurrection since the casting-off process is completed then, 2916, 2917. Such being the idea that angels have, nothing else can be meant by 'advanced in years' and by 'old age' in the internal sense - the sense which exists primarily for angels and for men who have minds like those of angels.