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

फुटनोट:

312. This belief among church people is also the cause of their belief that no one will arrive in heaven or hell before the time of the Last Judgment, which they have come to believe will be a time when everything they can see perishes and new things come into being, when souls will return into their bodies and then begin once more to live as people because of this reunion. This faith implies the other, about angels having been created in the beginning, for it is not possible to believe that heaven and hell come from the human race when you believe that no one is going to get there until the end of the world.

[2] So to convince people that this is not the case, I have been allowed to associate with angels and to talk with people in hell for several years now, sometimes constantly from morning until evening, and so to learn about heaven and about hell. The purpose of all this is that church people should remain no longer in their mistaken beliefs about a resurrection on Judgment Day and about the state of their souls in the meanwhile, or about angels and the devil. Because this faith is a mistaken one, it brings darkness with it; and for people who think about such things on the basis of their own intellect, it leads to doubt and eventually to denial. They are actually saying in their hearts, "How can such a vast heaven and so many stars be destroyed and disappear, along with the sun and the moon? How can stars that are larger than the earth fall on the earth? How can bodies that have been eaten by worms and destroyed by decay and scattered to the four winds be reunited to their souls? Where have these souls been in the meanwhile, and what have they been like without any of the senses they had in their bodies?"

[3] There are many other questions like these, which do not accord with belief because they are incomprehensible, and for many people they are destroying any belief in a life after death, in heaven and hell, and along with these the rest of the contents of the faith of the church. This destruction can be observed in people who say, "Who has come back from heaven and told us that it exists, or from hell, to say that it exists? What is this business about people being tortured by fire to eternity? What is this Judgment Day? Haven't we been waiting for it for centuries, all in vain?" along with any number of other things that imply a denial of everything.

[4] Many people who are particularly skilled in worldly affairs think like this; so to prevent them from further disturbing and misleading people of simple faith and simple heart and bringing on a hellish darkness concerning God, heaven, eternal life, and the other matters that follow from them, the deeper reaches of my spirit have been opened by the Lord, enabling me to talk after their death with all the people I have ever known during their physical lives. I have talked with some for days, with some for months, and with some for a year. I have talked with so many others that it would be no exaggeration to talk in terms of a hundred thousand, many in heaven and many in hell. I have talked with some just two days after their deaths and told them that now their funerals and burial rites were being performed so that they could be interred; to which they have responded that it was a good thing they had cast off what had served them as a body for their functions in our world, wanting me to say that they were not dead at all. They were just as alive and just as human as ever, having simply crossed over from one world to another. They were not aware of having lost anything, since they were just as much in a body as before, enjoyed volition and understanding just as before, and had thoughts and affections, sensation, and desires similar to the ones they had in our world.

[5] Many people who have just died, when they have discovered that they are living persons just as they were before, and in a similar state (for our first state after death is like the one we were in on earth, although this changes gradually for us either toward heaven or toward hell), have been moved by a newfound joy at still being alive. They have said they would not have believed it. They were absolutely amazed that they had been in such ignorance and blindness about the state of life after death, all the more so that this is true of people within the church, who could be in more light about such matters than all the rest of the whole world. ¹ Now for the first time they were seeing the reason for this blindness and ignorance, namely, that their outward concerns, their concerns for worldly and bodily matters, preoccupied and filled their minds so completely that they could not be raised into heaven's light and look into ecclesiastical subjects beyond the formalities of doctrine. When bodily and worldly matters are loved as much as they are today, nothing flows in from them but darkness when the mind tries to press further.

फुटनोट:

4973. 'And he was in the house of his lord the Egyptian' means to enable it to be introduced into natural good. This is clear from the meaning of 'lord' as good, dealt with below, and from the meaning of 'the Egyptian' as factual knowledge in general, and from this as that which is natural, dealt with in 4967. The reason 'being in the house' means being introduced is that 'house' is the mind in which good dwells, 3538, in this case the natural mind. Moreover 'house' is used in reference to good, 3652, 3720. The human being has both a natural mind and a rational mind. The natural mind exists within his external man, the rational within his internal. Known facts make up the truths that belong to the natural mind, and these are said to be there 'in their own house' when they are joined to good there; for good and truth together constitute a single house like husband and wife. But the forms of good and the truths which are the subject at present are of a more interior kind, for they are suited to the celestial of the spiritual from the rational, which is represented by 'Joseph'. Those suitable interior truths within the natural are applicable to useful purposes, while interior forms of good in the same are the useful purposes themselves.

[2] The expression 'lord' is used many times in the Word, but unless a person is acquainted with the internal sense he assumes that 'lord' has no other meaning than what the word has when used in ordinary conversation. But 'lord' is used nowhere in the Word other than in reference to good, as is similarly the case with the name 'Jehovah'. When however reference is being made to truth, 'God' and also 'king are used. This then is the reason why 'lord' means good, as may also be seen from the following places: In Moses,

Jehovah your God, He is God of gods, and Lord of lords. Deuteronomy 10:17.

In David,

Confess Jehovah, confess the God of gods, confess the Lord of lords. Psalms 136:1-3

In these places Jehovah or the Lord is called 'God of gods' by virtue of Divine Truth which goes forth from Him, and 'Lord of lords' by virtue of Divine Good which exists within Him.

[3] Similarly in John,

The Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings. Revelation 17:14.

And in the same book,

The One sitting on the white horse has on His robe and on His thigh the name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation 19:16.

The Lord is called 'King of kings' by virtue of Divine Truth, and 'Lord of lords' by virtue of Divine Good, as is evident from the individual expressions used here. 'The name written' is His true nature, 144, 145, 1754, 1896, 2009, 2724, 3006. 'His robe' on which it is written is the truth of faith, 1073, 2576, 4545, 4763. 'His thigh' on which likewise that nature is written is the good of love, 3021, 4277, 4280, 4575. From this too it is evident that by virtue of Divine Truth the Lord is called 'King of kings and by virtue of Divine Good 'Lord of lords'. For more about the Lord being called King by virtue of Divine Truth, see 2015, 2069, 3009, 3670, 4581.

[4] From this it is also plain what 'the Lord's Christ' means in Luke,

Simeon received an answer from the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord's Christ. Luke 2:26.

'The Lord's Christ' is the Divine Truth that goes with Divine Good, for 'Christ' is one and the same as Messiah, and Messiah is the Anointed or King, 3008, 3009, 'the Lord' in this case being Jehovah. The name Jehovah is not used anywhere in the New Testament Word, but instead of Jehovah, the Lord and God are used, see 2921, as again in Luke,

Jesus said, How can they say that the Christ is David's son when David himself says in the Book of Psalms, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand? Luke 20:41, 41.

The same appears in David as follows,

Jehovah said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand. Psalms 110:1.

It is obvious that Jehovah in David is called Lord in the gospel, 'Lord' in this case standing for the Divine Good of the Divine Human. Omnipotence is meant by 'sitting at the right hand', 3387, 4592, 4933 (end).

[5] While in the world the Lord was Divine Truth, but once He was glorified, that is, had made the Human within Him Divine, He became Divine Good, from which Divine Truth subsequently goes forth. This explains why after the Resurrection the disciples did not call Him Master, as they had before, but Lord, as is evident in John 21:7, 12, 15-17, 20, and also in the other gospels. Divine Truth - which the Lord was while in the world and which subsequently goes forth from Him, that is, from Divine Good - is also called 'the Angel of the Covenant', in Malachi,

Suddenly there will come to His temple the Lord whom you are seeking, and the Angel of the Covenant in whom you delight. Malachi 3:1.

[6] Because 'Lord' is used to mean Divine Good and 'King' Divine Truth, therefore in places where the Lord is spoken of as having dominion and a kingdom 'dominion' has reference to Divine Good and 'a kingdom' to Divine Truth. For the same reason the Lord is called 'Lord of the nations' but 'King of the peoples', for 'nations' means those governed by good, 'peoples' those governed by truth, 1259, 1260, 1849, 3581

[7] Good is called 'lord' as against a servant, and 'father' as against a son, as in Malachi,

A son should honour his father, and a servant his lord. If I am a Father, where is My honour? And if I am a Lord, where is the fear of Me? Malachi 1:6.

And in David,

To be a slave JOSEPH was sold. The word of Jehovah tested him. The king sent and released him, he who had dominion over nations set him free and placed him as lord of his house and as one with dominion over all his possessions. Psalms 105:17, 19-22.

Here, as is evident from each individual expression, 'Joseph' is used to mean the Lord, 'lord' in this instance being the Divine Good of the Divine Human.