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:

481. We come into heaven if our love is heavenly and spiritual and into hell if our love is carnal and worldly without any heavenly and spiritual dimension. My evidence for this conclusion is all the people I have seen raised into heaven and cast into hell. The ones who were raised into heaven had lives of heavenly and spiritual love, while the ones who were cast into hell had lives of carnal and worldly love. Heavenly love is loving what is good, honest, and fair because it is good, honest, and fair, and doing it because of that love. This is why they have a life of goodness, honesty, and fairness, which is a heavenly life. If we love these things for their own sakes and do or live them, we are also loving the Lord above all because they come from him. We are also loving our neighbor, because these things are our neighbor who is to be loved. ¹ Carnal love, though, is loving what is good and honest and fair not for their own sakes but for our own sake, because we can use them to gain prestige, position, and profit. In this case we are not focusing on the Lord and our neighbor within what is good and honest and fair but on ourselves and the world, and we enjoy deceit. When the motive is deceit, then whatever is good and honest and fair is actually evil and dishonest and unfair. This is what we love within [the outward appearance].

[2] Since these loves define our lives, we are all examined as to our quality immediately after death, when we arrive in the world of spirits, and we are put in touch with people of like love. If we are focused on heavenly love, we are put in touch with people in heaven; and if we are focused on carnal love, we are put in touch with people in hell. Further, once the first and second states have been completed the two kinds of people are separated so that they no longer see or recognize each other. We actually become our own love not only as to the deeper levels of our minds but outwardly as well, in face, body, and speech, since we become images of our love even in outward things. People who are carnal loves look coarse, dim, dark, and misshapen; while people who are heavenly loves look lively, clear, bright, and lovely. They are completely different in spirit and in thought as well. People who are heavenly loves are intelligent and wise, while people who are carnal loves are dense and rather silly.

[3] When leave is given to examine the inner and outer aspects of the thoughts and affections of people engaged in heavenly love, the inner reaches look as though they were made of light, in some cases like the light of a flame; and their outer manifestations are of various lovely colors, like a rainbow. In contrast, the inner reaches of people who are engaged in carnal love look gloomy because they are closed in, in some cases like a smoky fire for people who were inwardly maliciously deceptive. Their outer manifestations have an ugly color, depressing to look at (both the inner and outer aspects of the mind and spirit are presented visually in the spiritual world whenever it so pleases the Lord).

[4] People who are engaged in carnal love do not see anything in heaven's light. Heaven's light is darkness to them, while hell's light, which is like the light of glowing embers, is like daylight to them. In fact, in heaven's light their inner sight is deprived of light to the point that they become insane. As a result, they run away from it and hide in caves and caverns of a depth that corresponds to the false convictions that stem from their evil intentions. Exactly the reverse is true for people who are engaged in heavenly love, though. The deeper or higher they enter into heavenly light, the more clearly they see everything and the lovelier it all looks, and the more intelligently and wisely they grasp what is true.

[5] There is no way that people who are engaged in carnal love can live in heaven's warmth, because heaven's warmth is heavenly love. They can live in hell's warmth, though, which is a love of cruelty toward people who do not support them. The pleasures of this love are contempt for others, hostility, hatred, and vengefulness. When they are absorbed in these they are in their very life, with no knowledge whatever of what it means to do good for others out of sheer goodness and for the sake of the good itself. All they know is how to do good out of malice and for the sake of malice.

[6] People who are engaged in carnal love cannot breathe in heaven either. When evil spirits are taken there, they draw breath like someone who is struggling painfully. On the other hand, people who are engaged in heavenly love breathe more freely and feel more alive the deeper into heaven they come.

We may gather from this that a heavenly and spiritual love is heaven for us because everything heavenly is written on that love; and that carnal and worldly love apart from heavenly and spiritual love is hell for us because everything hellish is written on that love.

We can see, then, that people come into heaven who have a heavenly and spiritual love, and people come into hell who have a carnal and worldly love without a heavenly and spiritual one.

फुटनोट:

3921. 'Rachel said, God has judged me, and also has heard my voice' in the highest sense means righteousness and mercy, in the internal sense the holiness of faith, in the external sense the good of life. This is clear from the meaning of 'God's judging me', and from the meaning of 'hearing my voice'. 'God's judging me' means the Lord's righteousness, as may be seen without explanation, while 'hearing my voice' means mercy, as may likewise be seen; for the Lord judges everyone from righteousness, and hears everyone from mercy. He judges from righteousness in that He does so from Divine Truth, and hears from mercy in that He does so from Divine Good. He judges from righteousness those who do not receive Divine Good, and hears from mercy those who do. Yet when He judges from righteousness He does so at the same time from mercy since all Divine righteousness includes mercy within itself, even as Divine Truth includes Divine Good within it. But as these arcana are too deep for brief comment, they will in the Lord's Divine mercy be explained more fully elsewhere.

[2] The reason why 'God has judged me, and also has heard my voice' in the internal sense means the holiness of faith is that faith, which is associated with truth, corresponds to Divine righteousness, and holiness, which is goodness, corresponds to the Lord's Divine mercy; and in addition to this, judging or judgement is associated with the truth of faith, 2235. And since it is God who is said to have judged, that which is good or holy is meant. From this it is evident that the holiness of faith, at the same time as righteousness and mercy, is meant by these two expressions - 'God has judged me' and 'has heard my voice'. And because the two together mean a single entity they are joined by the words 'and also'. The reason the good of life is meant in the external sense is also rooted in correspondence, for the good of life corresponds to the holiness of faith. Without the internal sense no one can know what 'God has judged me, and also has heard me' means, and this is evident from the consideration that in the sense of the letter the two phrases do not fit together very easily to present one complete and intelligible idea.

[3] The reason why in this verse and in those that follow as far as 'Joseph' the name God is used and why in the verses immediately before these Jehovah is used is that in this and the following verses the regeneration of the spiritual man is the subject, whereas in those before them the regeneration of the celestial man was the subject. For God is used when the good of faith which is an attribute of the spiritual man is the subject, but Jehovah when the good of love which is an attribute of the celestial man is the subject, see 2586, 2769, 2807, 2822. For Judah, down to whom the births of sons went in the previous chapter, represented the celestial man, see 3881, whereas Joseph, down to whom those births go in the present chapter, represents the spiritual man, dealt with below in verses 23-24. The name Jehovah is used down to Judah, see Genesis 29:32-33, 35, but God down to Joseph, see verses 6, 8, 17-18, 20, 22-23 of the present chapter, after which Jehovah occurs again because the subject moves on from the spiritual man to the celestial. This is the arcanum which lies concealed in these words and which no one can know except from the internal sense, and also unless he knows what the celestial man is and what the spiritual.