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The Big Ideas

Po New Christian Bible Study Staff

A girl gazes into a lighted globe, showing the solar system.

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

Bilješke:

Iz Swedenborgovih djela

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #57

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57. This is why angels are not angels in their own right but are angels by virtue of their union with the Divine-Human One; and their union depends on their acceptance of what is divinely good and what is divinely true. What is divinely good and what is divinely true are God, and seem to emanate from him even though they are within him. Their acceptance depends on the way angels apply the laws of his design, which are divine truths, to themselves, using their freedom to think and intend according to their reason, a freedom given them by God as their own possession. This is what enables them to accept what is divinely good and divinely true in apparent autonomy; and this in turn is what makes possible the mutual element in their love, for as already noted [48], love is not real unless it is mutual. It is the same with us here on earth.

All this enables us finally to see that everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

Biblija

 

Luke 17

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1 He said to the disciples, "It is impossible that no occasions of stumbling should come, but woe to him through whom they come!

2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.

3 Be careful. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him.

4 If he sins against you seven times in the day, and seven times returns, saying, 'I repent,' you shall forgive him."

5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith."

6 The Lord said, "If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you would tell this sycamore tree, 'Be uprooted, and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

7 But who is there among you, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep, that will say, when he comes in from the field, 'Come immediately and sit down at the table,'

8 and will not rather tell him, 'Prepare my supper, clothe yourself properly, and serve me, while I eat and drink. Afterward you shall eat and drink'?

9 Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded? I think not.

10 Even so you also, when you have done all the things that are commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy servants. We have done our duty.'"

11 It happened as he was on his way to Jerusalem, that he was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee.

12 As he entered into a certain village, ten men who were lepers met him, who stood at a distance.

13 They lifted up their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"

14 When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." It happened that as they went, they were cleansed.

15 One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice.

16 He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus answered, "Weren't the ten cleansed? But where are the nine?

18 Were there none found who returned to give glory to God, except this stranger?"

19 Then he said to him, "Get up, and go your way. Your faith has healed you."

20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, he answered them, "The Kingdom of God doesn't come with observation;

21 neither will they say, 'Look, here!' or, 'Look, there!' for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you."

22 He said to the disciples, "The days will come, when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.

23 They will tell you, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Don't go away, nor follow after them,

24 for as the lightning, when it flashes out of the one part under the sky, shines to the other part under the sky; so will the Son of Man be in his day.

25 But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

26 As it happened in the days of Noah, even so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man.

27 They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

28 Likewise, even as it happened in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;

29 but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky, and destroyed them all.

30 It will be the same way in the day that the Son of Man is revealed.

31 In that day, he who will be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away. Let him who is in the field likewise not turn back.

32 Remember Lot's wife!

33 Whoever seeks to save his life loses it, but whoever loses his life preserves it.

34 I tell you, in that night there will be two people in one bed. The one will be taken, and the other will be left.

35 There will be two grinding grain together. One will be taken, and the other will be left."

37 They, answering, asked him, "Where, Lord?" He said to them, "Where the body is, there will the vultures also be gathered together."