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

脚注:

9009. 'And one who did not lie in wait' means when it was not contemplated beforehand by the will. This is clear from the meaning of 'lying in wait' as doing what has been thought up and so contemplated beforehand; for the ill that one lying in wait is going to do is contemplated in his mind beforehand. And since such ill done by him is contemplated beforehand it also has its origin in the will, for it comes forth from there. There are evils which come forth from a person's will but are not contemplated beforehand, and there those which come forth from his will and are contemplated beforehand. Those from the will and contemplated beforehand are far worse than those uncontemplated beforehand. For the person sees that they are evils and is therefore able to desist from them, but has no wish to; and by failing to do so he establishes them firmly within himself. And firmly established evils take on a character that makes it almost impossible for them to be rooted out afterwards. For at this time he summons spirits from hell, who after that rarely depart.

[2] Evils that come forth from one part of the mind and not at the same time from the other, such as those from the understanding part and not at the same time from the will part, do not take root and become the person's own. That alone takes root and becomes his own which passes from the understanding part into the will part, or what amounts to the same thing, from thought belonging to the understanding into affection belonging to the will, and from there into action. Things that enter the will are those which are said to enter the heart.

[3] Evils however which come forth solely from the will, thus not from prior thought about them, are those such as a person is prone to owing to heredity or owing to some previous activity resulting from hereditary inclinations. These evils are not ascribed to the person unless he has established them firmly in the understanding part of his mind, 966, 2308, 8806. But when they have been firmly established there they have been inscribed on the person, becoming properly his own; then they are attributable to him. But those evils cannot become firmly established with a person in the understanding part of his mind until he reaches adult life, that is to say, when he starts to think for himself and be wise. Till then he trusts not in himself but in teachers and parents.

All this shows what the meaning is of 'one who did not lie in wait', namely when it was not contemplated beforehand by the will.

545. THE LORD CASTS NO ONE INTO HELL; BUT THIS IS DONE BY THE SPIRIT HIMSELF

An opinion has prevailed with some that God turns away His face from man, rejects man from Himself, and casts him into hell, and is angry with him on account of his evil; and with some the opinion goes further, that God punishes man and does evil to him. They confirm themselves in this opinion from the sense of the letter of the Word, where similar things are said, not knowing that the spiritual sense of the Word, which explains the sense of the letter, is wholly different; and consequently that the genuine doctrine of the Church, which is from the spiritual sense of the Word, teaches otherwise, namely, that God never turns away His face from man, and never rejects man from Himself; that He casts no one into hell and is angry with no one. ¹ Everyone, moreover, whose mind is enlightened, perceives this to be true when he reads the Word, from a perception solely from it, because God is Good Itself, Love Itself, and Mercy Itself; and he has a perception that Good Itself cannot do evil to anyone, and Love Itself and Mercy Itself cannot reject man from itself; because this is contrary to the very essence of mercy and love, thus contrary to the Divine Itself. Therefore those who think from an enlightened mind clearly perceive, when they read the Word, that God never turns Himself away from man; and as He never turns Himself away from him He deals with him from goodness, love, and mercy, that is, wills good to him, loves him, and is merciful to him. And from this they see that the sense of the letter of the Word, in which such things are said, has stored up within itself a spiritual sense, and that these expressions, that are used in the sense of the letter in accommodation to man's apprehension and according to his first and general ideas, are to be explained in accordance with the spiritual sense.

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