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:

67. Next, since we are by creation heavens in smallest form and therefore images of the Lord, and since heaven is made up of as many desires as there are angels, each of which is a person as to its form, it follows that the constant effort in divine providence is for each of us to become a heaven in form and therefore an image of the Lord. Further, since this is accomplished by means of the desire for what is good and true, it is for us to become that desire. This, then, is the constant effort in divine providence.

The very heart of providence, though, is that we should be in some particular place in heaven or in some particular place in the divine heavenly person and therefore in the Lord. This is what happens for people whom the Lord can lead to heaven. Since the Lord foresees this, he also constantly provides for it, with the result that all of us who are allowing ourselves to be led to heaven are being prepared for our own places in heaven.

3843. 'To give the younger before the firstborn' means, that the affection for interior truth should precede the affection for external truth. This is clear from the representation of Rachel, to whom 'the younger' refers here, as the affection for interior truth, dealt with in 3758, 3782, 3793, 3819, and from the representation of Leah, to whom 'the firstborn' refers here, as the affection for external truth, dealt with in 3793, 3819. From this it is evident that 'giving the younger before the firstborn' means [that the state is not such] that the affection for interior truth should precede the affection for external truth. A brief explanation of these matters has been given above in 3834, and is further evident from the following: Anyone who does not know the state of man may believe that the joining together is effected not only with external truths but also with internal once he is acquainted with both kinds of truths, that is, once he has them in his memory. But no joining together is effected until he lives according to them; for the life reveals whether the joining together has been effected.

[2] The same applies to everything implanted in someone since childhood. It does not become his own until he acts according to it, and does so from affection. For when he acts from affection that which has been implanted in him passes into his will. Then it is no longer put into practice by him simply because he knows that he should or because he has been taught to do it, but because some delight unknown to himself and so to speak his own disposition or nature lead him to do so. For everyone acquires such a disposition or nature from frequent practice or habit, and that practice or habit from the things he has learned. This does not come about until the things he has absorbed through his being taught them have been passed through from the external man to the interior; for when they exist in the interior man he no longer acts from the sensory memory but from his acquired disposition, till at length they flow into action spontaneously. For in this case they have been inscribed on the person's interior memory, and the things that proceed from this give the appearance of being innate. This may be recognized from the languages a person has learned in childhood, also from the ability to reason, and from conscience too. From these considerations it is evident that the truths of doctrine, even those that are interior, are not joined to a person until they are matters of life. But further information on these points will in the Lord's Divine mercy appear elsewhere.