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

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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.

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8988. '[His] master shall bring him to God' means the state he then enters in keeping with Divine order. This is clear from the meaning of 'bringing to God', when the subject is those who are imbued with truths and cannot be imbued with good, as causing them to enter a state in keeping with Divine order; for 'bringing to' means entering, and 'God' means Divine order, which is dealt with below. The fact that these things are meant is evident from the details contained in the rest of this verse. These describe the state of those imbued with truths and not with complementary good, that is to say, a state of everlasting obedience. For those living in this condition are in servitude compared with those imbued with good complementing truths. For being governed by good the latter's actions spring from affection; and those who act from affection do so from the will, thus from themselves since whatever forms part of a person's will is part of his true self; for indeed the essence (esse) of a person's life is his will. But those whose actions spring from obedience act not from their own will, but from their master's, thus not from themselves, but from another; therefore in comparison they are in servitude. Actions that spring from truths and not from good spring solely from the understanding, for truths have connection with the understanding and forms of good with the will; and actions that spring from the understanding and not from the will spring from that which stands outside and serves. The understanding has been given to a person in order that he may receive truths and introduce them into his will to become forms of good; for when truths become part of the will they are called forms of good.

[2] The condition however of one who serves the Lord by doing according to His commandments, and by being obedient in that kind of way, is not that of a slave; rather, it is that of one who is free. For perfect freedom consists for a person in being led by the Lord, 892, 905, 2870, 2872. The Lord breathes the good into the person's will from which his actions spring; and although that good comes from the Lord, the person nevertheless has the feeling that his actions are from himself, that is, he does them in freedom. This freedom exists with all who abide in the Lord; and coupled with it there is indescribable happiness.

[3] The reason why 'God' here means Divine order is that in the Word the name 'God' is used where truth is referred to, and 'Jehovah' where good is referred to, 2769, 2807, 2822, 3921 (end), 4402, 7010, 7268, 8867. Therefore Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good is meant in the highest sense by 'God', and His Divine Good from which Divine Truth emanates is meant by 'Jehovah'. The reason for this is that Divine Good is Essential Being (Esse), and Divine Truth is the Coming-into-Being (Existere) from it, since what emanates from something comes into being from it. The situation with good and truth in heaven or among angels is similar, and that in the Church among men is similar. Good there is the essential being, and truth is the coming-into-being from it. Or what amounts to the same thing love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour is the essential being of heaven and the Church, while faith is the coming-into-being from it. All this makes plain why it is that 'God' can also mean Divine order; for Divine Truth emanating from the Lord is what constitutes order in heaven, so completely that it is order itself. For more about Divine Truth's being order, see 1728, 1919, 7995, 8700.

Therefore when man or angel receives Divine Truth from the Lord within good, there resides with him that order which exists in the heavens. As a consequence he is a heaven or kingdom of the Lord in particular; he is such in the measure that he is imbued with good from truths, and after this in the measure that he is endowed with truths from good. And - what is an arcanum - angels themselves appear in heaven in a human form that accords exactly with the truths present with them within good, together with beauty and brilliance which accord with the character of the good from truths. The souls of members of the Church present a similar appearance in heaven. The Divine Truth itself emanating from the Lord brings this about, as may be recognized from what has been shown at the ends of a number of chapters regarding heaven as the Grand Man, and its correspondence with individual aspects of a human being.

[4] This arcanum is what the following words are used to mean in John, in the Book of Revelation,

He measured the wall of the holy Jerusalem, a hundred and forty-four cubits, which is the measure of a man (homo), that is, of an angel. Revelation 21:17.

Will anyone ever understand these words if he does not know what the holy Jerusalem, its wall, measure, the number 144, and so 'a man, that is, an angel' all mean? By the new or holy Jerusalem is meant the Lord's New Church, which is going to take the place of the Christian Church existing at the present time, 2117; by 'the wall' is meant the truths of faith which will defend that Church, 6419; by 'measuring' and 'the measure' is meant its state in respect of truth, 3104; by the number 144 is meant much the same as by 12, since 144 is the number that is the product of 12 multiplied by itself, and by these numbers all truths in their entirety are meant, see 7973. These meanings make plain what is meant by 'the measure of a man, that is, of an angel', namely actual truth emanating from the Lord in the form it assumes, which is that of a man-angel in heaven, as stated above. All this reveals the arcanum which the words quoted above embody; it reveals that they describe the truths of that Church which is going to take the place of the Christian Church existing at the present time.

[5] The fact that they are truths from good is described in the very next verse, in these words,

The construction of its wall was jasper, but the city was pure gold, like pure glass. Revelation 21:18.

'Jasper' means truth such as that Church's will be, for truths are meant by 'stones' generally, 1298, 3720, 6426, and truths that come from the Lord by 'precious stones', 643; and 'gold' means the good of love and wisdom, 113, 1551, 1552, 5658. Would anyone ever discern that such meanings are embodied in those words? Yet who can fail to see from them that countless arcana lie concealed in the Word, which are not at all made apparent to anyone except by means of the internal sense, and that this sense, like a key, is the means of opening up God's truths as they exist in heaven, and therefore heaven and the Lord Himself, who is the All in all of the Word in its inmost sense?