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

각주:

319. People can realize that non-Christians as well as Christians are saved if they know what constitutes heaven in us; for heaven is within us, and people who have heaven within them come into heaven. The heaven within us is our acknowledgment of the Divine and our being led by the Divine. The beginning and foundation of every religion is its acknowledgment of the Divine Being; a religion that does not acknowledge the Divine Being is not a religion at all. The precepts of every religion focus on worship, that is, on how the Divine is to be honored so that we will be acceptable in its sight; and when this fully occupies the mind (or, to the extent that we intend this or love this) we are being led by the Lord.

It is recognized that non-Christians live lives that are just as moral as the lives of Christians - many of them, in fact, live more moral lives. A moral life may be lived either to satisfy the Divine or to satisfy people in this world. A moral life that is lived to satisfy the Divine is a spiritual life. The two look alike in outward form, but inwardly they are totally different. One saves us, the other does not. This is because if we live a moral life to satisfy the Divine we are being led by the Divine; while if we live a moral life to satisfy people in this world, we are being led by ourselves.

[2] This may be illustrated by an example. If we do not do harm to our neighbor because that is against our religion and therefore against the Divine, our refraining from evil stems from a spiritual source. But if we refrain from doing harm to others simply because we are afraid of the law or of losing our reputation or respect or profit - for the sake of self and the world, that is - then this stems from a natural source and we are being led by ourselves. This latter life is natural, while the former is spiritual. If our moral life is spiritual, we have heaven within ourselves; but if our moral life is merely natural, we do not have heaven within ourselves. This is because heaven flows in from above, opens our deeper natures, and flows through those deeper natures into our more outward natures; while the world flows in from below and opens our more outward natures but not our deeper natures. No inflow occurs from the natural world into the spiritual, only from the spiritual world into the natural; so if heaven is not accepted at the same time, the deeper levels are closed. We can see from this who accept heaven into themselves and who do not.

[3] However, the heaven in one individual is not the same as the heaven in another. It differs in each according to the affection for what is good and true. If people are absorbed in an affection for what is good for the sake of the Divine, they love divine truth because the good and the true love each other and want to be united. ¹ Consequently, non-Christian people who have not had access to genuine truths in the world still accept them in the other life because of their love.

각주:

3212. 'And Isaac was comforted after [the death of] his mother' means a new state. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'receiving comfort' as a new state, for a state of comfort is a new state, which, following the previous one, is meant by 'after his mother'. The new state is a state of glorification of the Rational; already so as to good, it now became glorified as to truth. The Rational was glorified when it became Divine as regards both good and truth.

[2] As to the Human the Lord was made new, that is, was glorified, or what amounts to the same, was made Divine; but nobody can possibly grasp this, nor thus believe it, who is immersed in worldly and bodily loves. He has no knowledge at all of what spiritual or celestial is, and does not even wish to know. But anyone who is not immersed in worldly and bodily loves can perceive it, for he believes that the Lord is one with the Father, that everything holy comes from Him, and consequently that He is Divine even as regards the Human. And anyone who believes this perceives it in his own way.

[3] The state of the Lord's glorification can be grasped to some extent from the state of man's regeneration, for man's regeneration is an image of the Lord's glorification, 3043, 3138. When a person is being regenerated he becomes completely different from before and is made new. Once he has been regenerated therefore he is called one who has been born again and created anew. At that point a person's face and speech remain the same, but not so his mind. Once he is regenerate his mind is open towards heaven, and love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, together with faith, reside in it. It is the mind that makes him a person who is different and new. Change of state cannot be discerned in a person's body, only in his spirit. The body is merely the covering for his spirit. When he lays aside the former his spirit is seen, and indeed in a form altogether different if he has been regenerated. In this case it is a visible form of love and charity that possesses beauty beyond description, 553, replacing the previous form, which had been a visible form of hatred and cruelty possessing ugliness also beyond description. From this it may become clear what a regenerate person is, that is, one born again or created anew, namely one who is altogether different from before and who is new.

[4] From this image one can have some conception of the Lord's glorification. He was not regenerated as man is but was made Divine, being made so from Divine love itself, for He was made Divine love itself. The nature of His form at that time was shown to Peter, James, and John when they were allowed to see Him not with their physical eyes but with those of the spirit, that is to say, on the occasion when His face shone like the sun, Matthew 17:2. This was His Divine Human, as is clear from the voice which at that time declared from the cloud, 'This is My beloved Son', Matthew 17:5 - 'the Son' being the Divine Human, see 2628.