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

V:

59. We can conclude from this that Divinity is present in absolutely everything in the created universe and that the created universe is therefore the work of Jehovah's hands, as it says in the Word. That is, it is a work of divine love and wisdom, for this is what is meant by "Jehovah's hands." Further, even though Divinity is present in all things great and small in the created universe, there is no trace of intrinsic divinity in their own being. While the created universe is not God, it is from God; and since it is from God, his image is in it like the image of a person in a mirror. We do indeed see a person there, but there is still nothing of the person in the mirror.

5695. 'And he washed his face' means that it took steps to ensure this. This is clear from the meaning of 'washing his face' here as taking steps to ensure that it remained unseen; for Joseph's face was washed, and so steps were taken by him to ensure that his tears remained unseen. The full implications of this will in the Lord's Divine mercy be stated further on; but let something be said at this point about the correspondence of a person's face with his interiors. His face is what is external serving to represent his interiors. For the face has been designed in such a way that a person's interiors may be seen there as if in a mirror that reflects things in a representative fashion; it has been so designed that another may know its owner's attitude of mind towards himself, so that the owner reveals his sentiments when he speaks not only through his speech but also through his face. This was the kind of face possessed by the most ancient people who belonged to the celestial Church, and it is the kind that all angels have. Angels have no wish to conceal from others anything they think, for they think solely of their neighbour's well-being. Nor do they have any thought hidden away which desires their neighbour's well-being for some selfish reason of their own.

[2] But those in hell, as long as they are not seen in the light of heaven, have a face other than the one that corresponds to their interiors. The reason for this is that during their lifetime they bore witness by means of their face to charity towards the neighbour solely for the sake of their own position and gain; they did not desire their neighbour's well being except insofar as it was identical with their own. Consequently the expression on their face is at variance with their interiors. Sometimes that variance is so great that feelings of enmity, hatred, and revenge, and the desire to murder are inwardly present, yet their face is set in such a way that love towards their neighbour is beaming from it. From this one may see how far people's interiors disagree at the present day with their exteriors, and why they resort to those kinds of practices to serve their own interests.