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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27. The Lord's Divine Providence Has as Its Goal a Heaven from the Human Race

I have explained elsewhere that heaven did not originate in angels who were created angels at the beginning, and that hell did not originate in a devil who was created an angel of light and was cast down from heaven. Rather, both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven is made up of people who are involved in a love for what is good and a consequent discernment of what is true, and hell of people who are involved in a love for what is evil and a discernment of what is false. I have been given convincing evidence of this through long-term association with angels and spirits, and would refer you to Heaven and Hell 311-316, the booklet The Last Judgment 14-27, and the whole of Supplements on the Last Judgment and the Spiritual World.

[2] Since heaven comes from the human race, then, and since heaven is living with the Lord forever, it follows that this was the Lord's goal for creation. Further, since this was the goal of creation, it is the goal of the Lord's divine providence.

The Lord did not create the universe for his own sake but for the sake of people he would be with in heaven. By its very nature, spiritual love wants to share what it has with others, and to the extent that it can do so, it is totally present, experiencing its peace and bliss. Spiritual love gets this quality from the Lord's divine love, which is like this in infinite measure.

It then follows that divine love (and therefore divine providence) has the goal of a heaven made up of people who have become angels and are becoming angels, people with whom it can share all the bliss and joy of love and wisdom, giving them these blessings from the Lord's own presence within them. He cannot help doing this, because his image and likeness is in us from creation. His image in us is wisdom and his likeness in us is love; and the Lord within us is love united to wisdom and wisdom united to love, or goodness united to truth and truth united to goodness, which is the same thing. (See the preceding section for a description of this union.)

[3] However, people do not know what heaven is in general or in groups of people and what heaven is in particular or in an individual. They do not know what heaven is in the spiritual world and what it is in the physical world, either; and yet it is important to know about these matters. Consequently, I want to shed some light on this, in the following sequence.

1. Heaven is union with the Lord.

2. Our nature from creation enables us to be more and more closely united to the Lord.

3. The more closely we are united to the Lord, the wiser we become.

4. The more closely we are united to the Lord, the happier we become.

5. The more closely we are united to the Lord, the more clearly we seem to have our own identity, and yet the more obvious it is to us that we belong to the Lord.

41. Because this assertion is contrary to the appearance, however, it may seem not to merit credence unless it is demonstrated, and since it cannot be demonstrated except by illustrations that a person can perceive with his physical power of sensation, therefore we will demonstrate it by recourse to such.

A person has five outward senses, which we call touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.

The subject of which the sense of touch is predicated is the skin that envelops a person. The very substance and form of the skin cause it to feel whatever is brought into contact with it. The sensation of touch does not exist in those things which are brought into contact with it, but it exists in the substance and form of the skin, which are the subject of which it is predicated. The sensation is simply the affecting of it by the things brought into contact with it.

The case is the same with taste. This sensation is simply the affecting of the substance and form which constitute the tongue. The tongue is the subject of which it is predicated.

It is the same with the sense of smell. People know that an odor affects the nostrils and is sensed in the nostrils, and that it is an affecting of them by odorous emanations coming into contact with them.

So, too, with hearing. It seems as though the hearing of a thing exists in the place where the sound originates; but the hearing is in the ear, and is an affecting of its substance and form. The hearing of things at a distance by the ear is only an appearance.

[2] It is the same with sight. When a person sees objects at a distance, it seems as though the sight exists there, but in fact it is in the eye, which is the subject of which it is predicated, and the sight is similarly the affecting of it. Distance is only a conclusion of the judgment regarding the intervening space based on the objects that lie in between, or on the dwindling and consequent fading of the object seen, the image of which is produced within the eye in accordance with its angle of incidence.

It is apparent from this that sight does not go out from the eye to the object, but that an image of the object enters the eye and affects its substance and form. For the case is the same with sight as it is with hearing. Hearing does not go out from the ear to capture sound, but sound enters the ear and affects it.

[3] From these illustrations it can be seen that the affecting of the substance and form which produces a sensation is not something separate from the subject of which it is predicated, but simply causes a change of state in it, the subject remaining still the subject it was before and that it continues to be thereafter. It follows as a consequence that sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are not some aerial emanation flowing out from their organs, but that they are the organs regarded in terms of their substance and form, the affecting of which produces sensation.