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

Фусноти:

71. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Act in Freedom and in Accord with Reason

It is generally recognized that we have a freedom to think and intend whatever we wish but not a freedom to say whatever we think or to do whatever we wish. The freedom under discussion here, then, is freedom on the spiritual level and not freedom on the earthly level, except to the extent that the two coincide. Thinking and intending are spiritual, while speaking and acting are earthly.

There is a clear distinction between these kinds of freedom in us, since we can think things that we do not express and intend things that we do not act out; so we can see that the spiritual and the earthly in us are differentiated. As a result, we cannot cross the line from one to the other except by making a decision, a decision that can be compared to a door that has first to be unlocked and opened.

This door stands open, though, in people who think and intend rationally, in accord with the civil laws of the state and the moral laws of society. People like this say what they think and do what they wish. In contrast, the door is closed, so to speak, for people who think and intend things that are contrary to those laws. If we pay close attention to our intentions and the deeds they prompt, we will notice that there is this kind of decision between them, sometimes several times in a single conversation or a single undertaking.

I mention this at the outset so that the reader may know that "acting from freedom and in accord with reason" means thinking and intending freely, and then freely saying and doing what is in accord with reason.

10758. Finally I talked to the spirits belonging to that planet about the beliefs which the inhabitants of our planet have about rising again, that they cannot conceive of people immediately after death entering the next life and appearing there as people complete with face, body, arms, feet, and all the senses outward and inward. Still less can they conceive of them wearing clothes and having homes and places to live in. The sole reason why this should be so is that the thought of the majority there is confined to the level of the physical senses, and therefore they think that things which they cannot see and touch have no existence; and also that few of them can be drawn away from things perceived by the outward senses to those on more internal levels and thereby be raised to the light of heaven. So it is that when they think of the soul or the spirit they can have no idea of a human being. Their idea is of a puff of wind, air, or breath that is formless yet has some vitality in it. This is the reason why they do not think they are going to rise again except at the end of the world, which they call the last judgement, when the body, though it has disintegrated into dust and been dispersed to the four winds, will be brought back and re-joined to its soul or spirit.

[2] I added that they are permitted to believe this because, as has been stated, their thought is confined to the level of the senses and therefore they are incapable of grasping anything other than this - that the soul or spirit cannot live as a person and in a human form unless it takes on the body which it carried around in the world. Consequently unless it were said that the body was going to rise again they would in their heart reject teachings about resurrection and eternal life as being unintelligible. But in spite of this that idea about rising again has its advantages, in that it leads people to believe in life after death, and the result of this belief is that when they lie sick on their bed and their thought is not confined, as it was previously, to worldly and bodily interests, thus to things on the level of the senses, they believe that they will be alive immediately after they have departed this life. They also talk then about heaven and about the hope of life there immediately after death, doing so in a way far removed from the teaching regarding a last judgement.

[3] I went on to tell them that I have at times been amazed that, when believers talk about life after death and about their own folk who are departing or have departed this life, and do not at the same time think about the last judgement, they believe that those folk will be or are living as people immediately after death. But as soon as thought about the last judgement enters in, that idea they have is turned into a material idea of their earthly body, which is to be joined again to their soul. For they do not know that inwardly every person is a spirit and that this is what possesses the life within the body; by itself the body has no life. Nor do they know that everyone's spirit is what gives the body its human form, consequently that it is who the person is primarily, and that it exists within a similar form, which however is not visible before the eyes of the body, but is visible before the eyes of spirits.

[4] Therefore also, when the sight of a person's spirit is opened, which is accomplished by the removal of physical sight, angels appear; and so it was that when they appeared to the ancients referred to in the Word, angels were seen as people. I have also talked at times to spirits whom I had known when they were living as people in the world. I have asked them whether they wished to be reclothed with their earthly body, as they had previously thought they were going to be. On hearing this the very idea of being joined to that body made them flee far away, struck with amazement that in the world blind belief devoid of all understanding had led them to think that way.