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

Footnotes:

153. There are two suns by means of which the Lord created everything, the sun of the spiritual world and the sun of the physical world. The Lord created everything by means of the spiritual world's sun, but not by means of the physical world's sun, since this latter sun is far beneath the former one. The spiritual sun is at a midpoint, with the spiritual world above it and the physical world below it. The physical world's sun was created to play a supporting role, a role that will be discussed below [157].

10420. 'For your people have corrupted themselves' means that they have turned themselves away altogether from the Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'corrupting themselves', when their worship is the subject, as turning themselves away from the Divine; for all corruption and deviation in worship is a departure and turning away from the Divine. Since the expression 'turning away' is used, what is implied by it must be stated briefly. Those whose interest lies in external things separated from what is internal all turn themselves away from the Divine; for they look in an outward and downward direction, and not in an inward and upward one. For a person looks inwards or upwards when his internal is open, thus when it is in heaven, but he looks outwards or downwards when his internal is closed and only his external is open; for his external is located in the world. Consequently when the external has been separated from the internal the person cannot be raised upwards; for the part on which heaven must act is unavailable, because it has been closed off. This explains why for those people all things of heaven and the Church dwell in thick darkness, as a result of which also they do not believe in the existence of those things. Indeed in their heart they deny the existence of them, some doing so with their lips as well.

[2] When heaven acts on a person, which happens when the internal is open, it leads him away from self-love and love of the world, and from the falsities welling up from them. When the internal is raised, so too is the external; for the viewpoint of the external is similar to that of the internal when it is subordinate to the internal. But when the internal cannot be raised because it is closed, the external looks in no other direction than towards self and the world, since self-love and love of the world reign. This is also called looking downwards because it involves looking towards hell, this being the place where those loves reign; and a person ruled by those loves lives in company with those inhabiting hell, though he is not conscious of doing so. Also inwardly he in actual fact turns himself away from the Lord; for he turns his back on Him and faces towards hell. This cannot be seen within a person while he lives in the body; but since his thought and will are what do this it is his spirit that so turns itself around, the spirit being that which thinks and wills within a person.

[3] It is plainly apparent in the next life that this is so; there spirits turn around as their loves direct them. Those who love the Lord and the neighbour look constantly towards the Lord; indeed, amazingly, they are facing Him whichever way they turn their body. For in the spiritual world no direction or quarter exists as in the natural world. The direction that anyone in the spiritual world faces is determined by his love causing him to turn around. But those who love themselves and the world above all things turn their face away from the Lord and turn themselves towards hell. And there each one turns towards those ruled by a love similar to his, and this too is so whichever way they turn their body. From this it becomes clear what turning oneself away from the Divine describes, and also what precisely is meant in the Word by 'turning oneself away', as in Isaiah,

They turn themselves away backwards, those trusting in a graven image. Isaiah 42:17.

In David,

[Our] heart does [not] turn itself away backwards. Psalms 44:18.

In Jeremiah,

Their transgressions have been multiplied, and their turnings away have become firm. Jeremiah 5:6.

In the same prophet,

They turn themselves away, in order that they may not return. This people turn themselves away; Jerusalem is perpetually turned away, they refuse to return. Jeremiah 8:4-5.

In the same prophet,

They have turned themselves away, they have taken themselves away to dwell in the deep. Jeremiah 49:8.

And the expression is used many times elsewhere.