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:

16. It therefore stands to reason that God is a person and in this way is God manifest--not manifest from himself, but manifest in himself. The one who is manifest in himself is the God who is the source of all.

2619. 'As He had spoken' means as He had thought. This is clear from the meaning of 'speaking' as thinking, dealt with in 2271, 2287. Perception, which is meant by 'Jehovah said', flowed from the Divine celestial, but thought, which is meant by 'Jehovah spoke', flowed from the Divine celestial by way of the Divine spiritual. This explains why in the sense of the letter there occurs an apparent repetition, namely 'as He had said' and 'as He had spoken'. But what perceiving from the Divine celestial is, and what thinking from the Divine celestial by way of the Divine spiritual, does not come within the range of even the most enlightened capacity to understand by means of the things which belong to the light of the world. This shows how infinite everything else [in the Word] must be. The fact that thought stems from perception, see 1919, 2515. With man the position is that good is the source from which he perceives, but truth the means by which he thinks. Good exists in love and its affections, and for that reason is the source of perception, whereas truth exists in faith, and for that reason faith goes with thought. The former is meant in historical parts of the Word by 'saying', but the latter by 'speaking'. When only the expression 'saying' is used however, it sometimes means perceiving and sometimes thinking, because 'saying' includes both.