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:

213. As for love and wisdom, love is the purpose, wisdom the means, and service the result. Further, service is the composite, vessel, and foundation of wisdom and love, such a composite and such a vessel that every bit of love and every bit of wisdom is actively present in it. It is their total presence. We need to be absolutely clear, though, that in keeping with what was presented in 189-194 above, what are present in service are all the elements of love and wisdom that are of the same kind, harmonious.

2915. 'I am a stranger and an inhabitant among you' means their first state when, although the Lord was not known to them, He was nevertheless able to be with them. This is clear from the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord, often dealt with already, and from the meaning of 'being a stranger among them' and 'being an inhabitant among them' as not being known but nevertheless being with them. It is evident from what comes before and after that this is the internal sense, for the subject is a new Church, and in this verse the first state of that Church. This state is such that first of all they do not know the Lord, yet because they lead good and charitable lives, and in public life they are just and fair, and in private life honourable and correct, they are the kind of people with whom the Lord is able to be present. For the Lord is present with man in good, and so in justice and fairness, and further still in honourableness and correctness (honourableness being the sum total of all the private virtues, correctness simply the form that honourableness takes). These are the kinds of good that follow one another consecutively, and are the levels with man on which the Lord bases conscience, and consequently intelligence and wisdom. People however with whom these qualities do not exist, that is to say, with whom they do not proceed from the heart or affection, cannot have anything of heaven planted within them. There is no level, nor any ground, thus nothing to receive them. And as they cannot have anything of heaven planted within them, neither can the Lord be present there. The Lord may be said to be present according to the good that is present, that is, according to the nature of that good. And the nature of this good is determined by the state of innocence, love and charity in which the truths of faith have been, or are able to be, implanted.