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.

3815. 'And Laban said to Jacob, Because you are my brother' means, because they are kindred, by virtue of good. This is clear from the representation of 'Laban' as a parallel good that springs from a common stock, and from the representation of 'Jacob' as the good of the natural, both dealt with above; and from the meaning of 'brother' as good, dealt with in 3803, in this case that which is kindred since these words are spoken by Laban to Jacob, and therefore by good to good. Furthermore every kinship has its origin in good, for good is related to love. It is the nearest degree of love in the line of descent that is called kindred, and is meant in the proper sense by 'brother'. In the spiritual world or in heaven no other kinships or relationships by marriage exist except those of love to the Lord and of love towards the neighbour, or what amounts to the same, those of good. This has been made clear to me by the fact that all the communities that constitute heaven, and that are countless, are quite distinct and separate from one another according to degrees and differences of love and of faith deriving from this, see 685, 917, 2739, 3612.

[2] This has also been made clear to me by the fact that in heaven they do not acknowledge one another because of any family relationship that had been theirs during their lifetime but solely on the basis of good and attendant truth. A father does not acknowledge a son or daughter, a brother does not acknowledge a brother or sister, and even a husband does not acknowledge his wife, unless they have been governed by similar good. They do, it is true, meet when they first enter the next life, but they part company after that; for good itself - that is, love and charity - determines whichever community a person is sent to. Kinship begins in the community in which each person belongs and spreads from there into all places round about.