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:

32. It is because the divine essence itself is love and wisdom that the universe and everything in it, whether living or not, depends on warmth and light for its survival. Warmth in fact corresponds to love and light corresponds to wisdom, which also means that spiritual warmth is love and spiritual light is wisdom. But more on this as well later [83-84, 89-92].

3069. 'And I will drink' means instruction from them in truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'drinking' as receiving instruction. References to 'drinking' occur in various places in the Word, and whenever the subject is the goods and truths of faith, instruction in these and reception of them is meant, as in Isaiah,

The new wine will mourn, the vine will languish, all the merry-hearted will sigh; they will not drink wine with singing, strong drink will be bitter to those drinking it. Isaiah 24:7, 9.

'Not drinking wine with singing' stands for not receiving instruction from the affection for truth and not receiving any consequent delight. 'Strong drink being bitter to those drinking it' stands for repugnance. In the same prophet,

It will be as when a thirsting man dreams, and behold, he is drinking; and he awakes, and behold, he is faint, and the soul is craving. Isaiah 29:8.

'Thirsting' stands for desiring instruction, 'drinking' for receiving it, but in things that are valueless.

[2] In Jeremiah,

Our waters we drink for silver, our timbers come for a price. Lamentations 5:4.

'Drinking waters for silver' stands for receiving instruction but not for nothing, and also attributing truth to oneself. Truth is a free gift and so does not come from oneself but from the Lord, as these words in Isaiah declare,

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come, buy! Isaiah 55:1.

And in John,

Jesus said, If anyone thirsts let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water. John 7:37-38.

Here 'drinking' means being given instruction and accepting it. In Luke,

They will say, We ate in Your presence and we drank, and You taught in our streets. But the Lord will say, I do not know where you come from; depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity! Luke 13:26-27.

Here 'eating and drinking in the Lord's presence' stands for giving instruction in, and proclaiming, the good and truth of faith, doing so from cognitions drawn from the Word, which is meant by 'You taught in our streets'. But because they did it for selfish reasons - for the sake of personal honour and gain, thus not out of any affection for good and truth, and so possessed cognitions of truth and yet led evil lives - it is said, 'I do not know where you come from; depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity!'

[3] In the same gospel, where Jesus was talking to the disciples,

That you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom. Luke 22:30.

It is evident to anyone that in the Lord's kingdom they do not eat and drink, and that no table is there, thus that something different is meant by 'eating and drinking at the Lord's table in His kingdom', that is to say, enjoying a perception of good and truth. So also with what the Lord says in Matthew,

I tell you that I shall not drink from now on of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it [new] with you in My Father's kingdom. Matthew 26:28, 29.

'Drinking' stands for giving living instruction in truths and imparting a perception of good and truth. That which the Lord said -

Do not be anxious for your soul, what you are going to eat or what you are going to drink, nor for your body, what you are going to put on. Matthew 6:25, 31; Luke 12:29 - is indicative of spiritual things, that so far as all things of faith are concerned, goodness and truth are imparted by the Lord. In John,

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but he who drinks from the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into eternal life. John 4:7-14. 'Drinking' clearly stands for being given instruction in goods and truths, and the acceptance of them.