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].

322. Let people beware of falsely assuming that spirits do not possess far keener sensory powers than they did in the life of the body. From thousands of experiences I know that the reverse is true. But if, because of their presuppositions about the spirit, they are unwilling to believe it, let them find out for themselves when they enter the next life, where their own experience will force them to believe it. Not only do spirits have the gift of sight, since they are living in light; good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels also live in a light so bright that the light of this world at midday is scarcely comparable to it. The light in which they live and by which they see will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described later on. Spirits also have a sense of hearing so keen that the sense of hearing in their physical body cannot be reckoned its equal. For several years now, with scarcely any break, they have been holding conversations with me. But their speech also will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described later on. They have the sense of smell, which also will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described later on. They have a very delicate sense of touch, which in hell brings about pain and torment. For all sensations are related to the sense of touch; indeed they are just different forms and variations of that sense.

[2] They have desires and affections, with which those they had in the life of the body cannot be compared. More, in the Lord's Divine mercy, will be said about these later on. They are far more penetrating and discriminating in their thinking than they were during their lifetime. One idea of their thinking embodies more than a thousand ideas did during their lifetime. In what they say to one another they are so direct and to the point, so clear-cut and discriminating, that if man were to catch only a fraction of it he would be dumbfounded. To sum up, they have lost absolutely nothing; they are as men, yet more perfect, but without material flesh and bones and the imperfections that go with these. They acknowledge and perceive that even during their lifetime it was the spirit that was active in sensation, and that although it presented itself within the body, it still did not belong to the body. When therefore the body has been laid aside, sensations are far more excellent and perfect. Life consists in sensation, for no life is possible without sensation, and as is the sensation so is the life, a point which anyone is capable of knowing.