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].

5934. 'Saying, Joseph's brothers have come' means [a perception] that the truths of the Church within the natural were present. This is clear from the meaning of 'having come as being present; and from the representation of the sons of Jacob or 'Joseph's brothers' as the truths of the Church within the natural, dealt with in 5403, 5419, 5458, 5512. Existing within the natural there is factual knowledge of various kinds. There is factual knowledge which has to do with earthly, bodily, and worldly matters; this occupies the lowest position since it consists of impressions received directly from the external or bodily senses. There is also factual knowledge which has to do with one's country, its system of government, and laws and statutes, which occupies a slightly more internal position. There is factual knowledge which has to do with matters of right conduct, which occupies a position still more internal. And there is knowledge which has to do with spiritual life occupying positions interior to them all; this consists of the truths known to the Church. To the extent that these truths exist with a person solely as a result of religious teaching they are no more than factual knowledge; but once they stem from the good of love in him they go onto a level above factual knowledge, for they now dwell in spiritual light, from which they can look at factual knowledge arrayed in proper order beneath them. By means of such rising degrees of factual knowledge a person attains intelligence; for factual knowledge at each level opens the mind so that light from the spiritual world may flow in. From all this one may now see what is meant by the truths of the Church within the natural being present.