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:

42. It is the same with love and wisdom, the only difference being that the substances and forms that are love and wisdom are not visible to our eyes as are the organs of our external senses. Still, no one can deny that those matters of love and wisdom that we call thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are substances and forms. They are not things that go floating out from nothing, remote from any functional and real substance and form that are their subjects. There are in fact countless substances and forms in the brain that serve as the homes of all the inner sensation that involves our discernment and volition.

What has just been said about our external senses points to the conclusion that all our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts in those substances and forms are not something they breathe out; they themselves are functional and substantial subjects. They do not emit anything, but simply undergo changes in response to the things that touch and affect them. There will be more later [210, 273] on these things that touch and affect them.

3340. Existing as the opposite of that light is thick darkness, and as the opposite of that warmth is coldness. Within that thick darkness and that coldness dwell those in hell. Their thick darkness is the product of the falsities in which they are immersed, and their coldness the product of evils. And the further away they are from truths the thicker is their darkness; and the further away they are from good the more intense is their coldness. When one is allowed to see into the hells where such beings exist the very dark mist in which they live is visible. And when there is any exhalation from that mist the insane ideas flowing from falsities, and the forms of hatred from evils, are detected. They are also provided sometimes with a light, but this is the feeble light from an ignis fatuus, which however goes out on them and becomes thick darkness as soon as they look at the light of truth. In addition they are sometimes provided with warmth, but this warmth is like that of a filthy bathhouse, which however turns into coldness with them as soon as they detect any hint of good. A certain spirit was sent into that dark mist which envelops those in hell so that he might discover for himself what it is like with those who are there. But the Lord protected him by means of angels. From there he spoke to me and said that the maniacal rage against what is good and true, and above all against the Lord, was so great that he was astounded that it could ever be withstood. For those in hell were breathing out nothing else but all kinds of hatred, revenge, and murder, and doing so with such vehemence that they wanted to destroy everybody throughout the universe. Consequently if the Lord was not constantly driving back that rage the entire human race would perish.