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:

45. Anyone who can pursue and grasp inherent reality and its manifestation at all thoughtfully will necessarily come to grasp the fact that it is wholly itself and unique. We call it wholly itself because it alone exists; and we call it unique because it is the source of everything else.

Further, since what is wholly itself and unique is substance and form, it follows that it is the unique substance and form, and wholly itself; and since that true substance and form is divine love and wisdom, it follows that it is the unique love, wholly itself, and the unique wisdom, wholly itself. It is therefore the unique essence, wholly itself, and the unique life, wholly itself, since love and wisdom is life.

6310. A person's interiors are divided into separate degrees through derivation from one another; and in keeping with those degrees they also differ in the level of light they possess. The light on the internal sensory level next to the bodily senses is the dullest, a light that much experience has enabled me to recognize. I have also noticed that every time I have descended to this degree of light falsities and evils of many a kind have presented themselves, indeed even slanders against what is heavenly and Divine, not to mention things of a foul and disgusting nature. The reason why is that this kind of light prevails in hell, and hell enters a person by means of this light especially.

[2] When this is the kind of light a person has, his thought possesses virtually the same kind of light as his external sight, and takes place almost on the level of the body. People who see in this kind of light must be called sensory-minded, for their thought does not rise beyond sensory impressions received by the body. Such people do not have any perception of or belief in things that lie beyond the senses; they believe only what they can see and touch. This is the light that people see by who have not devoted any attention whatever to more internal things; in life they have neglected or treated with contempt everything of a rational or spiritual nature. It is the light that avaricious persons and adulterers in particular see by, also those who have led lives of mere pleasure-seeking or lives that have been disgustingly lazy. The thoughts of such people are consequently foul, and they often entertain disgraceful attitudes towards the holy things of the Church.