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:

52. Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image. This is clearly evidenced by the way everything in the universe answers to something in us. Every single thing that comes to light in the created universe has such an equivalence with every single thing in us that you could call us a kind of universe as well. There is a correspondence of our affective side and its consequent thought with everything in the animal kingdom, a correspondence of our volitional side and its consequent discernment with everything in the plant kingdom, and a correspondence of our outermost life with everything in the mineral kingdom.

This kind of correspondence is not apparent to anyone in our physical world, but it is apparent to observant people in the spiritual world. We find in this latter world all the things that occur in the three kingdoms of our physical world, and they reflect the feelings and thoughts of the people who are there--the feelings that come from their volition and the thoughts that come from their discernment--as well as the outermost aspects of their life. Both their feelings and their thoughts are visible around them looking much like the things we see in the created universe, though we see them in less perfect representations.

From this it is obvious to angels that the created universe is an image depicting the Divine-Human One and that it is his love and wisdom that are presented, in image, in the universe. It is not that the created universe is the Divine-Human One: rather, it comes from him; for nothing whatever in the universe is intrinsic substance and form or intrinsic life or intrinsic love and wisdom. We are not "intrinsic persons." It all comes from God, who is the intrinsic person, the intrinsic wisdom and love, and the intrinsic form and substance. Whatever has intrinsic existence is uncreated and infinite; while what comes from it, possessing nothing within itself that has intrinsic existence, is created and finite. This latter presents an image of the One from whom it derives its existence and manifestation.

1893. That 'Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no child' means that the Rational Man did not as yet exist will be clear from what is said later on, when Isaac is the subject, for everyone, as has been stated, has an internal man, a rational man which is in between, and an external man, which strictly speaking is the natural man. These, as they existed with the Lord, were represented by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the Internal Man by Abraham, the Rational Man by Isaac, and the Natural Man by Jacob. The Lord's Internal Man was Jehovah Himself, for He was conceived from Jehovah. This was why so many times He referred to Jehovah as His Father, and why in the Word the Lord is called 'the only begotten of God' and 'God's only Son'. The rational man does not exist with anyone when he is first born, only a potentiality to become rational, as may become clear to anyone from the fact that new-born babes do not possess reason but become rational as time goes by through the response of the senses to stimuli from without and from within, as knowledge and cognitions are bestowed on them. Rationality does, it is true, appear to exist with children; but rationality does not in fact do so, only something of the first beginnings of it, as may be recognized from the fact that reason resides with people who are adult and advanced in years.

[2] The Lord's Rational Man is the subject in the present chapter. The Divine Rational itself is represented by Isaac, but the first rational before it had become Divine is represented by Ishmael. Here therefore the statement that 'Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no child' means that the Divine Rational did not as yet exist. As stated already, the Lord was born in the same way as any other, and as regards what He derived from Mary His mother He was like any other. And because the rational is formed through facts and cognitions which enter in by way of the external senses, or the senses that belong to the external man, His first rational was therefore born as it is with any other. But since everything human in Him was made Divine by His own power, so was the rational made Divine. His first rational is described in the present chapter, and once more in Chapter 21, where again in verses 9-21 Hagar and Ishmael are the subject, where it is said that Ishmael was cast out when Isaac, who represents the Divine Rational, had grown up.