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:

59. We can conclude from this that Divinity is present in absolutely everything in the created universe and that the created universe is therefore the work of Jehovah's hands, as it says in the Word. That is, it is a work of divine love and wisdom, for this is what is meant by "Jehovah's hands." Further, even though Divinity is present in all things great and small in the created universe, there is no trace of intrinsic divinity in their own being. While the created universe is not God, it is from God; and since it is from God, his image is in it like the image of a person in a mirror. We do indeed see a person there, but there is still nothing of the person in the mirror.

7211. 'And I will bring you to the land concerning which I lifted up my hand to give it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob' means raising by Divine power to heaven, where the Divine Human is the All. This is clear from the meaning of 'bringing to the land' - the land of Canaan - as raising to heaven (for the meaning of 'the land of Canaan' as the Lord's kingdom or heaven, see above in 7196); from the meaning of 'lifting up the hand', when said of Jehovah or the Lord, as by Divine power (for the meaning of 'hand' as power, see 878, 4931-4937, 5327, 5318, 6947, 7011); and from the representation of 'Abraham Isaac, and Jacob' as the Lord in respect of the Divine itself and in respect of the Divine Human, dealt with in 6804, 6847, at this point in respect of the Divine Human since this is the All in heaven. The reason why the Divine Human is the All in heaven is that no one there, not even an angel of the inmost or third heaven, can form any picture in his mind of the Divine itself, as accords with the Lord's words in John,

Nobody has ever seen God. John 1:18.

You have never heard the Father's voice nor seen His shape. John 5:37.

For the angels are finite, and what is finite cannot form any mental picture of the Infinite. In heaven therefore unless they pictured God in human shape they would have no mental picture of Him, or only an unsuitable one, and so could not have become linked to the Divine, either through faith or through love. That being so, in heaven they perceive the Divine in human form; and this explains why the Divine Human in heaven is the All in the insights they have, and is consequently the All in their faith and love, as a result of which they are joined to Him and thus saved by Him, 6700.