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.

219. These items need to be brought to light and defended one at a time.

(a) What "time-bound" and "eternal" things are. Time-bound things are all the properties of the physical world and therefore all of our own properties. The primary properties of the physical world are space and time, both of which have limits and boundaries. Our own properties, derived from them, involve the properties of our volition and of our discernment, and of the feelings and thoughts that they generate, and especially of our prudence. It is widely recognized that these are finite and limited.

In contrast, eternal things are all the properties of the Lord and the things from the Lord that seem to be ours. The properties of the Lord are all infinite and eternal, beyond time therefore, and consequently without limit and without end. Their derivatives that seem to be ours are likewise infinite and eternal, but nothing of them really belongs to us. They simply belong to the Lord, within us.

[2] (b) We are essentially time-bound, and the Lord is essentially eternal. Therefore, nothing comes from us that is not time-bound and nothing comes from the Lord that is not eternal. I have just stated that we are essentially time-bound and that the Lord is essentially eternal. Since nothing can come from anything that is not within it, it follows that nothing that is not time-bound can come from us and nothing that is not eternal can come from the Lord. The infinite cannot come from the finite: that would be a contradiction. Actually, something infinite can come from something finite, but it is not from the finite entity but through it, from the infinite. Conversely, too, the finite cannot come from the infinite: that too would be a contradiction. The finite can be produced by the infinite, but that is not "coming from," it is creating. On this subject see Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom from beginning to end.

If something finite does come from the Lord (as happens with us in many respects), then it does not come from the Lord but from us. We can still say that it comes from the Lord through us, because that is how it seems.

[3] We can illustrate this by the Lord's words, "Let your speech be 'Yes, yes; no, no.' Anything beyond this comes from evil" (Matthew 5:37). This is how everyone talks in the third heaven. The people there never try to figure out whether divine things are true or not; they see within themselves, from the Lord, whether they are true or not. This means that the reason people try to figure out whether divine things are true or not is that such thinkers are not seeing them from the Lord. They are trying to see them on their own, and whatever we see on our own is evil.

All the same, the Lord wants us not only to think and talk about divine matters but also to try to figure them out so that we ourselves come to see whether they are true or not. As long as the purpose of this thought, speech, and reasoning is to see the truth, we can say that it is from the Lord within us. Still, it is from us as long as we are seeing the truth and acknowledging it. All the while, our ability to think, talk, and reason is from the Lord alone. We can do all this because of the two abilities called freedom and rationality; and we have these abilities solely from the Lord.

[4] (c) The time-bound separates the eternal from itself, while the eternal unites the time-bound to itself. "The time-bound separates the eternal from itself" refers to what we (who are time-bound) do because of all that is time-bound within us. "The eternal unites the time-bound to itself" refers to what the Lord (who is eternal) does because of all that is eternal within him, as already noted [218].

I explained earlier [92] that there is a union of the Lord with us and a mutual union of us with the Lord, but that our mutual union with the Lord is not from us but from the Lord. I noted also [183] that our own volition is at odds with the Lord's volition, or in other words, that our prudence is at odds with the Lord's divine providence. It then follows that because of all that is time-bound within us, we separate the Lord's eternal things from ourselves, while the Lord unites his eternal things with our time-bound ones--that is, himself with us and us with him. Since I have already said so much about this, there is no need for further support.

[5] (d) The Lord unites us to himself by means of appearances. It does seem as though we ourselves loved our neighbor and did good and spoke the truth; and if it did not seem as though we were doing these things on our own, we would not love our neighbor, do good, or speak the truth, so we would not be united to the Lord. However, since love, goodness, and truth come from the Lord, we can see that it is through appearances that the Lord is uniting us to himself. There has been a great deal of material already [100-128] about this appearance and about the Lord's union with us and our responding union with the Lord by means of it.

[6] (e) The Lord unites us to himself by means of correspondences. This happens through the Word, whose literal meaning is made up entirely of correspondences. In Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Sacred Scripture, from beginning to end, I have explained that there is a union of the Lord with us and a responding union of us with the Lord through this meaning..