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:

83. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love

Part 2

In the spiritual world, divine love and wisdom look like a sun. There are two worlds, one spiritual and one physical; and the spiritual world does not derive anything from the physical one, nor does the physical one derive anything from the spiritual one. They are completely distinct from each other, communicating only by means of correspondence, whose nature has been amply explained elsewhere. The following example may be enlightening. Warmth in the physical world is the equivalent of the good that thoughtfulness does in the spiritual world, and light in the physical world is the equivalent of the truth that faith perceives in the spiritual world. No one can fail to see that warmth and the goodness of being thoughtful, and light and the truth of faith, are completely distinct from each other.

At first glance, they seem as distinct as two quite different things. That is what comes to the fore when we start thinking about what the goodness of being thoughtful has in common with warmth and what the truth of faith has in common with light. Yet spiritual warmth is that very "goodness," and spiritual light is that very "truth."

In spite of the fact that they are so distinct from each other, though, they still make a single whole by means of their correspondence. They are so united that when we read about warmth and light in the Word, the spirits and angels who are with us see thoughtfulness in the place of warmth and faith in the place of light.

I include this example to make it clear that the two worlds, the spiritual one and the physical one, are so distinct from each other that they have nothing in common, and that still they have been created in such a way that they communicate with each other and are actually united through their correspondences.

5700. 'And for the Egyptians eating with him by themselves' means the separation of factual knowledge existing in an inverted state of order. This is clear from the representation of 'the Egyptians' as factual knowledge present in an inverted state of order, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'eating with him by themselves' as a separation, dealt with immediately above in 5699. 'The Egyptians eating with him' means Egyptians who were eating at Joseph's house; yet it is evident that they did not do so with Joseph since it says that they ate 'by themselves'. In the good sense facts known to the Church are meant by 'Egypt' or 'the Egyptians', see 1462, 4749, 4964, 4966; but in the contrary sense facts existing in an inverted state of order, and so ideas contrary to the truths known to the Church are meant by them, 1164, 1165, 1186. And many places in the Word contain some reference to Egypt in this contrary sense. The reason why 'Egypt' means those facts existing in an inverted state of order is that the facts known to the Ancient Church which were the representatives and meaningful signs of celestial and spiritual realities, and which were fostered among those people more than others, were converted by them into magic. Consequently the facts known to the representative Church were brought by them into a completely inverted state of order.

[2] Facts are said to exist in an inverted state of order when people intent on doing what is evil violate heavenly order; for heavenly order intends that good should be done to everyone. The result of this therefore is that once people cause heavenly order to become inverted in this way they ultimately reject what is of God, what is of heaven, and consequently what constitutes charity and faith. People who have come to be like this know how to use factual knowledge to engage in keen and skillful reasoning; for their use of reason relies on sensory evidence, and reasoning reliant on sensory evidence relies on considerations of an external nature - on bodily and worldly matters which instantly absorb a person's thoughts and feelings. Unless such factual knowledge has had the light of heaven shed upon it and has thereby been brought into a completely different state of order, it sets the person in obscurity. This obscurity is so pronounced, so far as heavenly matters are concerned, that he not only fails to understand them but also utterly refuses to accept them, and at length casts them aside and, so far as he is allowed to do so, says blasphemous things about them. When factual knowledge exists in a proper state of order it has been arranged by the Lord into the same form as heaven takes. But when it exists in an inverted state of order it has been arranged into the form hell takes, a form in which the worst falsities are in the centre, supporting ideas come next, and truths on the outside. And as those truths are on the outside they cannot have any communication with heaven where truths are predominant. For this reason the interiors are closed, since it is through those interiors that the way to heaven lies open.