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:

129. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Not Be Compelled by Outside Forces to Think and Intend and So to Believe and Love in Matters of Our Religion, but That We Should Guide Ourselves and Sometimes Compel Ourselves

This law of divine providence follows from the two preceding ones, namely, that we should act in freedom and in accord with reason (71-99), and that we should do this for ourselves, even though it is being done by the Lord--that is, in apparent autonomy (100-128). Since it is not from freedom and according to reason and not in autonomy to be compelled but comes from the absence of freedom and from someone else, this law of divine providence follows directly from the two earlier ones. Everyone recognizes that none of us can be compelled to think what we do not want to think or to intend what we think we do not want to intend. So we cannot be compelled to believe what we do not believe and certainly not anything that we do not want to believe; or to love what we do not love and certainly not anything that we do not want to love. Our spirit or mind has complete freedom to think, intend, believe, and love. This freedom comes to us by an inflow from the spiritual world, which does not compel us. Our spirit or mind is actually in that world. The freedom does not flow in from the physical world, which accepts the inflow only when the two worlds are in unison.

[2] We can be compelled to say that we think and intend something or that we believe and love something, but unless this is or becomes a matter of our own desire and our consequent reasoning, it is not something that we really think, intend, believe, and love. We can also be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act according to religion, but we cannot be compelled to think in its favor as a matter of our own faith and to intend it as a matter of our own love. In countries where justice and judgment are cherished, everyone is obliged not to speak against religion or to violate it in action, but still no one can be compelled to think and intend in its favor. This is because each of us has a freedom to think in sympathy with hell and to intend in its favor, or to think in sympathy with heaven and to intend in its favor. Still, our reason tells us what the quality is of the one and of the other and what lot awaits the one and what lot awaits the other. Our ability to intend on the basis of reason is our capacity to choose and to decide.

[3] This may serve to show that what is outside cannot compel what is inside. However, it does happen sometimes, and I need to show that it is harmful in the following sequence.

1. No one is reformed by miracles and signs, because they compel.

2. No one is reformed by visions or by conversations with the dead, because they compel.

3. No one is reformed by threats or by punishment, because they compel.

4. No one is reformed in states where freedom and rationality are absent.

5. Self-compulsion is not inconsistent with rationality and freedom.

6. Our outer self has to be reformed by means of our inner self, and not the reverse.

10648. 'And they go whoring after their gods' means from which falsities of evil arise. This is clear from the meaning of 'whoring after the gods of the nations' as being linked to falsities of evil; for being linked together unlawfully is meant by 'whoring', and falsities of evil by 'the gods of the nations'. For the meaning of 'gods' as falsities, see 4402(end), 4544, 7873, 8867, and for that of 'nations' as evils, above in 10638. The expression 'from which falsities of evil arise' is used because from evil all kinds of falsity come forth. Falsities however which do not arise from evil are indeed falsities in the outward form they take, but they are not inwardly so. For falsities can exist with someone who leads a good life; but they have good interiorly present in them which causes the evil of the falsity to be removed. Consequently that falsity does not appear before angels as falsity but as a sort of truth; for angels look at the inner features of faith, not the outward aspects of it. This is why everyone, whatever their religion, even gentiles who possess no truths from the Word, can be saved, provided that they have regarded leading a good life as their end in view, and the religious teachings they have received as the means to that end, see 2589-2604.

[2] 'Whoring' is spoken of frequently in the Word. An unlawful joining to truth is meant by this, and an unlawful joining to good by 'committing adultery', so that 'whoring' means the falsification of truth, and 'committing adultery' the adulteration of good. The falsification of truth takes place in the following three ways,

1. If a person leads an evil life while acknowledging truths received through religious teachings, for the truths then have evil inside them, and evil falsifies truth. It does so because evil dispels from truths what is heavenly and Divine, and introduces what is hellish, as a consequence of which falsification takes place.

[3] 2. If a person first accepts the truths in religious teachings and afterwards assents to the falsity of another set of teachings, which happens solely in the case of those who lead an evil life, because evil has an appetite for falsity and freely takes hold of it as the truth.

3. If a person who is leading an evil life and adopting falsities as his religious teachings takes hold of truths belonging to another set of teachings, he too falsifies truths, because he does not acknowledge truths for their own sake, only for the sake of earning some gain, important position, or reputation.

[4] In the Word all these kinds of falsification are called acts of whoredom and prostitution, because a lawful joining together, which is that of goodness and truth, is meant by a marriage, see 2727-2759, so that instances of an unlawful joining together are meant by acts of whoredom. The truth of this may be recognized from a large number of places in the Word, of which let just these two be brought forward here:

In Ezekiel,

O Jerusalem, you committed whoredom because of your renown, and poured out your acts of whoredom on every passer-by. You took some of your garments and made for yourself high places variously coloured, and on them committed whoredom. For your adornment you took vessels made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself figures of the male, and committed whoredom with them. You took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to Me, and sacrificed them to them. Were your acts of whoredom a small matter? You committed whoredom with the sons of Egypt, your neighbours, great in flesh, and multiplied your whoredom to provoke Me to anger. You committed whoredom with the sons of Asshur, and you committed whoredom with them and were not satisfied. And you multiplied your whoredom, even as far as the trading land of Chaldea. Ezekiel 16:15-17, 20, 26, 28-29ff.

And in the same prophet,

Two women, the daughters of one mother, committed whoredom in Egypt. In their youth they committed whoredom. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem. Oholah committed whoredom under Me and doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours. She bestowed her acts of whoredom on them. Her acts of whoredom brought from Egypt she did not give up, for they had lain with her in her youth. Oholibah corrupted her love more than she, and multiplied her acts of whoredom above her sister's acts of whoredom; she doted on the sons of Asshur. She added to her acts of whoredom and saw the images of the Chaldeans. As soon as her eyes saw them she desired them. The sons of Babel came to her, into her love-bed. Ezekiel 23:2-5, 7-8, 11-12, 14, 16ff.

Further examples of the same thing occur in many other places, which may be seen, together with explanations of them as well as of the two quoted here, in 2466, 8904.