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:

67. Next, since we are by creation heavens in smallest form and therefore images of the Lord, and since heaven is made up of as many desires as there are angels, each of which is a person as to its form, it follows that the constant effort in divine providence is for each of us to become a heaven in form and therefore an image of the Lord. Further, since this is accomplished by means of the desire for what is good and true, it is for us to become that desire. This, then, is the constant effort in divine providence.

The very heart of providence, though, is that we should be in some particular place in heaven or in some particular place in the divine heavenly person and therefore in the Lord. This is what happens for people whom the Lord can lead to heaven. Since the Lord foresees this, he also constantly provides for it, with the result that all of us who are allowing ourselves to be led to heaven are being prepared for our own places in heaven.

3296. 'And the greater will serve the less' means that the good of truth must for a time be subordinate. This is clear from the meaning of 'the greater' as good, from the meaning of 'serving' as being subordinate, and from the meaning of 'the less' as truth. This matter may be seen from what follows, being described there by means of Esau and Jacob. For as has been stated, 'Esau' represents good, and 'Jacob' truth. The rise of a struggle or conflict over priority and over lordship is described in the internal sense by Jacob's stealing the birthright from Esau and also the blessing. But the fact that this situation would last for a time only is evident from Isaac's prophecy concerning Esau,

And by your sword you will live, and you will serve your brother; and it will be, when you have dominion over him, that you will break his yoke from above your neck. Genesis 27:40.

[2] The fact that the things said in this verse have an internal sense, and that without that internal sense nobody can know what they mean, is quite evident, that is to say, what is meant by 'two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be separated from your bowels', and by '[one] people will prevail over [the other] people, and the greater will serve the less'. The fact that they do mean the things that have been stated is clear from what follows where the subject is dealt with extensively. Furthermore one can scarcely credit that these statements embody such things unless one knows about good and truth, about the birth of the first from the second, and about the change of state with a person when being regenerated. In the internal sense the subject is indeed the Lord, here how the Lord made His Natural Divine. But in the representative sense the subject is the regeneration of man, for man's regeneration is an image of the Lord's glorification, 3043, 3138, 3212 - that is, in regeneration one sees as in a certain image the manner in which the Lord glorified His Human, or what amounts to the same, made it Divine. For as the Lord changed completely His human state into a Divine one, so also does the Lord when He is regenerating man change his state completely, for He turns his old man into a new man.