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.

3493. 'And his eyes were becoming dark so that he could not see' means when the Rational wished to enlighten the Natural from the Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'the eyes' as interior or rational sight, dealt with in 2701, and from the meaning of 'seeing' as recognizing and understanding, dealt with in 2150, 2325, 2807. Consequently when 'the eyes' are said 'to be becoming dark' the meaning is that no discernment exists any longer, in this case no discernment of the things present in the natural. This being the meaning of these words, the fact that the Rational wished to enlighten the Natural from the Divine is meant. What this implies may be seen from the following things stated and shown already about the rational and the natural with man when he is being regenerated: The rational is regenerated before the natural, for the reason that the rational is interior and so closer to the Divine, and also is purer and so more suited to receiving the Divine than the natural is; and for the further reason that the natural has to be regenerated by way of the rational, see 3286, 3288, 3321.

[2] When therefore the rational has been regenerated but not the natural the former in that case seems to itself to be made dark, for no correspondence exists between the two. Actually the rational receives its sight from the light of heaven, whereas the natural receives its sight from the light of the world; but unless a correspondence exists between the two the rational is unable to see anything that is in the natural. Everything there is like shadow or even like thick darkness. But once a correspondence does exist, things that are in light in the natural are then apparent to the rational, for things that belong to the light of the world are then enlightened by those that belong to the light of heaven, which are so to speak shining through. But these matters are more clearly evident from what has been stated and shown already about correspondence see 2987, 2989-2991, 3002, 3138, 3167, 3222, 3223, 3225, 3337, 3485. Through what is stated and shown in these paragraphs one may grasp to some extent that the words 'Isaac's eyes were becoming dark so that he could not see' mean that the Rational wished to enlighten the Natural from the Divine, that is to say, to make even the Natural Divine, for the subject in the highest sense is the Lord. Light is thereby shed on this matter by what occurs with man when he is being regenerated and which has been described already; for man's regeneration is an image of the Lord's glorification, 3043, 3138, 3212, 3296, 3490.