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:

71. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Act in Freedom and in Accord with Reason

It is generally recognized that we have a freedom to think and intend whatever we wish but not a freedom to say whatever we think or to do whatever we wish. The freedom under discussion here, then, is freedom on the spiritual level and not freedom on the earthly level, except to the extent that the two coincide. Thinking and intending are spiritual, while speaking and acting are earthly.

There is a clear distinction between these kinds of freedom in us, since we can think things that we do not express and intend things that we do not act out; so we can see that the spiritual and the earthly in us are differentiated. As a result, we cannot cross the line from one to the other except by making a decision, a decision that can be compared to a door that has first to be unlocked and opened.

This door stands open, though, in people who think and intend rationally, in accord with the civil laws of the state and the moral laws of society. People like this say what they think and do what they wish. In contrast, the door is closed, so to speak, for people who think and intend things that are contrary to those laws. If we pay close attention to our intentions and the deeds they prompt, we will notice that there is this kind of decision between them, sometimes several times in a single conversation or a single undertaking.

I mention this at the outset so that the reader may know that "acting from freedom and in accord with reason" means thinking and intending freely, and then freely saying and doing what is in accord with reason.

8781. 'Behold, I am coming to you in the thickness of a cloud' means that it will be made in a form utterly natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'coming to you' - when said by Jehovah to Moses, who represents the truth from God which the spiritual Church possesses, 8760 - as revelation; and from the meaning of 'the thickness of a cloud' as in a form utterly natural, like that in which the Old Testament Word exists in the letter. For the meaning of 'a cloud' as the Word in the letter, see preface to Genesis 18, and 4060, 4391, 5922, 6343 (end), 6752, 8106, 8443. 'Thickness' means dimness, such as that of a person's thought when it is lit solely by the inferior light of the senses, that is, by wholly natural light. It was in dimness such as this that the descendants of Jacob at that time thought about the Divine, and also that the Jews at the present day think about Him; for the Divine cannot be seen by anyone except in ways that are in keeping with his state of life and consequent discernment. So it is that heavenly light cannot be seen by those ruled by self-love and love of the world, which that nation more than others was ruled by, except as 'the thickness of a cloud'. The letter of the Word, especially the prophetical part, is nothing else in contrast to its internal sense. In its internal sense light exists such as may be compared to the light of the sun on top of clouds, the light which in the Word is called 'the glory'. This also explains why the Word says that Jehovah is carried on top of the clouds, rides above the clouds, flies above them, has His triclinium ¹ above them, that the Lord is going to come in the clouds of heaven, and many more statements like these, which would never have been made to describe Jehovah, that is, the Lord, unless they had meant the bright light of truth in which He is present in heaven, and 'clouds' had meant a shadowy light of truth in which those below heaven see.

Footnotes: