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.

9020. 'Shall surely die' means damnation, as above in 9008. The reason why they are damned who apply the truths of faith to evils and in so doing alienate them from themselves is that they have hitherto acknowledged them. If the truth of faith has been acknowledged, and then after that it is applied to evil, it is mixed together with falsity arising from evil, the result of which is profanation. For such mixing together is profanation, see the places referred to below in 9021. To make this matter more understandable, let an example serve to shed light on it. Take people who wish to direct according to their own will things that are the Lord's, especially those things that belong to heavenly life with a person, to the end that they may have dominion over everyone and may gain the [whole] world. When they take some of the Lord's words to support their desire they are thieves in a spiritual sense; for they are stealing truths from the Word and applying them to evils. They are evils because those people's end in view is dominion and gain, not the salvation of souls. If up to now those truths which they begin to apply to evils have been acknowledged without a view to dominion and gain, such people profane them; for by applying them to evils they mix falsities arising from evils together with the truths. Such people cannot possibly escape damnation, since they deprive themselves of all spiritual life by what they do. That they deprive themselves of spiritual life is evident from the consideration that when they are left on their own, and they then think alone or talk among themselves, these people possess no belief in truths. They do not believe in the Lord, in heaven, or in hell. Even so they proclaim them with their lips more than others do, because an intense desire for dominion and gain drives them towards these things, as means to their ends. This is especially prevalent in Christian Gentilism where images of persons canonized as saints are on display for veneration, before which those people too genuflect and prostrate themselves but do so because of their guile, in order that they may deceive and convince others.