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.

9430. 'And the cloud covered it' means the lowest level of the Word, which is obscure, comparatively so. This is clear from the meaning of 'the cloud' as the lowest level of the Word or its literal sense, dealt with in the Preface to Genesis 18, and in 4060, 4391, 5922, 6343 (end), 6752, 8106, 8443, 8781. The reason why that sense is called 'the cloud' is that it lies in obscurity, compared with the inward sense; for the inward sense dwells in the light of heaven. The outward lies in obscurity and resembles a cloud because it is intended for a person while in the world, whereas the inward sense is intended for a person when he enters heaven. But it should be recognized that while a person is in the world he is at the same time guided by the inward sense of the Word if in faith and life he is guided by teachings of the Church which are authentic. For through those teachings the inward sense of the Word is inscribed at that time on both his understanding and his will, on his understanding through the faith he has and on his will through the life he leads. When such a person enters heaven he understands the Word solely according to its inward sense and ceases to know anything of its outward sense. This now seems to him to be like a cloud that swallows up rays of light it receives.

[2] The person now understands the Word, as has been said, according to its inward and not according to its outward sense. This is so because the Lord uses God's truth present with people in the world, which is the Word, to teach all who are in heaven, the reason for this being that those people live on the lowest level of order, and everything on interior levels ends in the lowest. The lowest is so to speak the support for the interior levels, which stand and rest on it. The Word in the letter is Divine Truth on the lowest level of order, in the same way as the natural and sensory level is the lowest level of order in members of the Church with whom Divine Truth is present. On this lowest level in them, as on that of the Word, interior levels terminate and rest. All this is like a house and its foundations. The actual house is heaven, and it is also Divine Truth there such as the Word is in its inward sense, while the foundations are the world and also Divine Truth there such as the Word is in its outward sense. Just as the house rests on its foundations, so too heaven rests on the Church, and consequently Divine Truth in heaven on Divine Truth on earth. For through the Word a continuous link exists from the Lord by way of heaven right down to people in the world. This is the reason why the Lord always provides for the existence of a Church on earth, where Divine Truth may exist on its lowest level. This is an arcanum unknown to anyone up to now, an arcanum implied in the matters introduced at 9357, 9360. Let everyone take care therefore not to damage the Word in any way; for those who damage it damage what is indeed Divine.