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:

493. Our first state after death is like our state in this world, since we are then similarly involved in outward concerns. We have similar faces, voices, and character; we lead similar moral and civil lives. This is why it still seems to us as though we were in this world unless we notice things that are out of the ordinary and remember that angels told us we were spirits when we were awakened (450). So the one life carries on into the other, and death is only a passage.

361. The fact that every person possesses these two components, will and intellect, which are as distinct from each other as love and wisdom are from each other, is something that is known and not known in the world. It is known from common perception, and not known from theorizing, still less from theorizing in writing about them.

Who indeed does not know from common perception that the will and intellect are two distinct entities in a person? For everyone perceives this when he is told it, and he may also say to another, "This one means well, but he is not very intelligent. On the other hand, this one is very intelligent, but he does not mean well. I like someone who is intelligent and means well, but I do not like someone who is intelligent and means ill."

However, when the same person theorizes about the will and intellect, he does not make them two and distinguish them, but confuses them. The reason is that his thinking is then bound up with his physical sight. Still less does he comprehend that the will and intellect are two distinct entities when he is engaged in writing about them. That is because his thinking is then bound up with his sensual nature, which is a person's native character. (It is because of this that some people can think and speak well, but yet not write well - a characteristic common in the feminine sex.)

[2] The case is the same in many other instances. Who does not know from common perception that a person who leads a good life is saved, and that a person who leads an evil life is condemned? Or that a person who leads a good life enters into the company of angels, and there sees, hears and speaks as a person? Or further, that he has a conscience who acts justly from a just motive, or uprightly from an upright motive?

But if one parts with common perception and submits these matters to theorizing, he then does not know what conscience is, or that the soul can see, hear and speak as a person, or that goodness of life is anything other than giving to the poor. And if from theorizing about them you commit them to writing, you confirm your theories with appearances and misconceptions, and with words having sound but no substance.

For this reason, among the learned who have theorized extensively, and still more who have committed their theories to writing, many have enfeebled and obscured the common perception in them, indeed have destroyed it. And consequently the simple see more clearly what is good and true than those who believe themselves to be wiser than they.

[3] This common perception is due to influx from heaven, and it descends into thought even to the sight. But thought apart from common perception sinks into an imagination arising from the sight and from one's native character.

You may discover for yourself the reality of this. Tell someone who has common perception some truth, and he will see it. Tell him that we have our being and live and move from God and in God, ¹ and he will see it. Tell him that God dwells in the love and wisdom in a person, and he will see it. Tell him further that the will is the recipient vessel of love, and the intellect the recipient vessel of wisdom, and with a little explanation he will see it. Tell him that God is love itself and wisdom itself, and he will see it. Ask him what conscience is, and he will tell you.

But tell the same things to some learned person who has not thought from common perception, but from principles or ideas seized on by his sight from the world. He will not see.

Consider after that who is the wiser.

Footnotes: