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:

498. This first state after death lasts a few days for some people, months for some, and a year for some, but rarely more than a year for anyone. The difference for particular individuals depends on the harmony or discord between their inner and outer natures. These inner and outer natures must act as one and correspond for everyone. No one is allowed to think and intend one way and speak and act another way in the spiritual world. Everyone must be an image of his or her affection or love, which means we must be outwardly what we are inwardly. This is why the outer concerns of a spirit are first stripped off and brought into order: so that they may serve as a plane responsive to the inner ones.

7381. 'Say to Aaron' means an influx of inward law into outward law. This is clear from the representation of 'Moses' as the law of God, dealt with in 6713, 6752; from the representation of 'Aaron' as teachings presenting what is good and true, dealt with in 6998, 7089, these teachings represented by 'Aaron' being nothing other than outward law emanating from inward law, that is, from the Divine through inward law; and from the meaning of 'saying' as influx, as in 6152, 6291, 7291. The reason why at this point 'saying' means influx is that Moses is commanded to 'Say to Aaron'; 'Moses' is inward law, and 'Aaron' outward law, and influx from the Divine takes place through what is inward into what is outward. Inward law is God's truth itself as it exists in heaven, while outward law is God's truth as it exists on earth. Thus inward law is truth suited to angels, while outward law is truth suited to men.

[2] Since inward law, represented by 'Moses', is truth suited to angels, while outward law, represented by 'Aaron', is truth suited to men, let something be said about them here. Truth suited to angels is for the most part beyond the comprehension of men. This is clear from the consideration that in heaven things are seen and spoken such as eye has never seen, nor ear ever heard. The reason for this is that the things spoken of among angels are spiritual, which are withdrawn from natural things and consequently are far removed from the ideas and words belonging to man's speech. For man has formed his ideas from things in the natural order, especially its grosser aspects, that is, from things which he has seen in the world and on earth, and has had physical contact with, that is, material things. Even though the ideas belonging to a person's inward thought exist on a level above material things they are nevertheless founded on material things; and the level that ideas are founded on is the level on which they seem to exist. That is the level on which a person perceives the things he thinks about. From this one may see what the situation is with the truth of faith, and also the nature of that which comes within man's range of thought, namely that which is called outward law and is represented by 'Aaron'.

[3] Let the following example serve to shed light on this. Man can have no thought at all without ideas involving time and space; such ideas cling to practically every detail of what man thinks. If ideas formed from time and space were taken away from man he would not know what he thinks, and scarcely whether he thinks. Yet angels' ideas have nothing of time or space within them, but states instead. The reason is that the natural world marks itself off from the spiritual world by the existence of time and space within it. The reason why time and space exist in the natural world, but states instead in the spiritual world, is this: In the natural world the sun appears to give rise to days and years by its apparent revolutions. It divides the days up into the four periods of night, morning, midday, and evening, and the years too into the four seasons of winter, spring, summer, and autumn, which it effects by means of variations of light and shade, as well as of warmth and coldness. And these divisions are the source of ideas of time and varying periods of it. Ideas of space arise from the use of periods as measurements; therefore where one exists, so does the other.

[4] But in the spiritual world the Sun of heaven, which is the source of spiritual light and spiritual heat, does not make circuits and revolutions which give rise to ideas of time and space. The light which flows from that Sun is God's truth, and the heat which flows from that Sun is God's goodness. These give rise to ideas of states among the angels, states of intelligence and faith being the product of God's truth, and states of wisdom and love the product of God's goodness. Variations in these states among the angels are what states of light and shade in the world, and also of warmth and coldness, correspond to, which are attributable to the sun since it is responsible for the existence of times and seasons and of spatial measurements. This example demonstrates to some extent what inward truth or truth suited to angels, called inward law, is like, and what outward truth or truth suited to men, referred to as outward law, is like. It also goes to explain why the things that angels discuss with one another are beyond man's comprehension and also indescribable.