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:

523. The Lord never does anything contrary to his design because he himself is the design. The divine truth that emanates from him is what establishes the design, and divine truths are the laws of the design by which the Lord is leading us. Saving people by unmediated mercy is contrary to the divine design, and anything contrary to the divine design is contrary to the divine nature.

The divine design is heaven for us. We have distorted it by living contrary to its laws, which are divine truths. The Lord brings us back into the design out of pure mercy, through the laws of the design; and to the extent that we are brought back, we accept heaven into ourselves. Whoever accepts heaven enters heaven.

This shows again that the Lord's divine mercy is pure mercy but not unmediated. ¹

Footnotes:

10151. 'And the altar' means reception of what is Divine from the Lord in the higher heavens. This is clear from the meaning of 'sanctifying' as the reception of what is Divine from the Lord, dealt with above in 10149; and from the meaning of 'the altar' as that which was representative of the Lord in respect of Divine Good, dealt with in 9964, at this point in respect of Divine Good emanating from Him in the heavens where that Good is received, thus in the higher heavens. For these heavens receive the Lord as to His Divine Good, but the lower heavens receive the Lord as to His Divine Truth, in accord with what has been shown immediately above in 10150.

[2] It should be recognized that whatever served to represent the Lord Himself represented heaven also; for what is Divine, emanating from the Lord and received by angels, constitutes heaven. The angels themselves, as to what is properly their own, do not constitute heaven; only what is Divine, received by them from the Lord, does so. The truth of this may be recognized from the consideration that every one of them there acknowledges, believes, and also perceives that not a grain of good originates in themselves, only in the Lord, and that whatever originates in themselves is not good, so that - exactly as the Church teaches - everything good comes down from above. All this being so, it follows that what is Divine and the Lord's is what constitutes heavenly life among them, consequently constitutes heaven. All this goes to show how the idea that the Lord is the All in all of heaven should be understood, that the Lord dwells there in what is His own, and also that 'an angel' in the Word means some attribute that is the Lord's, ideas that have been the subject in various places in what has gone before.

[3] The situation is the same with regard to the Church. People there, as to what is properly their own, do not constitute the Church; only what is Divine, received by them from the Lord, does so. For no one there who fails to acknowledge and believe that the good of love and the truth of faith come entirely from God forms part of the Church, because he wishes to love God with what is his own and to believe in God with what is his own, which however no one is able to do. From this too it is evident that what is Divine and the Lord's constitutes the Church, just as it constitutes heaven. The Church furthermore is the Lord's heaven on earth, and therefore also the Lord is the All in all within the Church, just as He is in heaven, and dwells with people there in what is His own, just as He does with angels in heaven. Also, people of the Church who thus receive what is Divine and the Lord's in love and faith, they and no others, become angels of heaven after life in the world.

[4] That what is Divine and the Lord's constitutes His kingdom with a person, that is, heaven and the Church with him, is also the Lord's teaching in John,

The Spirit of truth will remain with you and will be in you. And you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. John 14:17, 20.

'The Spirit of truth' is Divine Truth emanating from the Lord, about which He says that it 'will remain with you'. After this He says that He is in the Father, they are in Him, and He is in them, meaning that they will be in what is Divine and the Lord's, and what is Divine and the Lord's will be in them, by which, it is evident, the Divine Human should be understood. Elsewhere in the same gospel He says,

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you cannot do anything. John 15:4-5.