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:

2425. 'But I shall not be able to escape into the mountain' means doubt as to whether he would be able to possess good that flows from charity, that is, to think and act from that good. This is clear from the meaning of 'a mountain' as love and charity, dealt with in 795, 1430.

[2] With regard to that doubt, people governed by the affection for truth possess the affection for good within their affection for truth. But that affection for good is in so much obscurity that they do not perceive and so do not know what the affection for good is, or what genuine charity is. They do indeed think that they know, but they do so from truth, and so from acquired knowledge, but not from good itself. Nevertheless they perform the good works of charity, not to merit anything by doing so, but from a sense of obedience. They act in this way insofar as they understand it to be the truth. For they allow the Lord to lead them away from the obscurity surrounding good by means of truth which to them looks like the truth. For example, because they do not know what the neighbour is they do good to everyone they imagine to be their neighbour, especially the poor, who call themselves the poor because they lack worldly riches; they do good to orphans and widows because they are termed such; to strangers because they are such; and so on with the rest. They behave in this way without knowing what is really meant by the poor, orphans, widows, strangers, and many more. Nevertheless because within their affection there is, lying in obscurity, as stated, the affection for good by means of which the Lord leads them to do those things, good is at the same time present with them interiorly. Within that good the angels are present with them, and there take pleasure in the appearances of truth for which those people have an affection.

[3] But those who are governed by good that flows from charity, and from this by an affection for truth, exercise discrimination when performing all those deeds, for they dwell in light, and the light of truth has no other source than good, because the Lord flows in by way of good. They do not do good to the poor, orphans, widows, and strangers just because these are so termed, for they know that the good, whether poor or rich, are pre-eminently the neighbour; for by the good, good is done to others, and therefore insofar as they do good to the good they are doing it through them to others. They know also how to discriminate between one good and another, and so between one good person and another. They call the common good itself their neighbour to a higher degree, for within this neighbour the good of a greater number of persons is seen. The Lord's kingdom on earth, which is the Church, they acknowledge as being their neighbour to an even higher degree, towards whom charity should be shown; and the Lord's kingdom in heaven to an even higher degree than that. People however who set the Lord above all of these, who adore Him alone and love Him above all things, derive all degrees of the neighbour from Him, for in the highest sense the Lord alone is the Neighbour and so is all good insofar as this is derived from Him.

[4] Those however whose disposition is quite the reverse derive degrees of the neighbour from themselves and acknowledge as neighbour only those who show them favour and are subservient to them. Calling these and no others their brothers and friends, they discriminate between them only to the degree that they make one with themselves. All this shows what the neighbour is, namely that everyone is the neighbour according to the love which governs him; and he is truly the neighbour who is governed by love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, but in a different way for everyone. Thus it is the good itself with each one that is the determining factor.