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:

545. The Lord Does Not Cast Anyone into Hell: Spirits Cast Themselves In

Some people cherish the notion that God turns his face away from people, spurns them, and casts them into hell, and is angry against them because of their evil. Some people even go so far as to think that God punishes people and does them harm. They support this notion from the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are said, not realizing that the spiritual meaning of the Word, which makes sense of the letter, is wholly different. So the real doctrine of the church, which is from the spiritual meaning of the Word, teaches something else. It teaches that the Lord never turns his face away from anyone or spurns anyone, never casts anyone into hell or is angry. ¹

Anyone whose mind is enlightened perceives this while reading the Word simply from the fact that the Lord is goodness itself, love itself, and mercy itself. Good itself cannot do harm to anyone. Love itself and mercy itself cannot spurn anyone, because this is contrary to mercy and love and is therefore contrary to the divine nature itself. So people who are thinking with an enlightened mind when they read the Word perceive clearly that God never turns away from us, and that because he does not turn away from us, he behaves toward us out of goodness and love and mercy. That is, he wills well toward us, loves us, and has compassion on us.

Enlightened minds also see from this that the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are said has a spiritual meaning concealed within it, a meaning needed to explain expressions that in the letter are adapted to human comprehension, things said in accord with our primary and general conceptions.

Footnotes:

874. Fear God and give glory to Him, signifies to worship the Lord from His Divine truth by a life according to it. This is evident from the signification of "fearing God," as being to revere and worship the Lord (See above, n. 696); also from the signification of "giving glory to Him," as being to live according to the Divine truth, that is, according to His commandments in the Word. "Glory" in reference to the Lord signifies the Divine truth proceeding from Him, thus the Word such as it is in heaven; for that is light to the angels, and by that light the Lord manifests His glory; for by that light He gives intelligence and wisdom, and also presents before the eyes of angels magnificent objects that glow with most precious things. This is the signification of the Lord's "glory" in the sense nearest to the letter. But all these magnificent things, which glow as if from gold and precious stones in wonderful forms, are given by the Lord according to the reception of Divine truth proceeding from Him, consequently they appear to the angels in the exact measure of the wisdom that is with them, for they are correspondences. But since angels have wisdom according to their reception of Divine truth not only in doctrine but also in life, "to give glory to Him," signifies to live according to Divine truth.

[2] It is believed in the world that those have wisdom, and thus heaven, who know Divine truths and talk about them from knowledge, although they do not live according to them. But I can testify that such have no wisdom. They appear to have wisdom when they speak; but as soon as they are in their own spirit or think with themselves they are not at all wise, sometimes they are even demented like fools, thinking in opposition to the Divine truths which they have spoken. But it is otherwise with those who live according to Divine truths; such think wisely with themselves, and speak wisely with others. This it has been given me to know from a thousand examples of experience in the spiritual world; for there such things are manifest that are wholly unknown to men in the natural world. I have heard many there speak so wisely that I could have believed them to be interior angels of heaven; and yet they became devils, for they had filled their memory with such things from the love of glory, but had not lived according to them; consequently as soon as they returned to themselves and the love of their life they spoke in opposition to these things, and were as insane as if they had known nothing at all about them. This made clear to me that almost everyone has the ability to understand, in order that he may be reformed; but he who does not live the life of truth does not wish to be reformed; and he who does not wish to be reformed gradually rejects from himself everything pertaining to that intelligence and wisdom, and lives his own love which is contrary to these, and finally he draws near to those who are in hell, and is in a love like theirs.

[3] From all this it can be seen that "to give glory to God" signifies to live according to Divine truth; as the Lord has taught in these words in John:

Herein is My Father glorified, that ye may bear much fruit, and may become My disciples. Abide ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love. Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you (John 15:8-10, 14).

This makes clear that "to glorify God," or "to give glory to God," means to bear fruit. See also what has been said before about glory; as that "glory" signifies the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, and its reception by angels and men (n. 33, 288, 345); also that "the Lord's glory" means the enlightenment of men and angels, and blessing them with wisdom and happiness; which is done solely through the reception of Divine truth in doctrine and at the same time in the life.