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:

7007. 'And will teach you the things you will do' means that the Divine will therefore be within every single thing that is going to happen. This is clear from the meaning of 'teaching' as flowing in, and when it is used as it is here in reference to the Divine, as going forth, as above in 6999; and from the meaning of 'the things you will do' as things that are going to happen. Every single one is meant because what is said refers to the Divine. Something must be said here about what is meant by the Divine within every single thing that happens in a person's life. To man this seems to be altogether untrue, because he thinks that if the Divine were present in every single thing that happens no evil deeds would be done and no one would be damned either, and also that justice would always prevail, the upright would prosper in the world rather than those who are not upright, and many other conditions like these. But because they see the opposite of such conditions they do not believe that the Divine is in every single thing. As a consequence they attribute matters of a specific nature to themselves and their own prudence, and merely general, overall control to the Divine, calling everything else fortune and chance, which to them are blind natural forces.

[2] But a person thinks in that kind of way because he has no knowledge of the arcana of heaven, which are that the Lord leaves each person in freedom, for unless a person is in freedom he cannot be reformed at all. What a person does under compulsion does not reform him because compulsion does not allow anything to take root; for anything a person does under compulsion is not an act of willing, whereas what he does in freedom is an act of willing. What is good and true, if it is to be present in a person as his own, must take root in his will. What is outside the will is not the person's own. And since everyone is for that reason left in freedom people are allowed to think what is evil and, so far as outward fears do not hold them back, to do what is evil; and - since everyone is in freedom - those who are not upright rejoice and glory in the world seemingly more than those who are upright. But the glorying and rejoicing of those who are not upright is external or of the body and in the next life it is turned into hellish misery, whereas the glorying and rejoicing of those who are upright, being internal or of the spirit, remains and becomes heavenly bliss.

[3] Furthermore high rank and wealth bring worldly but not eternal happiness. This being so, that happiness may be experienced both by those who are not upright and by those who are upright; and if the upright are denied it, it is in order that such things may not divert them from what is good. And since a person thinks that Divine blessings consist in worldly kinds of goodness and bliss, his weakness leads him into errors about God's providence when He sees the opposite taking place. He also draws conclusions from present circumstances as he sees them. He gives no thought to the idea that Divine Providence has what is eternal in view, working especially to bring all things into a state of order in heaven, and also in hell, and so to ensure that heaven will unceasingly resemble a single human being, hell will exist opposite it, and equilibrium will therefore result. He gives no thought to the idea that these things cannot be brought about at all except by means of Divine providence at work in the most specific details of all, thus unless the Divine is constantly governing and directing people's freedom.

[4] For anything further on the subject see what has been stated and shown already regarding Divine providence:

The Lord's providence cannot be overall unless it is present in the most specific details, 1919 (end), 4319, 5122 (end), 5894 (end), 6481-6486, 6490.

The Lord's providence has in view what is eternal, 5264, 6490.

The Lord foresees what is evil and makes provision for what is good, 5155, 5195, 6489.

The Lord turns evil that He foresees into good, 6574.

Things that happen by chance are all part of providence, 5508, 6493, 6494.

One's own prudence is like dust thinly distributed in the air, while providence is, like the entire atmosphere, 6485.

Quite a number of mistaken ideas deny the presence of Divine providence in specific details, 6481.