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:

24. It requires no further explanation to see that the statement that all people who have ever been born since the beginning of creation and have died are in heaven or in hell is the consequence of what has been said in the previous chapter, where it was shown that heaven and hell are from the human race. Up to now it has been generally believed that people will not go to heaven or to hell before the day of the Last Judgment, when souls will return to their own bodies so that they can enjoy what are believed to be the peculiar properties of the body. Simple people have been brought to believe this by those who have made a profession of being wise and have enquired into people's inner state. These have had no idea of the spiritual world, but only the natural one, and so no idea of the spiritual man either. They have therefore been unaware that the spiritual man, which everyone has within his natural man, has human form just as the natural man. Neither has it occurred to them that the natural man gets his human form from his spiritual man. Yet they could have seen that the spiritual man acts at will upon every detail of the natural man, who is unable to do anything of himself.

[2] It is the spiritual man who thinks and wills, for the natural man cannot do this of himself. And thought and will are all-in-all to the natural man, for he is acted upon as the spiritual man wills, and he speaks as the spiritual man thinks, so much so that action is nothing but willing and speech is nothing but thinking. For if you take away willing and thinking, speech and action come instantly to a stop. From this it is plain that the spiritual man really is the man, present in every detail of the natural man; so its outward form must be similar, since any part or particle of the natural man not subject to the action of the spiritual is lifeless. However, the spiritual man cannot become visible to the natural man, for the natural cannot see the spiritual, though the spiritual can see the natural. This is in accordance with the rules of order, but the reverse would be contrary to them, since it is possible for the spiritual to influence the natural (and this applies to sight, since it is a form of influence), but not the reverse. The spiritual man is what is called a person's spirit, which is seen in the spiritual world in complete human form and which lives on after death.

[3] Since intelligent people have, as I said before, known nothing about the spiritual world, and thus about a person's spirit, they have therefore got the idea that a person cannot have a personal life until his soul returns to his body and resumes its senses. This is the origin of such empty notions about personal resurrection, for instance, that although bodies have been eaten by worms or fishes or have collapsed into dust, they will by God's almighty power be brought together again and reunited with souls; or that these events will only occur at the end of the world, when the visible universe will come to an end; and many similar ideas, all of which are beyond our grasp and at first sight appear impossible and contrary to God's order. Consequently many people have their faith weakened by these ideas. For those who think wisely can only believe what they to some extent understand; one cannot believe the impossible, that is, what one judges to be impossible. So those who do not believe in life after death use this argument to infer a proof of their negative attitude. However, it may be seen in numerous chapters of HEAVEN AND HELL that people rise again at once after death, and are then endowed with complete human form. These remarks are intended as additional confirmation of the statement that heaven and hell are from the human race; from which it follows that all people who have ever been born from the beginning of creation and have died are in heaven or in hell.

4882. 'And went' means life. This is clear from the meaning of 'going' as living, dealt with in 3335, 3690. This meaning of 'going' in the internal sense as living does indeed seem quite remote from or unrelated to ideas man has which constitute his thought. The reason for this is that man dwells within space and time, and with these has formed the ideas comprising his thought, such as the idea of going, advancing, setting out, sojourning, or moving on. Now because these actions occur within both space and time, and as a consequence space and time have become embedded in ideas of those actions, man therefore finds it difficult to grasp that states of life are meant. But when his idea of those actions is relieved or divested of spatial and temporal elements the spiritual reality that is meant leaps out. For in the spiritual world or heaven nothing at all spatial or temporal enters the ideas they have, but instead aspects of a state of life, 1274, 1382, 2625, 2788, 2837, 3356, 3404, 3827, 4814. It does indeed appear to spirits and angels that they too move about, going from one place to another, and indeed exactly in the same way as it appears so to men. All the same, it is the changes taking place in their state of life that are responsible for this appearance. To them also, no less than to men, the appearance is that they live self-dependently, when in fact they do not live self-dependently but are dependent on the Lord's Divine, the source of every spark of life. Among angels these appearances are called real ones, because they seem in all reality to exist.

[2] I have on occasions spoken to spirits about these appearances, but those who are not governed by good, nor consequently by truth, do not wish to listen when told it is but an appearance that they live self-dependently; for their wish is to live self-dependently. But in addition to showing them from actual experience that they do not lead self-dependent lives and that every advance made from one place to another is a change to, and an advance made in, their state of life, I have also told them that for them it may be sufficient for them to know no other than that they live self-dependently, and that their life would be life no more if they did not live self-dependency. It would nevertheless be better for them to know what the situation really is, for in that case they would have the truth; and if they have the truth they also dwell in the light of heaven, since the light of heaven is the truth itself which flows from the Lord's Divine. Furthermore, if the truth existed with them in this way they would not claim that good was their own, nor would evil cling to them. Angels possessing that truth do not merely know it; they also have a perception of it.

[3] Intervals of time and space in the spiritual world are states of life, and every spark of life has its origin in the Lord, as the following experience may show. Each spirit and angel sees on his right those who are good and on his left those who are evil; this is so in whatever direction he turns himself. If he turns and looks eastwards he sees the good to the right and the evil to the left. The same happens if he turns and looks to the west, and likewise to the south or the north. This is the case with every spirit or angel, so that if there were two, and one of these turned and looked to the east and the other did so to the west, each would still see the good on his right and the evil on his left. Those far removed from, even behind the backs of, those who behold them are seen in those unchanging positions. From these considerations one may deduce clearly that every spark of life has its origin in the Lord, that is, that the Lord is within the life of everyone; for in the spiritual world the Lord is seen as the Sun, the good or sheep being on His right, and the evil or goats on His left. The same is therefore the case with each spirit or angel, for the reason, as stated, that the Lord exists in every spark of life. This is bound to look like a paradox to man, for as long as he is in the world man has ideas that are formed from worldly things, and therefore from what is spatial and temporal. But as stated above, in the spiritual world no ideas are formed from what is spatial and temporal but from the state belonging to affections and the thoughts flowing from these. It is for this reason also that the intervals of space and time in the Word mean states.