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.

481. We come into heaven if our love is heavenly and spiritual and into hell if our love is carnal and worldly without any heavenly and spiritual dimension. My evidence for this conclusion is all the people I have seen raised into heaven and cast into hell. The ones who were raised into heaven had lives of heavenly and spiritual love, while the ones who were cast into hell had lives of carnal and worldly love. Heavenly love is loving what is good, honest, and fair because it is good, honest, and fair, and doing it because of that love. This is why they have a life of goodness, honesty, and fairness, which is a heavenly life. If we love these things for their own sakes and do or live them, we are also loving the Lord above all because they come from him. We are also loving our neighbor, because these things are our neighbor who is to be loved. ¹ Carnal love, though, is loving what is good and honest and fair not for their own sakes but for our own sake, because we can use them to gain prestige, position, and profit. In this case we are not focusing on the Lord and our neighbor within what is good and honest and fair but on ourselves and the world, and we enjoy deceit. When the motive is deceit, then whatever is good and honest and fair is actually evil and dishonest and unfair. This is what we love within [the outward appearance].

[2] Since these loves define our lives, we are all examined as to our quality immediately after death, when we arrive in the world of spirits, and we are put in touch with people of like love. If we are focused on heavenly love, we are put in touch with people in heaven; and if we are focused on carnal love, we are put in touch with people in hell. Further, once the first and second states have been completed the two kinds of people are separated so that they no longer see or recognize each other. We actually become our own love not only as to the deeper levels of our minds but outwardly as well, in face, body, and speech, since we become images of our love even in outward things. People who are carnal loves look coarse, dim, dark, and misshapen; while people who are heavenly loves look lively, clear, bright, and lovely. They are completely different in spirit and in thought as well. People who are heavenly loves are intelligent and wise, while people who are carnal loves are dense and rather silly.

[3] When leave is given to examine the inner and outer aspects of the thoughts and affections of people engaged in heavenly love, the inner reaches look as though they were made of light, in some cases like the light of a flame; and their outer manifestations are of various lovely colors, like a rainbow. In contrast, the inner reaches of people who are engaged in carnal love look gloomy because they are closed in, in some cases like a smoky fire for people who were inwardly maliciously deceptive. Their outer manifestations have an ugly color, depressing to look at (both the inner and outer aspects of the mind and spirit are presented visually in the spiritual world whenever it so pleases the Lord).

[4] People who are engaged in carnal love do not see anything in heaven's light. Heaven's light is darkness to them, while hell's light, which is like the light of glowing embers, is like daylight to them. In fact, in heaven's light their inner sight is deprived of light to the point that they become insane. As a result, they run away from it and hide in caves and caverns of a depth that corresponds to the false convictions that stem from their evil intentions. Exactly the reverse is true for people who are engaged in heavenly love, though. The deeper or higher they enter into heavenly light, the more clearly they see everything and the lovelier it all looks, and the more intelligently and wisely they grasp what is true.

[5] There is no way that people who are engaged in carnal love can live in heaven's warmth, because heaven's warmth is heavenly love. They can live in hell's warmth, though, which is a love of cruelty toward people who do not support them. The pleasures of this love are contempt for others, hostility, hatred, and vengefulness. When they are absorbed in these they are in their very life, with no knowledge whatever of what it means to do good for others out of sheer goodness and for the sake of the good itself. All they know is how to do good out of malice and for the sake of malice.

[6] People who are engaged in carnal love cannot breathe in heaven either. When evil spirits are taken there, they draw breath like someone who is struggling painfully. On the other hand, people who are engaged in heavenly love breathe more freely and feel more alive the deeper into heaven they come.

We may gather from this that a heavenly and spiritual love is heaven for us because everything heavenly is written on that love; and that carnal and worldly love apart from heavenly and spiritual love is hell for us because everything hellish is written on that love.

We can see, then, that people come into heaven who have a heavenly and spiritual love, and people come into hell who have a carnal and worldly love without a heavenly and spiritual one.

Footnotes: