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:

19. 1. The one God is called Jehovah from "being," that is, from the fact that he alone is [and was] and will be, and that he is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. "Jehovah" means "I am" and "to be," as is generally known. We know from the Book of Creation, or Genesis, that God was called "Jehovah" from most ancient times. In the first chapter he is called "God," but in the second and subsequent chapters he is called "Jehovah God. " Later on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob forgot the name of God owing to their long sojourn in Egypt. Then in the event recorded in the following passage it was recalled to memory:

Moses said to God, "What is your name?" God said, "I Am I Who Am. So you will say to the Children of Israel, 'I Am sent me to you. ' And you will say, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, sent me to you. This is my name to eternity, and this is how I will be remembered from generation to regeneration. " (Exodus 3:13-15)

Since God alone is "I Am" and being, or "Jehovah," therefore nothing exists in the created universe that does not derive its underlying reality from him. (How this happens will be discussed below [21, 75-76, 78].) The same thing is meant by these words: "I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega" (Isaiah 44:6 and Revelation 1:8, 11; 22:13). This means that on every level of existence he is the one and only entity, the source of all things.

[2] God is called the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, because alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet and omega is the last; so together they mean all things as a whole.

In the spiritual world, every alphabetical letter has a meaning. A vowel, because it carries tone, means a feeling or some kind of love. Spiritual and angelic speech, and also writing, depends on these meanings - but this is a mystery that has not been known until now. There is in fact a universal language shared by all angels and spirits. It has nothing in common with any human language in our world. After death everyone inherits that language, because it is latent in everyone from creation. In the spiritual world, then, everyone can understand everyone else. I have often been allowed to hear that language. I have compared it with languages in the physical world and have ascertained that it has not even the least thing in common with any earthly language. It differs by its very origin, which is that every letter of every word has a meaning. This is why God is here called the Alpha and the Omega, meaning that on every level of existence he is the one and only entity, the source of all things. (For more on how this language and its written form flow from angels' spiritual thought, see the work Marriage Love 326-329; see also what follows in this work [280].)

10022. 'Before the tent of meeting' means to purification, the reception of truth from heaven, and the joining of it to good. This is clear from the representation of 'the tent of meeting' as heaven where the Lord is, dealt with in 9457, 9481, 9485. The reason why purification, the implantation of truth, and the joining of it to good are also meant here is that the young bull was led to that place to be sacrificed, and by sacrifices not only purification but also the implantation of truth and good and joining together of them are meant. For sacrifices represented purifications from evils and falsities, and expiations, see 9990, 9991, and the place before the tent, called its door, represented the joining together of truth and good, which is called the heavenly marriage, 10001. So it is then that 'you shall bring the young bull near before the tent of meeting' means the time when the external or natural man, as this exists in its infancy, applies itself to being purified from evils and falsities, and so to receiving truth from heaven and joining it to good.

[2] Since sacrifices and burnt offerings are the subject in what follows directly after this in the present chapter, what was represented by them in general must be stated. Burnt offerings and sacrifices in general represented purification from evils and falsities; and since purification was represented, so too was the implantation of goodness and truth from the Lord, and also the joining together of them. For when a person has been purified from evils and falsities, which is brought about by the removal of them, goodness and truth from the Lord flow in; and to the extent that goodness and truth flow in, in that state, they are implanted and joined together. For the Lord is unceasingly present with goodness and truth with every person, but He is received only to the extent that evils and falsities are removed, thus to the extent that the person is purified from them. The joining together of truth and good is regeneration. From this it may be seen what burnt offerings and sacrifices in general represented; but what each represented specifically is clear from the different kinds of living creatures that were sacrificed.

[3] Because these three - purification from evils and falsities, the implantation of truth and good, and the joining together of them - were represented by sacrifices and burnt offerings, all worship springing from the truth of faith and the good of love is also meant by them, 6905, 8680, 8936; for the end in view of all worship is that a person may be purified from evils and falsities, consequently that he may have forms of goodness and truth from the Lord implanted in him, and so may be regenerated, which is accomplished by the joining together of that goodness and truth. These joined together constitute heaven or the Lord's kingdom with a person.