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

Voetnoten:

25. After his life in the world everyone lives for ever. This is evident from the fact that he is then no longer natural but spiritual; and a spiritual person once separated from the natural stays in the same state for ever, since a person's state cannot change after death. Moreover every person's spiritual side is linked with the Divine, since it can think about and also love the Divine, and be acted upon by all the influences coming from the Divine, much as the church teaches. The spiritual side can as a result be linked to the Divine by willing and thinking, the two faculties of the spiritual man which make up his life. Thus a link can be made with the Divine which can never die, for the Divine is present with him and links him to Itself.

[2] Man has also been created so as mentally to be a model of heaven. The form of heaven derives from the Divine itself, as was shown in HEAVEN AND HELL (The Lord's Divine makes and forms heaven, 7-12, 78-86); man was created so as to be a model of heaven on the smallest scale (57); heaven taken all together resembles a single human being (59-66). Hence an angel has a perfect human form (73-77). An angel is a human being in his spiritual aspect.

[3] I have had a number of conversations with angels on this subject. They were extremely surprised that there are very many among those reputed intelligent in the Christian world, and believed to be intelligent by other people, who have totally rejected any idea that their life is not subject to death, but believe that the soul of a human being is dispersed after death like that of an animal. They fail to perceive the difference in the way human beings and animals live. Human beings have thoughts that can rise above themselves, and they can think about God, heaven, love, faith, spiritual and moral good, truths and such matters, thus rising to the Divine itself, and being linked to Him by all these means. Animals, however, cannot rise above their natural level so as to entertain such thoughts. As a result their spiritual side cannot be separated from their natural after death, ¹ and live on by itself as a human being's can. That too is the reason why an animal's life ² is dispersed together with its natural life.

[4] The angels said that the reason why many so-called intelligent people in the Christian world do not believe their life is immortal is that at heart they deny the existence of the Divine and acknowledge Nature in His place. Those who think from such premises cannot imagine how they can live for ever by being linked with the Divine, and consequently that the condition of human beings is any different from that of animals; for when they banish the idea of the Divine from their thoughts, they also banish that of eternity.

[5] They went on to say that every individual has a highest or most inward degree of life, something highest and inmost on which the Lord's Divinity primarily and most closely acts, and from which He controls the remaining interiors belonging to the spiritual and natural man and arranged in ordered sequence in them. They called this highest or most inward part the Lord's entrance into man and His truest abode with man. It is this highest or most inward part which gives man his humanity and sets him apart from dumb animals, which lack it. This is why men can, unlike animals, have their interiors, which belong to their minds and characters, raised by the Lord to Himself. Thus they can believe in Him, feel love for Him, and receive intelligence and wisdom and speak rationally.

[6] When asked whether those who deny the existence of the Divine and the Divine truths which link a person's life with the Divine Himself none the less live on for ever, they said that these had the ability to think and will, and thus to believe and love what proceeds from the Divine equally with those who acknowledge Him; and that this ability to think and will enables them equally to live for ever. They added that this ability results from that highest or most inward part everyone possesses which was mentioned just above. I have demonstrated at length that even those in hell have this ability, which enables them to reason and speak against Divine truths. This is why every person, irrespective of what sort of person he is, lives for ever.

[7] Because after death everyone lives for ever, no angel or spirit can think about death; in fact, they do not know what it is to die. Whenever therefore death is mentioned in the Word, the angels understand it as damnation, which is death in the spiritual sense, or the continuation of life and resurrection. ³ These remarks are intended as confirmation that all people who have ever been born from the beginning of creation, and have died, are alive, some in heaven and some in hell.

Voetnoten:

4364. 'He said, What do you mean by all this camp which I met?' means the specific things which came from the good of truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'camp' here as things that are specific, for these are meant by the animals mentioned in verses 14, 15 of the previous chapter - two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred sheep and twenty rams, thirty milking camels and their colts, forty young cows and ten young bulls, twenty she-asses and ten foals. By these are meant the goods and truths together with the things that are subservient, by means of which the instillation was to be effected, see 4263, 4264, and so mean those that are specific. The specific ones meant here are nothing other than those which serve to prove that truths really are truths and forms of good really are forms of good. They support a person's thoughts and affections - that is, the things he knows and the things he loves - which lead him to favour an idea and maintain that it is true. The gifts which in the Church of old were made to kings and to priests also held the same meaning It is well known that another is led to one's own way of thinking - that is, to the things which one says are good and true - both by the use of rational arguments and by the appeal to affections. It is the actual supporting proofs to which the term 'specific' applies and that are meant at this point by 'this camp'. This is the reason why the words 'to find favour in the eyes of my lord' appear, explaining why 'the camp' was sent, and after that, 'If now I have found favour in your eyes, then take my gift from my hand'.

[2] It is similar with spiritual things or matters of faith, when these are being joined to the good of charity. People believe that goods and truths flow in immediately from heaven, and so without any intermediate agents in man; but in this they are much mistaken. The Lord leads everyone through the agency of his affections and in so doing bends him by means of a Providence working silently; for He leads people by means of their freedom, 1937, 1947. All freedom entails a person's affection or love, see 2870, 2873. Consequently every joining together of good and truth takes place in freedom and not under compulsion, 2875-2878, 2881, 3145, 3146, 3158, 4031. When therefore a person has been brought in freedom to good, truths find acceptance and are implanted. That person also starts to be stirred by an affection for them and is in this manner introduced little by little into heavenly freedom. One who is regenerate, that is, who loves the neighbour - more so one who loves the Lord - will discover, if he reflects on his life before then, that he has been led to that point by many ideas present in his thought and many impulses of his affection.

[3] What exactly is meant here by the things which came from the good of truth may be seen more easily from examples. Let truth which has to be introduced into good be exemplified by the truth that man has life after death. Unless this is supported by specific truths, it does not find acceptance, that is, not unless it is supported by the following: Man is able to think not only about the things he sees and perceives with the senses but also about those which he does not see or perceive with the senses. Also his affection can be stirred by them; and through his affection he can become linked to them and therefore to heaven, indeed to the Lord Himself. And those who are able to be linked to the Divine can never die. These and many more like them are the specific truths which present themselves before that truth is instilled into good, that is, before it is believed fully. That truth does indeed submit itself first, yet these specific truths nevertheless cause it to find acceptance.

[4] Take as another example the truth that man is a spirit and that he is clothed with a body while he lives in the world. This also is a truth that has to be instilled into good, for if it is not instilled he has no concern for heaven, in which case he looks on himself in the same way as he does on animals. But this truth cannot be instilled except by means of specific ones such as the following: The body which a person carries around ministers to uses in the world; that is to say, it enables him by means of material eyes to see things that are in the world, and to perform actions by means of material muscles, which give him power that is sufficient to lift heavy objects. Nevertheless some more interior part of him exists which thinks and wills, and for which the body is the instrumental or material organ. Also his spirit is his true self, or the person himself, who performs actions and has sensory perception through these organic forms. And there are many other personal experiences by which he can prove that truth to be so once he believes it. All of these are specific truths which are put forward first and which cause that truth itself to be instilled into good and also to come from it. It is these and other things like them that are meant here by 'a camp'.