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

Notas de rodapé:

301. Further, in the light of angelic concepts, which are nonspatial, it is perfectly clear that in the created universe there is nothing living except the Divine-Human One--the Lord--alone, that nothing moves except by life from God, and that nothing exists except by means of the sun from God. So it is true that in God we live and move and have our being.

8513. 'How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws?' means because their actions were not in keeping with Divine order. This is clear from the explanation immediately above in 8512. So that people may know what an action in keeping with Divine order is and what one not in keeping with it is, something further must be said. Everything done in keeping with Divine order is inwardly open all the way to the Lord, and so holds heaven within it; but everything not done in keeping with Divine order is inwardly closed, and so does not hold heaven within it.

[2] Divine order therefore is for the Lord to flow through the inner levels of a person into the outer ones, thus through the person's will into his actions. This actually happens when a person is governed by good, that is, when an affection to do good for its own sake and not for any selfish reason governs him. When anyone does good for a selfish reason and not for its own sake his inner levels are closed, and he cannot be led by the Lord by means of heaven, only by self. The love determines whom he is led by, for everyone is led by his love. One who loves himself more than his neighbour is led by self; but one who loves good is led by good and consequently by the Lord, who is the Source of good.

[3] From all this one may see what the difference is between living a life in keeping with order and not living a life in keeping with it. How to live so that one's life is in keeping with order is taught by the Word and by religious teachings drawn from the Word. The person who does not look beyond externals can never grasp such ideas. He does not know what the internal is; he scarcely knows of the existence of the internal, let alone that it can be opened up, and that when it has been opened it has heaven within it. The intelligentsia of the world especially are ignorant of it, and those of them who do subscribe to the existence of an internal nevertheless have no idea of what it is or only a foolish one. This explains why they have little real belief and also why they use their knowledge to confirm the notion that all things are due to natural forces.