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:

67. Next, since we are by creation heavens in smallest form and therefore images of the Lord, and since heaven is made up of as many desires as there are angels, each of which is a person as to its form, it follows that the constant effort in divine providence is for each of us to become a heaven in form and therefore an image of the Lord. Further, since this is accomplished by means of the desire for what is good and true, it is for us to become that desire. This, then, is the constant effort in divine providence.

The very heart of providence, though, is that we should be in some particular place in heaven or in some particular place in the divine heavenly person and therefore in the Lord. This is what happens for people whom the Lord can lead to heaven. Since the Lord foresees this, he also constantly provides for it, with the result that all of us who are allowing ourselves to be led to heaven are being prepared for our own places in heaven.

5095. 'To the king of Egypt' means which were subordinate to the interior natural. This is clear from the representation of Pharaoh or 'the king of Egypt' in this chapter as a new state of the natural man, dealt with in 5079, 5080, consequently as the interior natural since this had been made new. As to what the interior natural is, and the exterior natural, see immediately above in 5094. The nature of the internal sense of the Word in the historical sections and in the prophetical parts must be stated briefly. When the historical sense mentions a number of persons - as when Joseph, Pharaoh, the chief of the attendants, the cupbearer, and the baker are mentioned here - various things are indeed meant by them in the internal sense, yet only as all these exist in one person. The reason for this is that names mean different spiritual things, as they do here: 'Joseph' represents the Lord as regards the celestial-spiritual from the rational and also within the natural, 'Pharaoh' represents Him as regards the new state of the natural man, that is, as regards the interior natural, 'the cupbearer and the baker' as regards the things that belong to the external natural. Such is the nature of the internal sense. The same is so in other places, for example when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are mentioned; in the sense of the letter they are three different persons, but in the highest sense all three represent the Lord - 'Abraham' the Divine itself, 'Isaac' His Divine Intellectual, ¹ and 'Jacob' His Divine Natural. The same may be seen in the Prophets where sometimes the text consists of mere names, either of persons or of kingdoms or of cities; yet all of them together present and describe a single entity in the internal sense. Anyone unaware of this may be easily misled by the sense of the letter into visualizing a variety of things, with the result that the idea of a single entity disappears.

Notas de rodapé: