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:

11. 4. For various reasons, different nations and peoples have had and still have a diversity of opinions on the nature of that one God. The first reason for this is that knowledge about God and therefore acknowledgment of God is not possible without revelation; and knowledge of the Lord and therefore acknowledgment that all the fullness of divinity dwells physically in him is not possible without the Word, which is a garland of revelations. From the revelation they have been given, people are able to meet God, receive an inflow, and thus be made spiritual instead of earthly.

Early revelation spread throughout the whole world, and the earthly self distorted it in many different ways, giving rise to divergences, disagreements, heresies, and schisms among religions.

The second reason [for the diversity of opinions on God] is that the earthly self cannot comprehend anything about God; it can comprehend only the world, and conform it to itself. This is why it is among the axioms of the Christian church that the earthly self is against the spiritual self, and that they battle each other. People then have come to acknowledge from the Word [or] from some other revelation that there is a God, and yet in both the past and the present they have had a diversity of opinions on the nature and the oneness of God.

[2] Therefore people whose mental sight was dependent on their physical senses and who nevertheless wished to see God made idols for themselves out of gold, silver, stone, and wood. They intended to adore God in those forms as objects of sight. Others with the same desires but with religious principles that forbade idols pictured the sun and moon, the stars, and various things on earth as images of God. Those who believed themselves to be wiser than most but who remained earthly were led by the immensity and omnipresence God displayed in creating the world to acknowledge nature as God, in some cases in its innermost, in others in its outermost aspects. And some who wished to see God as separate from nature thought up some thing that was as all-encompassing as possible and that they called the Entity of All; but because they know nothing more of God than this, this "Entity of All" turns out to be an entity of their minds alone, utterly without any real meaning.

[3] As anyone can see, concepts of God are mirrors of God, and people who know nothing about God do not see God in a mirror facing their eyes, but in a mirror that is facing the wrong way, the back of which is covered with quicksilver or some black, sticky substance that absorbs rather than reflects the light.

Faith in God enters us on a pathway that comes down from above, from the soul into the higher reaches of the intellect. Concepts of God enter us on a pathway that comes up from below, because the intellect takes them in from the revealed Word through our bodily senses. In mid-intellect the different inflows come together. There an earthly faith, which is mere belief, becomes a spiritual faith, which is actual acknowledgment. The human intellect, then, is a kind of trading floor on which exchanges occur.

10578. 'And He said, You cannot see My face' means that things which are interior and Divine in the Church, worship, and the Word cannot be revealed to the Israelite nation. This is clear from the meaning of 'Jehovah's face' as things that are interior and Divine in the Church, worship, and the Word, dealt with above in 10567, 10568; and from the meaning of 'seeing' them as the revelation of them. The impossibility of their being revealed to the Israelite nation is clear from the consideration that Jehovah's words are addressed to Moses, and Moses here represents the head of the Israelite nation, 10556. The meaning of 'Jehovah's face' as things that are interior and Divine in the Word, the Church, and worship is also evident from the consideration that 'Jehovah's face' has a similar meaning to 'Jehovah's glory', since Moses said, 'Cause me, I beg You, to see Your glory', and Jehovah replied, 'You cannot see My face'; and 'Jehovah's glory' means things that are interior and Divine in the Word, the Church, and worship, see above in 10574.

[2] The situation with all this may be recognized from what has often been stated before, to the effect that the Israelite nation was not at all able to see the interior things of worship, the Church, and the Word because their interest lay in external things separated from what was internal, and so they were incapable of seeing Jehovah's face, either. But all those whose interest in external things does not exclude what is internal see the interior things of the Word, the Church, and worship, and so see Jehovah's face. From this it follows that those governed by love to the Lord and also those governed by charity towards the neighbour see them; for love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour open the internal man, and when this has been opened a person is, on the level of his interiors, in heaven among angels where the Lord is.

[3] But a brief statement of what love to the Lord or loving the Lord is must be made here. Anyone who supposes that he can love the Lord without leading a life in keeping with His commandments is very much mistaken; for leading a life in keeping with them is what constitutes loving the Lord. Those commandments are truths received from the Lord, and so are such as have the Lord within them. To the extent therefore that those commandments are loved, that is, to the extent that a person is inspired by love to lead a life in keeping with them, the Lord is loved. The reason why this should be so is that the Lord loves the person and in His love desires him to be eternally blessed; and no one can become blessed except through a life led in keeping with His commandments. For by means of these the person is being regenerated and made spiritual, and can then be raised to heaven. But loving the Lord without leading a life in keeping with His commandments does not constitute loving Him, for then the person has nothing within him into which the Lord can flow and raise him to Himself. He is like an empty vessel, in that there is no life at all in his faith, nor any life at all in his love. The life of heaven, called eternal life, is not poured into anyone directly but through some agency. From all this it may be recognized what loving the Lord is, and also what seeing the Lord or His face is, namely seeing Him with that kind of faith and love.

[4] Leading a life in keeping with the Lord's commandments consists in leading a life in keeping with the teachings about charity and faith, which you can see in the preliminary sections to each of the chapters of the Book of Exodus. The Lord Himself also teaches in John that this is what it consists in,

He who has My commandments and does them, he it is who loves Me. But he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. If anyone loves Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words. John 14:21, 23-24.

What more is meant by 'Jehovah's face' will be stated in the paragraph immediately below.