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.

322. Let people beware of falsely assuming that spirits do not possess far keener sensory powers than they did in the life of the body. From thousands of experiences I know that the reverse is true. But if, because of their presuppositions about the spirit, they are unwilling to believe it, let them find out for themselves when they enter the next life, where their own experience will force them to believe it. Not only do spirits have the gift of sight, since they are living in light; good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels also live in a light so bright that the light of this world at midday is scarcely comparable to it. The light in which they live and by which they see will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described later on. Spirits also have a sense of hearing so keen that the sense of hearing in their physical body cannot be reckoned its equal. For several years now, with scarcely any break, they have been holding conversations with me. But their speech also will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described later on. They have the sense of smell, which also will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described later on. They have a very delicate sense of touch, which in hell brings about pain and torment. For all sensations are related to the sense of touch; indeed they are just different forms and variations of that sense.

[2] They have desires and affections, with which those they had in the life of the body cannot be compared. More, in the Lord's Divine mercy, will be said about these later on. They are far more penetrating and discriminating in their thinking than they were during their lifetime. One idea of their thinking embodies more than a thousand ideas did during their lifetime. In what they say to one another they are so direct and to the point, so clear-cut and discriminating, that if man were to catch only a fraction of it he would be dumbfounded. To sum up, they have lost absolutely nothing; they are as men, yet more perfect, but without material flesh and bones and the imperfections that go with these. They acknowledge and perceive that even during their lifetime it was the spirit that was active in sensation, and that although it presented itself within the body, it still did not belong to the body. When therefore the body has been laid aside, sensations are far more excellent and perfect. Life consists in sensation, for no life is possible without sensation, and as is the sensation so is the life, a point which anyone is capable of knowing.