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:

795. Since this is how it is there, I have conversations every day with the races and peoples of this world. I have interaction not only with people in Europe but also people in Asia and Africa. I talk to people of a variety of religions. Therefore by way of an epilogue to this work I will add a brief description of the state of some of them.

Keep in mind that in the spiritual world, the state of every race and people in general and of each individual in particular depends on their acknowledgment and worship of God. All those who acknowledge God at heart, and from now on, who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Redeemer and Savior, are in heaven. People who do not acknowledge him are beneath heaven and are given instruction there. Those who accept the instruction are lifted up into heaven. Those who do not accept it are cast down into hell. In this second group are people like the Socinians, who turn to God the Father alone, and people like the Arians, who have denied that the Lord's human manifestation was divine. The Lord himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6); and when Philip asked to see the Father, the Lord said to him, "Those who see and recognize me, see and recognize the Father" (John 14:7 and following).

8991. 'And he shall serve him forever' means into eternity. This is clear from the meaning of 'serving' as obeying, for slaves are those who obey and masters those who give orders (the fact that those represented by 'slaves' are those who did what was good from obedience, not from charitable affection, is clear from things stated previously); and from the meaning of 'forever' as into eternity. In the sense of the letter 'forever' here means servitude with his master to the end of his life; but in the internal or spiritual sense it means into eternity, because it refers to the state after death. The expression 'into eternity' is used because those who do what is good from faithful obedience and not from charitable affection, who were represented by 'slaves', cannot ever be brought in the next life to a state of good, that is, so that their actions spring from good; for everyone's life remains with them after death. What a person is like when he dies, so he continues to be, in keeping with the common saying, Where the tree falls, there it lies. Not that he continues to be what he is like around the time of death but what the whole course of his life has made him like when he dies. Therefore those who have learned during life in the world to do what is good solely from obedience, not from charity, remain the same into eternity. They are perfected in obedience, it is true, but they do not attain any degree of charity.