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

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213. As for love and wisdom, love is the purpose, wisdom the means, and service the result. Further, service is the composite, vessel, and foundation of wisdom and love, such a composite and such a vessel that every bit of love and every bit of wisdom is actively present in it. It is their total presence. We need to be absolutely clear, though, that in keeping with what was presented in 189-194 above, what are present in service are all the elements of love and wisdom that are of the same kind, harmonious.

9845. 'According to their generations' means both kinds in the order in which they are begotten and proceed one from the other. This is clear from the meaning of 'generations' as matters of faith and charity, or forms of truth and goodness in the spiritual world, dealt with in 613, 2020, 2584, 6239, 9042, 9079, so that 'according to generations' means according to the order in which they are begotten and proceed one from the other, that is to say, good from truth and truth from good. For there are two states which the person undergoing new birth from the Lord passes through, the first being a state of truth, the other a state of good. While in the first state the person is led by means of truths towards good, but in the second he is led by means of good. This second state is the state of heaven with a person; for a person is not in heaven until good is present within him, see what has been shown above in 9832. From all this it is evident what 'according to the generations of the sons of Israel' means. The words 'in the order in which they are begotten and proceed one from the other' are used because even as good is begotten by means of truths, so does it afterwards proceed from them; and in a similar way even as truths are begotten from good, so do they afterwards proceed. For they are begotten in consecutive stages and proceed subsequently in the order of their consecutive stages of birth. But these matters have been stated for the benefit of those who know about the way in which series of things are produced in consecutive stages.