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

Fusnotat:

57. This is why angels are not angels in their own right but are angels by virtue of their union with the Divine-Human One; and their union depends on their acceptance of what is divinely good and what is divinely true. What is divinely good and what is divinely true are God, and seem to emanate from him even though they are within him. Their acceptance depends on the way angels apply the laws of his design, which are divine truths, to themselves, using their freedom to think and intend according to their reason, a freedom given them by God as their own possession. This is what enables them to accept what is divinely good and divinely true in apparent autonomy; and this in turn is what makes possible the mutual element in their love, for as already noted [48], love is not real unless it is mutual. It is the same with us here on earth.

All this enables us finally to see that everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One.

2508. 'She is my sister' means rational truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a sister' as rational intellectual truth, dealt with in 1495. That rational truth is meant by 'a sister' cannot be seen by anyone except from the heavenly marriage; for the things that descend from that marriage have links with one another - resembling the ties of blood-relationships and relationships by marriage on earth, concerning which see 685, 917 - and in ways endlessly varying. The heavenly marriage exists solely between Divine Good and Divine Truth. Conceived from that marriage there exist with man the capacities to understand, to be rational, and to have knowledge; for without this conception from the heavenly marriage no one can possibly be endowed with understanding, reason, or knowledge, and cannot consequently be a human being. Insofar therefore as he draws from the heavenly marriage he is human. The heavenly marriage exists within the Lord Himself, so that the Lord is that marriage itself; for He is Divine Good itself and at the same time Divine Truth. The heavenly marriage exists with angels and men insofar as love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, and consequently insofar as faith derived from these exist with them, that is, insofar as the Lord's good and the truth derived from this do so. When this is the case with them they are called 'daughters and sons', and in relation to one another 'sisters and brothers', but with differences. The reason rational truth is called 'a sister' is that it is conceived from the influx of Divine Good into the affection for rational truths. The good conceived in this way in the rational is called 'a brother', and the truth 'a sister'. But this will be clearer from the words spoken by Abraham in verse 12 of this chapter, 'And also she is truly my sister, my father's daughter but not my mother's daughter; and she became my wife'.