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

Фусноте:

129. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Not Be Compelled by Outside Forces to Think and Intend and So to Believe and Love in Matters of Our Religion, but That We Should Guide Ourselves and Sometimes Compel Ourselves

This law of divine providence follows from the two preceding ones, namely, that we should act in freedom and in accord with reason (71-99), and that we should do this for ourselves, even though it is being done by the Lord--that is, in apparent autonomy (100-128). Since it is not from freedom and according to reason and not in autonomy to be compelled but comes from the absence of freedom and from someone else, this law of divine providence follows directly from the two earlier ones. Everyone recognizes that none of us can be compelled to think what we do not want to think or to intend what we think we do not want to intend. So we cannot be compelled to believe what we do not believe and certainly not anything that we do not want to believe; or to love what we do not love and certainly not anything that we do not want to love. Our spirit or mind has complete freedom to think, intend, believe, and love. This freedom comes to us by an inflow from the spiritual world, which does not compel us. Our spirit or mind is actually in that world. The freedom does not flow in from the physical world, which accepts the inflow only when the two worlds are in unison.

[2] We can be compelled to say that we think and intend something or that we believe and love something, but unless this is or becomes a matter of our own desire and our consequent reasoning, it is not something that we really think, intend, believe, and love. We can also be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act according to religion, but we cannot be compelled to think in its favor as a matter of our own faith and to intend it as a matter of our own love. In countries where justice and judgment are cherished, everyone is obliged not to speak against religion or to violate it in action, but still no one can be compelled to think and intend in its favor. This is because each of us has a freedom to think in sympathy with hell and to intend in its favor, or to think in sympathy with heaven and to intend in its favor. Still, our reason tells us what the quality is of the one and of the other and what lot awaits the one and what lot awaits the other. Our ability to intend on the basis of reason is our capacity to choose and to decide.

[3] This may serve to show that what is outside cannot compel what is inside. However, it does happen sometimes, and I need to show that it is harmful in the following sequence.

1. No one is reformed by miracles and signs, because they compel.

2. No one is reformed by visions or by conversations with the dead, because they compel.

3. No one is reformed by threats or by punishment, because they compel.

4. No one is reformed in states where freedom and rationality are absent.

5. Self-compulsion is not inconsistent with rationality and freedom.

6. Our outer self has to be reformed by means of our inner self, and not the reverse.

365. (ii) The Lord flows in likewise in the case of every person with the whole essence of faith and charity.

This follows from the previous proposition, since the life of Divine wisdom is the essence of faith, and the life of Divine love is the essence of charity. Therefore, when the Lord is present with His own particular attributes, namely Divine wisdom and Divine love, He is also present with all the truths which make up faith and all the kinds of good which make up charity. For faith means every truth which the Lord enables a person to perceive, think and speak, and charity means every kind of good for which the Lord inspires an affection, and which the person consequently wills and does.

[2] I said above that the Divine love which radiates from the Lord as a sun is felt by the angels as heat, and the Divine wisdom from the same source is perceived as light. Anyone who is unable to pass beyond appearances in his thinking might hold the view that that heat is nothing but heat, and that light is nothing but light, such as are the heat and light radiated by the sun of our world. But the heat and light radiated by the Lord as a sun contain within themselves all the infinite possibilities in the Lord, the heat containing all the infinite possibilities of His love, the light all the infinite possibilities of His wisdom. Thus they also contain to an infinite degree all the good which makes up charity and all the truth which makes up faith. The reason is that that very sun is everywhere present in the form of its heat and light; and that sun is a circle most closely surrounding the Lord, and emanating from His Divine love and at the same time from His Divine wisdom. For, as has been said a number of times before, the Lord is in the midst of that sun.

[3] These statements now show plainly that there cannot be anything lacking to prevent a person drawing from the Lord, since He is omnipresent, all the good which makes up charity and all the truth which makes up faith. The fact that nothing of this is lacking is evident from a consideration of the love and wisdom of the angels of heaven; these they have from the Lord, and they are beyond description, passing the comprehension of a natural person, and they are capable of being increased for ever.

The infinite possibilities contained in the heat and light radiated by the Lord, even though they are perceived as simply heat and light, can be illustrated by various phenomena of the natural world. For instance, the sound of a person's voice and speech is heard as a simple sound, yet the angels on hearing it perceive in it all the affections which make up the person's love, and they also show which affections and of what kind they are. The fact that these things lie hidden within the sound one can even to some extent grasp from the sound of someone talking: for instance, whether it has in it a ring of contempt, or mockery, or hatred; and equally whether it has a ring of charity, good will, or cheerfulness, or other affections. The look the eye has when gazing at someone has something similar hidden in it.

[4] Another illustration might be the scents of a large garden, or the scents from broad expanses of flowering meadows. The fragrant odour they exhale is composed of thousands and myriads of various scents, yet they are still perceived as one. It is similar with many other things which, uniform as they appear externally, are still inwardly multifarious.

Sympathetic or antipathetic feelings are nothing but affections given off from the mind; they attract another the more strongly the more they resemble his, and repel him the more they differ from his. Although these feelings are countless and not felt by any bodily sense, they are still perceived by the sensory organs of the soul as one; and it is these which determine who are linked together and associated in the spiritual world. I have brought in these comparisons in order to illustrate what was said above about the spiritual light radiated by the Lord containing the whole of wisdom and the whole of faith; and to show that this is the light which allows the understanding to see and submit to analysis rational arguments, just as the eye sees and estimates the proportions of natural objects.