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:

25. After his life in the world everyone lives for ever. This is evident from the fact that he is then no longer natural but spiritual; and a spiritual person once separated from the natural stays in the same state for ever, since a person's state cannot change after death. Moreover every person's spiritual side is linked with the Divine, since it can think about and also love the Divine, and be acted upon by all the influences coming from the Divine, much as the church teaches. The spiritual side can as a result be linked to the Divine by willing and thinking, the two faculties of the spiritual man which make up his life. Thus a link can be made with the Divine which can never die, for the Divine is present with him and links him to Itself.

[2] Man has also been created so as mentally to be a model of heaven. The form of heaven derives from the Divine itself, as was shown in HEAVEN AND HELL (The Lord's Divine makes and forms heaven, 7-12, 78-86); man was created so as to be a model of heaven on the smallest scale (57); heaven taken all together resembles a single human being (59-66). Hence an angel has a perfect human form (73-77). An angel is a human being in his spiritual aspect.

[3] I have had a number of conversations with angels on this subject. They were extremely surprised that there are very many among those reputed intelligent in the Christian world, and believed to be intelligent by other people, who have totally rejected any idea that their life is not subject to death, but believe that the soul of a human being is dispersed after death like that of an animal. They fail to perceive the difference in the way human beings and animals live. Human beings have thoughts that can rise above themselves, and they can think about God, heaven, love, faith, spiritual and moral good, truths and such matters, thus rising to the Divine itself, and being linked to Him by all these means. Animals, however, cannot rise above their natural level so as to entertain such thoughts. As a result their spiritual side cannot be separated from their natural after death, ¹ and live on by itself as a human being's can. That too is the reason why an animal's life ² is dispersed together with its natural life.

[4] The angels said that the reason why many so-called intelligent people in the Christian world do not believe their life is immortal is that at heart they deny the existence of the Divine and acknowledge Nature in His place. Those who think from such premises cannot imagine how they can live for ever by being linked with the Divine, and consequently that the condition of human beings is any different from that of animals; for when they banish the idea of the Divine from their thoughts, they also banish that of eternity.

[5] They went on to say that every individual has a highest or most inward degree of life, something highest and inmost on which the Lord's Divinity primarily and most closely acts, and from which He controls the remaining interiors belonging to the spiritual and natural man and arranged in ordered sequence in them. They called this highest or most inward part the Lord's entrance into man and His truest abode with man. It is this highest or most inward part which gives man his humanity and sets him apart from dumb animals, which lack it. This is why men can, unlike animals, have their interiors, which belong to their minds and characters, raised by the Lord to Himself. Thus they can believe in Him, feel love for Him, and receive intelligence and wisdom and speak rationally.

[6] When asked whether those who deny the existence of the Divine and the Divine truths which link a person's life with the Divine Himself none the less live on for ever, they said that these had the ability to think and will, and thus to believe and love what proceeds from the Divine equally with those who acknowledge Him; and that this ability to think and will enables them equally to live for ever. They added that this ability results from that highest or most inward part everyone possesses which was mentioned just above. I have demonstrated at length that even those in hell have this ability, which enables them to reason and speak against Divine truths. This is why every person, irrespective of what sort of person he is, lives for ever.

[7] Because after death everyone lives for ever, no angel or spirit can think about death; in fact, they do not know what it is to die. Whenever therefore death is mentioned in the Word, the angels understand it as damnation, which is death in the spiritual sense, or the continuation of life and resurrection. ³ These remarks are intended as confirmation that all people who have ever been born from the beginning of creation, and have died, are alive, some in heaven and some in hell.

Фусноте:

10645. 'Therefore you shall not bow down to any other god' means that the Lord alone is to be worshipped in faith and love. This is clear from the meaning of 'bowing down' as adoring and worshipping. The reason why the Lord alone and no other is the One who is to be worshipped is that 'Jehovah' and 'God' are used in the Word to mean the Lord, see in the places referred to in 9315, 9373, and that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, also the one and only God, in the places referred to in 9194. The reason for saying that the Lord is to be worshipped in faith and love is that worship of the Lord springs either from faith or from love. Worship that springs from faith is called worship in accord with truths, for truths belong to faith, and worship that springs from love is called worship springing from good, for good belongs to love. Those who are in the Lord's spiritual kingdom worship Him in faith, whereas those who are in His celestial kingdom do so in love.

[2] But something must be said to show what worship of the Lord in faith and love is like. Very many people suppose that they worship the Lord in faith when they believe the things contained in the teachings of the Church, and that they worship the Lord in love when they love Him. But worship of the Lord does not consist in mere belief nor in mere love; rather it consists in leading a life in accord with His commandments. For those who do so, they alone are the ones who believe in the Lord and love Him. All others may say that they believe in the Lord but they do not in fact believe in Him, and they may say that they love Him but they do not in fact do so. The reason why only those who lead a life in accord with His commandments believe in the Lord and love Him is that the Lord cannot be where there is an understanding of truth but no will or desire for it, only where there is an understanding of truth coupled with a will or desire for it. For truth does not enter a person and become his until he wills or desires it, and in willing it does it; for the will is the real person, whereas the understanding is the person only insofar as it is rooted in the will. The Lord is also present with a person in his truths that spring from good with him; and truths springing from good are ones that a person wills or desires and consequently does, not those which he understands and does without any desire for them in his will. For without any desire in the will the doing of them is hypocrisy, since they are done before men and not before the Lord.

[3] Neither does the Lord reside with a person who is an empty shell, that is, who possesses no knowledge of His truths and does not do them. It is in those truths which spring from good, that is, which a person wills or desires and does, that the Lord is present with a person; for truths springing from good compose the Church as it exists in him, and they compose heaven as this exists in him. In short, they cause the Lord Himself to reside in him.

[4] Reason alone tells people that this is so, if they weigh the matter up; they can see that truths serve to shape the whole understanding part of the human mind, and forms of good to shape the whole will part. For all things that exist throughout creation have connection with truth and with good; and the human understanding has been made to receive truths and the human will to receive forms of good. The truths which a person believes are called the truths of faith, and the forms of good that fill a person with delight are called forms of the good of love. From this it becomes clear that what the truths of faith shaping the understanding are like, and what the forms of the good of love shaping the will are like, determines what a person is like; for a person is a person by virtue of his understanding and will. If therefore God's truths come to shape his understanding and become the constituents of his faith, and the forms of good which become the components of his love give shape to his will, it follows that heaven then exists within that person, and that the Lord resides with that person as in His heaven. For Divine Truths which make up the understanding and forms of Divine Good which make up the will come from the Lord, or are the Lord's; and those things which are the Lord's are Himself. From this it is evident that believing in the Lord consists in filling one's understanding with the truths of faith, that loving the Lord consists in filling one's will with forms of the good of love, and that neither of these things is accomplished except by learning truths from the Word, willing them, and doing them. Whether you say willing and doing or you say loving, it amounts to the same thing; for what a person loves he wills, and what he actively wills he loves.

[5] From all this it may now be seen what worshipping the Lord in faith and love really is. That the nature of it is as described is also evident from the consideration that the Lord wills or desires the salvation of all. His desire to save a person implies His desire to lead him towards Himself, to heaven. This cannot be accomplished unless the Lord is in him; and the Lord cannot be in him at all except in such things residing in him as come from Himself. Those things are truths springing from good, thus commandments of His which the person does in faith and in love; for nothing else exists in a person, or is ever able to exist, that receives the Lord and heaven. Nor does heaven itself consist of anything else.

[6] The truth that believing in the Lord and loving Him consist in doing His commandments is also what the Lord teaches in John,

If you love Me, keep My commands. He who has My commandments and does them, he it is who loves Me. If anyone loves Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words. John 14:15, 21, 23-24.

And elsewhere in the same gospel,

Remain in My love. If you keep My commands, you will remain in My love. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. John 15:9-10, 14.

The commandments which are to be kept, and in accordance with which people ought to conduct their lives, are presented in the teachings about charity and faith ¹ .

Фусноте: