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

Fotnoter:

336. As for the ways divine providence works with its means, and uses them to form us and bring us toward perfection, they are infinite in number and infinite in variety as well. There are as many of them as there are actions of divine wisdom, prompted by divine love, for our salvation; as many therefore as there are things that divine providence does in keeping with its laws, as already discussed.

I have already shown [164, 180, 296] that these ways are deeply hidden by comparing them with the way our souls work within our bodies, ways we know little or almost nothing about--how our eyes, ears, nostrils, tongue, and skin register sensations, for example, how our stomach digests, our mesentery produces chyle, our liver works on our blood, our pancreas and spleen purify it, our kidneys separate it from contaminating fluids, our heart gathers it in and sends it out, our lungs cleanse it, and our brain refines it and gives it new life, along with countless other processes, all subtle, whose depths our science can scarcely plumb.

We can see from this that we are even less able to plumb the depths of the subtle workings of divine providence. It is enough that we know its laws.

164. However, since this is a secret of angelic wisdom, people cannot understand it unless their spiritual minds have been opened. Such people are angels by virtue of their union with the Lord and will be able to understand what follows on the basis of what has already been said. (a) Both we and angels are in the Lord, and the Lord is in both us and angels, to the extent that we are united with him--that is, to the extent that we accept love and wisdom from him.

[2] (b) Each of us is assigned a place in the Lord--that is, in heaven--according to the quality of that union or acceptance of him.

[3] (c) Each of us has a specific state in that place, a state different from that of anyone else, and from the commonwealth we are granted a livelihood appropriate to our place, our responsibilities, and our needs, just the way it happens in the human body.

[4] (d) Each of us is led into our place by the Lord, in keeping with our lives.

[5] (e) Each of us is introduced at infancy into that divine-human being whose soul and life is the Lord; and we are led and taught out of divine love itself according to divine wisdom itself, within the Lord and not outside him. However, since we are not deprived of our freedom, the only way we can be led and taught is within the limits of our apparently autonomous acceptance.

[6] (f) People who do accept [divine love and wisdom] are brought to their places by countless winding and roundabout ways, almost like the way the chyle is brought through the mesentery and the lacteals into its reservoir, and from there through the thoracic duct into the blood and therefore to its proper place.

[7] (g) People who do not accept [divine love and wisdom] are separated from those who are inside the divine person the way feces and urine are excreted from us.

These are secrets of angelic wisdom that people can understand to some extent; but there are many other secrets that they cannot understand.