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

Mga talababa:

333. The premise is that for our salvation, divine providence begins at our birth and continues to the end of our life. To understand this, we need to realize that the Lord knows the kind of person we are and the kind of person we want to be and therefore the kind of person we will be. Further, he cannot deprive us of the freedom of our volition if we are to be human and therefore immortal, as amply explained above; so he foresees what our state will be after death and provides for it from our birth all the way to the end of our life. He does this for evil people by both allowing and constantly leading them away from their evils, and for good people by constantly leading them to what is good. So divine providence is constantly at work for our salvation; but it cannot save more of us than want to be saved. We want to be saved if we believe in God and are led by him, and we do not want to be saved if we do not believe in God and we lead ourselves. In the latter case, we are not thinking about eternal life or salvation, while in the former case we are. The Lord sees all this and still leads us, doing so under the laws of his divine providence, laws he cannot violate because that would be to violate his divine love and his divine wisdom, and therefore himself.

[2] Since he foresees everyone's state after death and foresees our place as well--in hell for people who do not want to be saved and in heaven for people who do--it follows that, as just stated, he provides places for the evil by permitting and leading them away and for the good by leading them to their places. It follows also that if this were not being done constantly for everyone from birth to the end of life, neither heaven nor hell would endure. Without this foresight and providence, that is, there would be neither a heaven nor a hell, only confusion. (See 202-203 above on the fact that we are all provided with places by the Lord in his foresight.)

[3] To illustrate this by a comparison, if an archer or musketeer were to aim at a target and a straight line a mile long were drawn behind the target, then if the aim were off just a hair, at the end of that mile the arrow or ball would have strayed far from the line behind the target. That is what it would be like if the Lord did not have his eye on eternity at every moment, every least moment, in his foresight and provision for everyone's place after death. The Lord does this, though, because to him the whole future is present, and to him everything present is eternal.

On the fact that divine providence focuses on what is infinite and eternal in everything it does, see above, 46-69, 214 and following.

4618. 'And Isaac breathed his last, and died' means an awakening within the Divine Natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'breathing one's last, and dying' as an awakening, dealt with in 3326, 3498, 3505; for when mention is made in the Word of someone having died, the latter end of that person's [representation] and a new beginning in another, and so a continuation, is meant in the internal sense. When for instance the kings of Judah and Israel, or the high priests, are referred to as having died, the meaning in the internal sense is the end of the representation by means of them and the continuation of it in another, and so an awakening of it. What is more, those in the next life who are present with man when these references are read have no conception of death, since in that life they are completely unaware of what it is to die. Instead of death therefore they perceive the representation which is continued in the other person. Besides, when a person dies he does so only so far as his body is concerned, which has been of service to him for performing uses on earth. So far as his spirit is concerned he continues his life in a world where what belongs to that body is no longer of any use to him.

[2] The reason why 'Isaac breathed his last, and died' means an awakening within the Divine Natural is that the rational has no life until the natural corresponds to it, 3493, 3620, 3623. It is like the sight of the eye. If this does not have any objects outside itself to look at it perishes; and it is similar with each of the other senses. It likewise perishes if the objects are utterly incompatible with it, for these bring death to it. It is also like the outlet of a spring from which no water flows, and therefore is a stream that is blocked up. Similarly with the rational. Unless its light is received within the natural its sight perishes, for facts present within the natural are the objects of sight for the rational. Or if these objects are incompatible with that light, that is, with an intelligent understanding of truth and a wise discernment of good, again the sight of the rational perishes, for it is unable to enter into things incompatible with itself. This is why in the case of those under the influence of evils and falsities the rational is closed, so that no communication with heaven lies open through it, except so to speak through chinks enabling them to think, reason, and speak. Consequently, so that the natural may be joined to the rational, it must be made ready to receive it; and this is effected through regeneration by the Lord. When it is so joined the rational lives within the natural, for within the natural it sees objects proper to the rational, as has been stated, just as within the world the eye sees objects proper to the eye.

[3] The rational does indeed possess life within itself which is distinct and separate from the life of the natural. Nevertheless the rational exists within the natural, like a person within his own house, or the soul within the body. The same is true of the heavens, in that the inmost or third heaven lives distinct and separate from the heavens beneath it, and yet if there were no reception of it in the second or middle heaven the wisdom there would evaporate. In a similar way if there were no reception of the light and intelligence of this middle heaven within the ultimate or first heaven, and finally of this heaven within man's natural, the intelligence of those heavens would likewise evaporate unless the Lord provided for its reception somewhere else. The heavens therefore have been formed by the Lord in such a way that one serves as the recipient of another, and lastly man who, as to his natural and sensory degrees, serves as the ultimate recipient of all; for at this point in him the Divine is present in the ultimate degree of order and passes into the world. If therefore the ultimate degree accords or corresponds with the degrees prior to it, those prior degrees exist simultaneously within the ultimate; for the things constituting the ultimate are the receptacles of those prior to itself, and things that are consecutive to one another are present together there within it. This shows what is meant by an awakening within the Divine Natural.