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:

457. It is different for people who only worship God but do not also perform good actions related to goodwill. These people are like covenant breakers. It is different again for people who divide God into three and worship each one separately. It is different again for people who go to God, but not in his human manifestation. These are the people "who do not enter through the door but instead climb up some other way" (John 10:1). It is different again for people who deny with conviction that the Lord is divine. All these types of people lack a connection to God and therefore lack salvation. The goodwill they have is illegitimate. This type of goodwill forms a connection that is not face to face but side to side or back to back.

[2] I will briefly explain how loving God and loving our neighbor are connected. With all of us, God flows into our concepts of him and brings us true acknowledgment of him. He also flows into us and brings us his love for people. If we accept only the first inflow but not the second, we receive that inflow with our intellect but not our will. We keep the concepts of God that we have without arriving at an inward acknowledgment of God. Our state is then like a garden in winter.

If we accept both types of inflow, however, we receive the inflow with our will and then our intellect - that is, with our whole mind. We then develop an inner acknowledgment of God that brings our concepts of God to life. Our state is then like a garden in spring.

[3] Goodwill makes the connection, because God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; he can benefit us only indirectly through each other. For this reason he inspires us with his love, just as he inspires parents with love for their children. If we receive this love, we become connected to God and we love our neighbor out of love for God. Then we have love for God inside our love for our neighbor. Our love for God makes us willing and able to love our neighbor.

[4] We cannot do anything good if it does not seem to us that our power, willingness, and actions come from ourselves. Therefore we are granted the appearance that they do. When we freely do something good as if we were acting on our own, this goodness is attributed to us and is taken as our response, and this forges the connection.

The situation here is like something active and something passive and the cooperation of the two that occurs when the passive element accepts the active one.

The situation is also like the intention present in people's actions, the thinking present in their speech, and the soul working from the inside on both the intention and the thinking. It is like the originating force that is present in a motion. It is like the prolific power present in the seed of a tree. That power acts from the inside on the various forms of sap that develop the tree all the way to the point of bearing fruit. Through the fruit the tree produces new seeds. It is also like the light in precious stones that is reflected depending on the textures of the interior. Different colors appear as a result, as if they were the stones colors, but they are really the colors of the light.

3646. So far as influx and correspondences are concerned, it is similar with animals as with men. That is to say, with an animal there is an influx from the spiritual world and an afflux from the natural world which hold it together and give it life. But the actual operation of that influx and afflux varies according to the forms which animals' souls take and consequently which their bodies take. It is like the light of the world which flows into varying objects on earth to the same degree and in the same way yet acts in differing ways within differing forms. In some it produces beautiful colours, in others horrid colours. Thus when spiritual light flows into the souls of animals its reception is completely different, and the effect it therefore has on the activity of their souls is different from its reception and the effect it has when it flows into the souls of human beings.

[2] For the souls of human beings exist on a higher level and in a more perfect state, and are such that they are able to look upwards, and so to heaven and the Lord. Consequently the Lord is able to join them to Himself and grant them eternal life. But the souls of animals are such that they cannot do other than look downwards, thus merely to earthly things, and so can be joined only to these. This is also why they perish together with the body. It is their ends in view that show what the life possessed by man is like and what that possessed by a beast is like. Man is able to have spiritual and celestial ends in view, and to see, acknowledge, and believe them, and to have an affection for them. But beasts can have none but natural ends in view. Thus man is able to dwell in the Divine sphere of ends and purposes which exist in heaven and which constitute heaven, whereas beasts can dwell in no other sphere than that of ends and purposes which exist on earth. Ends are nothing else than loves, for the things which people love they have as an end in view.

[3] The reason why most people do not know how to distinguish their own life from that of beasts is that the two are externally alike. Both are interested in and set their hearts solely on earthly, bodily, and worldly objects. Such people also believe that their life is similar to the life which beasts possess and that like these they are going to become nothing at all when they die. For what spiritual and celestial things may be they do not know because they are not interested in them. From this comes the insanity of our own times of people comparing themselves to animals and not recognizing any internal distinction. But anyone who believes in the existence of celestial and spiritual things, that is, who allows spiritual light to flow in and influence him, sees quite the reverse, and also sees the extent to which he is superior to animals. The life of animals however will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with as a separate subject.