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

Примітки:

3016. 'Abraham, being old, was advanced in years' means when the state was reached in which the Lord's Human could become Divine. This is clear from the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord, dealt with in 1893, 1965, 1989, 2011, 2172, 2198, 2501, 2833, 2836, and many times elsewhere; from the meaning of 'old' or old age as casting off what is human and putting on what is heavenly, dealt with in 1854, 2198, and when it has reference to the Lord, putting on what is Divine; and from the meaning of 'day' as state, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, and therefore from the meaning of 'advanced in years' as the point when a state has been reached. The reason why 'old' and 'advanced in years' mean these things is that with angels the notion of old age does not exist, nor that of getting older, meant by 'advanced in years', only the notion of state as regards the life that is theirs. Consequently when getting older or old age is mentioned in the Word the angels present with man can have no other idea than that of the state of life that is theirs or that is men's as they pass through the different stages of life until they reach the last, that is to say, as they accordingly cast off what is human and put on what is heavenly. For man's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death and the actual transition from one life to the next. Burial therefore is also resurrection since the casting-off process is completed then, 2916, 2917. Such being the idea that angels have, nothing else can be meant by 'advanced in years' and by 'old age' in the internal sense - the sense which exists primarily for angels and for men who have minds like those of angels.

267, 2. Evil people misuse these abilities to validate things that are evil and false, while good people use them to validate things that are good and true. The mental ability we call rationality and the volitional ability we call freedom afford us the possibility of validating anything we please. As earthly-minded people, we can raise our discernment to a higher light as far as we want to; but if we are bent on evil and the distortions it causes, we raise it no higher than the upper levels of the earthly mind, rarely to the region of the spiritual mind. This is because we are caught up in the pleasures of our earthly mind's love. If we do rise above that level, the pleasures of its love die away. If we rise even higher and see true things that are contrary to the pleasures of our life or the basic premises of the intellect that we claim as our own, then we either distort them or ignore them, dismissing them as worthless, or we hold them in our memory so that they may be of use as tools to our life's love or our pride in our own intelligence.

It is obvious from the abundance of heresies in Christendom (each one validated by its adherents) that earthly-minded people can validate whatever they please. Can anyone miss the fact that all kinds of evil and false notions can be validated? We can "prove" (and inwardly, evil people do "prove") that God does not exist and that nature is all there is, having created itself; that religion is only a device for holding the minds of the simple in bondage; that our own prudence accomplishes everything; and that divine providence does nothing but maintain the universe in the pattern in which it was created; and even, according to Machiavelli and his followers, that there is nothing wrong with murder, adultery, theft, deception, and revenge.

Earthly-minded people can justify a host of things like this, can fill books with "proofs;" and once they have been justified, we see these false notions in their own illusory light, and true ideas are in such darkness that they are virtually invisible, like ghosts in the night. In brief, take the falsest notion you can think of, frame it as a proposition, and tell someone clever to prove it, and you will find it "proved" to the absolute stifling of any true light. But then step back from those proofs and take a second look at the same proposition from your own rationality, and you will see how grotesquely false it is.

This shows that we are able to misuse the two abilities the Lord instills in us to validate all kinds of evil and false notions. No animal can do this because animals do not enjoy these abilities. So unlike us, animals are born into the complete pattern of their lives, with all the knowledge necessary for their earthly love.