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:

129. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Not Be Compelled by Outside Forces to Think and Intend and So to Believe and Love in Matters of Our Religion, but That We Should Guide Ourselves and Sometimes Compel Ourselves

This law of divine providence follows from the two preceding ones, namely, that we should act in freedom and in accord with reason (71-99), and that we should do this for ourselves, even though it is being done by the Lord--that is, in apparent autonomy (100-128). Since it is not from freedom and according to reason and not in autonomy to be compelled but comes from the absence of freedom and from someone else, this law of divine providence follows directly from the two earlier ones. Everyone recognizes that none of us can be compelled to think what we do not want to think or to intend what we think we do not want to intend. So we cannot be compelled to believe what we do not believe and certainly not anything that we do not want to believe; or to love what we do not love and certainly not anything that we do not want to love. Our spirit or mind has complete freedom to think, intend, believe, and love. This freedom comes to us by an inflow from the spiritual world, which does not compel us. Our spirit or mind is actually in that world. The freedom does not flow in from the physical world, which accepts the inflow only when the two worlds are in unison.

[2] We can be compelled to say that we think and intend something or that we believe and love something, but unless this is or becomes a matter of our own desire and our consequent reasoning, it is not something that we really think, intend, believe, and love. We can also be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act according to religion, but we cannot be compelled to think in its favor as a matter of our own faith and to intend it as a matter of our own love. In countries where justice and judgment are cherished, everyone is obliged not to speak against religion or to violate it in action, but still no one can be compelled to think and intend in its favor. This is because each of us has a freedom to think in sympathy with hell and to intend in its favor, or to think in sympathy with heaven and to intend in its favor. Still, our reason tells us what the quality is of the one and of the other and what lot awaits the one and what lot awaits the other. Our ability to intend on the basis of reason is our capacity to choose and to decide.

[3] This may serve to show that what is outside cannot compel what is inside. However, it does happen sometimes, and I need to show that it is harmful in the following sequence.

1. No one is reformed by miracles and signs, because they compel.

2. No one is reformed by visions or by conversations with the dead, because they compel.

3. No one is reformed by threats or by punishment, because they compel.

4. No one is reformed in states where freedom and rationality are absent.

5. Self-compulsion is not inconsistent with rationality and freedom.

6. Our outer self has to be reformed by means of our inner self, and not the reverse.

874. Fear God and give glory unto him. That this signifies that they should worship the Lord from His Divine truth by a life according to it, is evident from the signification of fearing God, as denoting to reverence and worship the Lord; concerning which see above (n. 696); and from the signification of giving glory unto Him, as denoting to live according to Divine truth, that is, according to His precepts in the Word.

By glory, where it is said of the Lord, is signified Divine truth proceeding from Him, thus the Word such as it is in heaven; for this is light to the angels, by means of which the Lord manifests His glory. For by means of that light He gives intelligence and wisdom, and also sets before their eyes magnificent objects, which are refulgent from highly precious things. This in the proximate sense is signified by the Lord's glory. But because all those magnificent things that are refulgent, as it were, from gold and precious stones in wonderful forms, are given by the Lord according to the reception of Divine truth proceeding from Him, therefore they are seen by them entirely according to the wisdom which is in them; for these things are correspondences. But since they have wisdom according to their reception of Divine truth, not only in doctrine but also in life, therefore by giving glory unto Him is signified to live according to Divine truth.

[2] It is believed in the world that those possess wisdom, and consequently heaven, who know Divine truths and speak of them from knowledge, although they may not live according to them. But I can testify that such persons have no wisdom. They appear indeed to be wise, when they speak; but as soon as they are in their own spirit, or think in themselves, they are quite unwise; sometimes in fact they rave like foolish persons, thinking contrary to the Divine truths of which they have spoken. But the case is different with those who live according to Divine truths. Such persons think wisely in themselves, and also speak wisely with others. This it has been granted me to know by a thousand examples from experience in the spiritual world; for things are seen there such as are altogether unknown to men in the natural world. I have heard many there speak so wisely that I could have supposed them to be angels of the interior heaven; yet they had become devils; for they had filled their memory with such things from the love of glory, and yet had not lived according to them. As soon therefore as they came to themselves, and returned to the love of their own life, they spoke in opposition to those things, and were as insane as if they had known nothing at all about them. It was therefore evident to me, that almost every one has the faculty to understand, in order that he may be reformed; but he who does not live the life of truth, does not will to be reformed. He successively rejects from himself all those things that have reference to his intelligence and wisdom, and lives his own love, which is opposed to them, and at length he draws near to those who are in hell, and in a love similar to his own.

From these things it is evident that to give glory to God is to live according to Divine truth; as the Lord also taught in these words in John:

"In this is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. Abide ye in my love: if ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you" (15:8, 10, 14).

It is therefore evident that to glorify God, or to give glory to God, is to bring forth fruit.

See, moreover, what has been said before concerning glory as that glory signifies the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, and its reception by angels and men (n. 33, 288, 345); and that the Lord's glory consists in enlightening men and angels, and in blessing them with wisdom and happiness; which can take place only by the reception of Divine truth in doctrine and also in life.