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

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67. Next, since we are by creation heavens in smallest form and therefore images of the Lord, and since heaven is made up of as many desires as there are angels, each of which is a person as to its form, it follows that the constant effort in divine providence is for each of us to become a heaven in form and therefore an image of the Lord. Further, since this is accomplished by means of the desire for what is good and true, it is for us to become that desire. This, then, is the constant effort in divine providence.

The very heart of providence, though, is that we should be in some particular place in heaven or in some particular place in the divine heavenly person and therefore in the Lord. This is what happens for people whom the Lord can lead to heaven. Since the Lord foresees this, he also constantly provides for it, with the result that all of us who are allowing ourselves to be led to heaven are being prepared for our own places in heaven.

1463. That 'sojourning' means receiving instruction becomes clear from the meaning in the Word of 'sojourning' as receiving instruction, and it has this meaning because sojourning and passing on, or moving from one place to another, is in heaven nothing else than a change of state, as shown already in 1376, 1379. Therefore every time travelling, sojourning, or transferring from one place to another occurs in the Word nothing else suggests itself to angels than a change of state such as takes place with them. There are changes of state both of thoughts and of affections. Changes of the state of thoughts are cognitions, which in the world of spirits are represented by means of forms of instruction. This also explains why members of the Most Ancient Church, having communication with the angelic heaven, did not perceive anything else by 'sojourning'. Thus the statement here that 'Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn' does not mean anything other than the Lord's being instructed.

[2] Something similar is meant by Jacob and his sons going down into Egypt, as in Isaiah,

Thus said the Lord Jehovih, My people went down to Egypt at first to sojourn there, and Asshur oppressed them without cause. Isaiah 52:4.

Here 'Asshur' stands for reasonings. This is also why in the Jewish Church people who were receiving instruction were called 'sojourners, sojourning in their midst' who, it was commanded, were to receive the same treatment as the native-born, Exodus 12:48-49; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:13-16, 26, 29; 19:10. Regarding sojourners it is said in Ezekiel,

You shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. You shall divide it by lot as an inheritance for yourselves and for sojourners, sojourning in your midst. They shall be to you as native-born among the children of Israel, they shall cast lots with you for an inheritance in the midst of the tribes of Israel. In the tribe with which the sojourner has sojourned, there shall you give him his inheritance. Ezekiel 47:21-23.

This refers to the new Jerusalem, or the Lord's kingdom. 'Sojourners sojourning' is used to mean people who allow themselves to receive instruction, consequently the gentiles. That 'sojourners' stands for people who are receiving instruction is clear from the fact that it is said 'in the tribe with which he has sojourned, there shall an inheritance be given him'. 'Tribes' stands for the things that constitute faith.

[3] 'Sojourning' is also similar in meaning to travelling and dwelling. 'Travelling' means the established patterns and order of life, while 'dwelling' means living, both dealt with already in 1293. For the same reasons the land of Canaan is also called 'the land of the sojournings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob', in Genesis 28:4; 36:7; 37:1; Exodus 6:4. And Jacob said to Pharaoh,

The days of the years of my sojournings; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojournings. Genesis 47:9.

Here 'sojourning' stands for life and for forms of instruction.