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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526. I have at times talked with angels about this and have said that many people in the world who have lived intent on evil and have talked with others about heaven and eternal life say only that getting into heaven is simply a matter of being let in on the basis of pure mercy. This is true especially of people who make faith the only means of salvation, since from this fundamental tenet of their religion they do not focus on life or on the deeds of love that make up one's life. As a result, they do not focus on the other means the Lord uses to instill heaven into us and render us open to heavenly joy. So since they reject all the actual means, the necessary corollary of their premise is that we enter heaven on the basis of pure mercy, believing God the Father to be moved to it through the intercession of the Son.

[2] Angels have responded that they know this kind of dogma follows necessarily from acceptance of the principle of salvation by faith alone and that this dogma is the head of the others, a head into which no light from heaven can flow, because it is not true. It is therefore the source of the ignorance the church is mired in nowadays - ignorance about the Lord, heaven, life after death, heavenly joy, the essential nature of love and thoughtfulness, and in general about what is good and its union with what is true. This results in ignorance about human life, its source, and its quality. Life is never gained by mere thought, but only by intent and consequent deeds. It is the result of thought to the extent that the thought derives from intent, so it is from faith only to the extent that faith derives from love. Angels grieve that these people do not realize that faith alone cannot exist in anyone because faith apart from its source, which is love, is only information, or for some a secondhand belief that counterfeits faith (see above, 482). This belief is not part of our life but is outside it, since it is separated from us if it is not coherent with our love.

[3] Angels have also said that people who are caught up in this kind of principle concerning the essential means of our salvation cannot help believing in straight mercy because they can tell from natural light and from visual experience that faith by itself does not constitute human life - people who are leading evil lives can think and convince themselves of the same principles. This is why they believe that evil people can be saved just like good ones, provided in the hour of their death they talk about intercession and mercy obtained by it.

The angels kept insisting that they have never yet seen people who lived an evil life accepted into heaven out of straight mercy, no matter how fervently they had spoken in the world from faith, or from the trust that is meant by faith in its primary sense.

[4] When they have asked about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, about the apostles, whether they were not accepted into heaven out of straight mercy, angels have answered that none of them was. Each one was accepted on the basis of his life in the world. They should realize where they were. No one had more prestige than anyone else. They said that the reason these individuals were mentioned in the Word with such respect was that they referred in the deeper meaning to the Lord - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the Lord in respect to his divine nature and his divine human nature, David to the Lord as to the regal divine nature, and the apostles to the Lord as to divine truths. The angels do not pay any attention to these individuals when the Word is being read by people on earth because their names do not cross over into heaven. They are conscious of the Lord instead, as just noted. So the Word that is in heaven (described above in 259) never mentions them, since that Word is the inner meaning of the Word that exists in the world. ¹

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14. ¹ III. HEAVEN AND HELL ARE FROM THE HUMAN RACE.

No one in the Christian world is aware that heaven and hell are from the human race. It is believed that angels were created from the beginning, and so heaven was formed; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, but becoming a rebel was cast down together with his crew, and so hell was formed. The angels are exceedingly surprised that such is the belief of the Christian world; and even more so by the fact that people know nothing at all about heaven, when this is a leading point in what the church teaches. Because such ignorance abounds the angels were delighted that it has now pleased the Lord to make further revelations to Christians about heaven, and also about hell; and so as far as possible to dispel the darkness that deepens day by day, because the church has reached its end. The angels therefore wish me to assert as their own statement that the whole of heaven does not contain one angel who was created from the beginning, nor does hell contain any devil who was created an angel of light and then cast down; but that all the inhabitants of both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven contains those who lived in the world in a state of heavenly love and faith, hell those who lived in a state of hellish love and faith. They said that it is the whole of hell taken together which is called the Devil and Satan; the rear hell, the home of those called wicked genii, is called Devil, the front hell, the home of those called wicked spirits, is called Satan. ² On the nature of the two hells see the final part of my book HEAVEN AND HELL. The angels explained the reason for the Christian world's belief about the inhabitants of heaven and of hell as the result of a failure to understand certain passages in the Word as anything but literal accounts, instead of interpreting them and illustrating them in the light of the correct teaching from the Word. Yet the literal sense of the Word, unless previously illuminated by the church's correct teaching, causes people's minds to go astray in various directions; and this is the source of ignorance, heresy and error. ³

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