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

脚注:

23. There is one human God who is the source of everything. All the elements of human reason unite in, and in a sense center on, the fact that a single God is the Creator of the universe. As a result, rational people, on the basis of their shared understanding, neither do nor can think in any other way. Tell people of sound reason that there are two creators of the universe and you will feel within yourself how they recoil from this notion, perhaps simply from the tone of their voice in your ear. This enables us to see that all the elements of human reason unite and center on the oneness of God.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that in its own right, our very ability to think rationally is not our own property. It is a property of God within us. Human rationality in general depends on this fact, and this general property causes our reason more or less spontaneously to see the oneness of God. The second is that through our rational ability either we are in heaven's light or we draw from it some general quality of its thought, and the all-pervading element of heaven's light is that God is one.

This is not the case if we have used our rational ability to skew our lower understanding. In this case we still possess the ability, but by the distortion of our lower abilities we have steered it off course, and our rationality is not sound.

4839. 'And what he had done was evil in the eyes of Jehovah' means that it was contrary to Divine order. This is clear from the meaning of 'evil in the eyes of Jehovah', or evil contrary to Him, as that which is contrary to the order originating in Him. This is evident both from what Onan actually did and from what was laid down regarding a husband's brother - the sister-in-law was required to remove the shoe from his foot and to spit in his face; and his name in Israel was to be called, The house of him that has his shoe taken off, Deuteronomy 25:8-10. These actions meant that he was devoid of good, external and internal; and those who are devoid of that good and are governed by evil are contrary to Divine order. All evil that wells up or flows from evil present interiorly - that is, which, like Onan's, is intentional or has an evil end in view - is contrary to Divine order. But that which does not well up or flow from evil present interiorly - that is, which is unintentional or has no evil end in view - may sometimes look like evil but is not in fact this if the end in view is not an evil one; for it is the end that determines the true nature of every action. The end holds a person's life within it; that is to say, what a person loves and consequently thinks he has as his end in view. The life of his soul is nothing else.

[2] Everyone realizes that evil is contrary to Divine order and good is in keeping with it. Divine Order is the Lord Himself in heaven, for Divine Good and Truth received from Him constitute order. They do this so completely that they are order, Divine Good being the essential element of it and Divine Truth the form given to this. When represented in a visible shape Divine order is seen as a Human Being, for the Lord alone who is the producer of it is Man, 49, 288, 477, 565, 1871, 1894, 3638, 3639. And insofar as angels, spirits, and men are recipients of Him, that is, insofar as good and accompanying truth are present in them, thus insofar as His Divine order is present there, they are human beings. This is the reason why the whole of heaven represents one complete human being, called the Grand Man, and every single thing in the human being corresponds to it, as has been shown at the ends of chapters. It also explains why all the angels in heaven are seen in a human shape; but evil spirits on the other hand are deluded into seeing one another as human beings, whereas in the light of heaven they look like monsters, ever more dreadful and horrid, depending on the evil which governs them, 4533. The reason for this is that evil itself is contrary to order and so contrary to the human form. For as has been stated, when represented in a visible form, Divine order looks like a human being.