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:

499. Our Second State after Death

Our second state after death is called a state of our deeper interests because then we are given access to the deeper reaches of our minds, or of our intentions and thoughts, while the more outward interests that engaged us in the first state become dormant.

Anyone who is observant of our life and our words and actions can recognize that we all have more outward and more inward natures, or more outward and more inward thoughts and intentions. We can recognize this from the fact that if we are involved in civic life, we think about other people in terms of their reputation, or of what we have picked up about them when they were the subjects of conversation. However, we do not talk with them the way we think about them, and even if the others are evil people, we still behave courteously toward them. This is particularly noticeable in pretenders and sycophants whose words and deeds are wholly at odds with their thoughts and intentions, and in hypocrites who talk about God, heaven, the salvation of souls, the truths of the church, the welfare of the country, and their neighbor as though they were motivated by faith and love when at heart they believe otherwise and love no one but themselves.

[2] We may gather from this that we have two thought processes, one more outward and one more inward, and that we talk on the basis of our more outward thinking and feel differently on the basis of our more inward thinking. Further, these two thought processes have been separated to prevent the inner from flowing into the outer and becoming somehow visible.

We have been so created that our inner thought may act in unison with our outer by means of correspondence; and it does act as one when we are involved in something constructive, since we do not think anything that is not good, and what we say is good. But if we are involved in something evil, our deeper thought does not act as one with our outer thought, because we are thinking something evil and saying something good. This means that the pattern is inverted, since the good is on the outside for us and the evil lies within. As a result, the evil controls the good and suppresses it like a slave, to make it serve as a means to securing its own ends, the objects of its love. Since this kind of purpose is latent in the good we say and do, we can see that now the good is not really good but is infected with evil, no matter how good it may look in outward form to people who are not aware of deeper matters.

[3] It is different for people who are involved in something good. For them, the pattern is not inverted; rather, the good flows from their deeper thought into their more outward thought and therefore into their words and deeds. This is the pattern into which we were created. In this way, our deeper reaches are in heaven and in the light there, and since heaven's light is divine truth emanating from the Lord and is in fact the Lord in heaven (see 126-140), the Lord is leading us.

I mention this to show that each of us has a more inward thought and a more outward thought, and that these are distinguishable. When I say "thought," I mean volition as well, since thought comes from volition. No one can actually think without intent.

We can see from this what our states of outer concerns and of inner concerns are.

598. Man cannot be reformed unless he has freedom, for the reason that he is born into evils of every kind, and these must be removed in order that he may be saved; and they cannot be removed unless he sees them in himself and acknowledges them, and then does not will them, and finally holds them in aversion. Then for the first time they are removed. This cannot be done unless man is in good as well as in evil, since it is from good that he is able to see evils, while from evil he cannot see good. The spiritual goods that man is capable of thinking, be learns from childhood as a result of the reading of the Word and of preaching; and he learns moral and civil good from his life in the world. This is the first reason why man ought to be in freedom.

[2] Another reason is that nothing is appropriated to man except what is done from the affection that is of his love. The other things may gain entrance, but no farther than the thought, not reaching the will; and whatever does not enter in as far as to the will of man does not become his, for thought derives what pertains to it from memory, while the will derives what pertains to it from the life itself. Nothing is ever free unless it is from the will, or what is the same, from the affection that is of love, for whatever a man wills or loves, that he does freely; consequently, man's freedom and the affection that is of his love or of his will are a one. It is for this reason that man has freedom, in order that he may be affected by truth and good or may love them, and that they may thus become as if they were his own.

[3] In a word, whatever does not enter in freedom with a man does not remain, because it does not belong to his love or will, and the things that do not belong to man's love or will do not belong to his spirit; for the very being (esse) of the spirit of man is love or will. It is said love or will, since a man wills what he loves. This, then, is why man can be reformed only in freedom. But more on the subject of man's freedom may be seen in the ARCANA CAELESTIA in the passages referred to below.