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

Imibhalo yaphansi:

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.

985. Who hath authority over these plagues, signifies no fear of the Last Judgment by the Lord, and of the condemnation and punishment at that time of the evils and consequent falsities that have devastated the church. This is evident from the signification of "having authority," as being, in reference to God whose name they blasphemed, the Lord as to the Last Judgment; also from the signification of "plagues," as being the evils and consequent falsities, and the falsities and the consequent evils that have devastated the church (See n. 949). It is the Lord in regard to judgment that is signified by "who hath authority over the seven plagues" that are treated of in this chapter, because the end of the church, when these plagues, that is, these evils and falsities exist, is what is here treated of; and after that the judgment is wrought by the Lord. By the Last Judgment all that are in these plagues, that is, in the evils and falsities that have devastated the church, are cast into hell, and thus the New Church which is then to be established is cleansed of them. This makes clear the signification of "having authority over these plagues."

(Continuation respecting the Sixth Commandment)

[2] How profane and thus how much to be detested adulteries are can be seen from the holiness of marriage. All things in the human body, from the head to the heel of the foot, both interior and exterior, correspond to the heavens, and in consequence man is a heaven in its least form, and also angels and spirits are in form perfectly human, for they are forms of heaven. All the members devoted to generation in both sexes, especially the womb, correspond to societies of the third or inmost heaven, and for the reason that love truly conjugial is derived from the Lord's love for the church, and from the love of good and truth which is the love of the angels of the third heaven; therefore conjugial love, which descends therefrom as the love of the heavens, is innocence, which is the very being [esse] of every good in the heavens. And for this reason embryos in the womb are in a state of peace, and after birth infants are in a state of innocence; so, too, is the mother in relation to them.

[3] As this is the correspondence of the genital organs of both sexes, it is evident that from creation they are holy, and therefore they are devoted solely to chaste and pure conjugial love, and are not to be profaned by the unchaste and impure love of adultery, by which man converts the heaven with himself into hell; for as the love of marriage corresponds to the love of the highest heaven, which is love to the Lord from the Lord, so the love of adultery corresponds to the love of the lowest hell. The love of marriage is so holy and heavenly because it has its beginning in the inmosts of man from the Lord Himself, and it descends according to order to the ultimates of the body, and thus fills the whole man with heavenly love and brings him into a form of the Divine love, which is the form of heaven, and is an image of the Lord, as has been said above. But the love of adultery has its beginning in the ultimates of man from an impure lascivious fire there, and thus, contrary to order, penetrates towards the interiors, always into the things that are man's own [proprium], which are nothing but evil, and brings these into a form of hell, which is an image of the devil. Therefore a man who loves adultery and turns away from marriage is in form a devil.

[4] As the organs of generation in each sex correspond to the societies of the third heaven, and the love of a marriage pair corresponds to the love of good and truth, so those organs and that love correspond to the Word. The reason is that the Word is the Divine truth united to the Divine good proceeding from the Lord; and this is why the Lord is called "the Word," also why in every particular of the Word there is a marriage of good and truth, or a heavenly marriage. That there is such a correspondence is an arcanum not yet known in the world, but it has been made evident and proved to me by much experience. From this also it is clear how holy and heavenly marriages are in themselves, and how profane and diabolical adulteries are. And for this reason adulterers make no account of Divine truths and thus of the Word, and if they were to speak from the heart they would even blaspheme the holy things that are in the Word. This they do when they have become spirits after death, for every spirit is compelled to speak from the heart that his interior thoughts may be revealed.