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.

481. The man whose love is heavenly and spiritual comes into heaven; while the man whose love is corporeal and worldly with no heavenly and spiritual love goes to hell. This has been confirmed for me from all whom I have seen taken up into heaven or cast into hell. The life of those taken up into heaven had been derived from a heavenly and spiritual love, while the life of those cast into hell had been derived from a corporeal and worldly love. Heavenly love consists in loving what is good, honest, and just, because it is good, honest and just, and in doing this from that love; and those who have this love have a life of goodness, honesty, and justice, which is the heavenly life. Those who love these things for their own sake, and who do them or live them, love the Lord above all things, because they are from Him; they also love the neighbour, because these things are the neighbour who is to be loved. ¹ But corporeal love is loving what is good, honest, and just, not for its own sake but for the sake of self, because reputation, honour, and gain can thus be acquired. Such, in what is good, honest, and just, do not look to the Lord and to the neighbour, but to self and the world, and feel delight in fraud; and the goodness, honesty and justice derived from fraud are evil, dishonesty, and injustice, and these are what are loved by such in their practice of goodness, honesty, and justice.

[2] As the life of everyone is determined by these different kinds of love, as soon as men after death enter the world of spirits they are examined to discover their quality, and are joined to those who are in a like love; those in heavenly love to those who are in heaven, and those in corporeal love to those who are in hell. Also after they have passed through the first and second state they are so separated as to see or know each other no longer; for each one becomes his own love, both in respect of his interiors pertaining to his mind, and in respect of his exteriors pertaining to his face, body, and speech; for each becomes an image of his own love, even in externals. Those who are corporeal loves appear gross, dusky, black and misshapen; while those who are heavenly loves appear fresh, bright, fair and beautiful. Also in their minds and thoughts they are wholly unlike, those who are heavenly loves being intelligent and wise, while those who are corporeal loves are stupid and, as it were, foolish.

[3] When it is granted to behold the interiors and exteriors of thought and affection of those who are in heavenly love, their interiors appear like light, and some like a flamy light, while their exteriors appear in various beautiful colours like rainbows. But the interiors of those who are in corporeal love appear as if black, because they are closed up; and the interiors of some who were interiorly in malignant deceit appear like a dusky fire. But their exteriors appear of a dirty colour, and disagreeable to the sight. (The interiors and exteriors of the mind and "animus" are made visible in the spiritual world whenever the Lord pleases.)

[4] Those who are in corporeal love see nothing in the light of heaven; to them the light of heaven is thick darkness; but the light of hell, which is like light from burning coals, is to them as clear light. Moreover, in the light of heaven their interior sight is so darkened that they become insane; consequently, they shun that light and hide themselves in dens and caverns, more or less at a depth in accordance with the falsities with them derived from their evils. On the other hand, those who are in heavenly love, the more interiorly and deeply they come into the light of heaven, see all things more clearly and all things appear more beautiful to them, and they perceive truths more intelligently and wisely.

[5] It is impossible for those who are in corporeal love to live at all in the heat of heaven, for the heat of heaven is heavenly love; but they can live in the heat of hell, which is the love of raging against others who do not favour them. The delights of that love are contempt of others, enmity, hatred and revenge; and when they are in these delights they are in their life, and have no idea what it is to do good to others from good itself and for the sake of good itself, knowing only what it is to do good from evil and for the sake of evil.

[6] Those who are in corporeal love are unable to breathe in heaven. When any evil spirit is brought into heaven he draws his breath like one struggling in combat; while those who are in heavenly love have a freer respiration and a fuller life the more interiorly they are in heaven. From these things it can be confirmed that heaven with man is heavenly and spiritual love, because on that love all things of heaven are inscribed; also that corporeal love and worldly love apart from heavenly and spiritual love, are hell with man, because on such loves all things of hell are inscribed. From these things it is clear that he whose love is heavenly and spiritual comes into heaven, and he whose love is corporeal and worldly apart from heavenly and spiritual love comes into hell.

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