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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27. The Lord's Divine Providence Has as Its Goal a Heaven from the Human Race

I have explained elsewhere that heaven did not originate in angels who were created angels at the beginning, and that hell did not originate in a devil who was created an angel of light and was cast down from heaven. Rather, both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven is made up of people who are involved in a love for what is good and a consequent discernment of what is true, and hell of people who are involved in a love for what is evil and a discernment of what is false. I have been given convincing evidence of this through long-term association with angels and spirits, and would refer you to Heaven and Hell 311-316, the booklet The Last Judgment 14-27, and the whole of Supplements on the Last Judgment and the Spiritual World.

[2] Since heaven comes from the human race, then, and since heaven is living with the Lord forever, it follows that this was the Lord's goal for creation. Further, since this was the goal of creation, it is the goal of the Lord's divine providence.

The Lord did not create the universe for his own sake but for the sake of people he would be with in heaven. By its very nature, spiritual love wants to share what it has with others, and to the extent that it can do so, it is totally present, experiencing its peace and bliss. Spiritual love gets this quality from the Lord's divine love, which is like this in infinite measure.

It then follows that divine love (and therefore divine providence) has the goal of a heaven made up of people who have become angels and are becoming angels, people with whom it can share all the bliss and joy of love and wisdom, giving them these blessings from the Lord's own presence within them. He cannot help doing this, because his image and likeness is in us from creation. His image in us is wisdom and his likeness in us is love; and the Lord within us is love united to wisdom and wisdom united to love, or goodness united to truth and truth united to goodness, which is the same thing. (See the preceding section for a description of this union.)

[3] However, people do not know what heaven is in general or in groups of people and what heaven is in particular or in an individual. They do not know what heaven is in the spiritual world and what it is in the physical world, either; and yet it is important to know about these matters. Consequently, I want to shed some light on this, in the following sequence.

1. Heaven is union with the Lord.

2. Our nature from creation enables us to be more and more closely united to the Lord.

3. The more closely we are united to the Lord, the wiser we become.

4. The more closely we are united to the Lord, the happier we become.

5. The more closely we are united to the Lord, the more clearly we seem to have our own identity, and yet the more obvious it is to us that we belong to the Lord.

10400. 'For this Moses, that man who caused us to come up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him' means a total unawareness of what other Divine Truth exists in the Word that raises a person from an external to an internal level and makes him an embodiment of the Church. This is clear from the representation of 'Moses' as the Word, thus Divine Truth, dealt with in the places referred to in 9372, so that an attitude of mind that doubts and denies the existence of any Divine Truth other than that which presents itself in the sense of the letter is meant by 'this Moses, that man, we do not know what has become of him' (the word 'man' is used here because in the Word 'man' means truth, see 3134, 3309, 3459, 7716, 9007); and from the meaning of 'causing the children of Israel to go up out of the land of Egypt' as a raising from the natural or external man to the internal or spiritual man, so that the person may be made an embodiment of the Church. For 'the land of Egypt' means the natural or external level of the Church, 'causing to come up' raising, and 'the children of Israel' the Church.

'The land of Egypt' means the natural or external level of the Church, see in the places referred to in 9391.

'Causing to come up' means raising from an external to an internal level, 3084, 4539, 4969, 5406, 5817, 6007, and so from the natural man to the spiritual man.

'The children of Israel' means the Church, see in the places referred to in 9340.

[2] From all this it is evident that 'this Moses, that man who caused us to come up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him' means a total unawareness of what Divine Truth exists in the Word to raise a person from an external to an internal level and to make him an embodiment of the Church other than that which presents itself in the sense of the letter. This also is what all who are restricted to external things devoid of anything internal think and say; and all are restricted to external things devoid of anything internal who are ruled by self-love and love of the world. With these people the internal man is closed and only the external man lies open; and what is seen by the external man without the internal when they read the Word is seen in thick darkness. This is so because in spiritual things natural illumination without light from heaven is complete darkness; and the light from heaven enters and illuminates the external man by way of the internal. This explains why so many heresies have arisen, why some call the Word a book of heresies, why people do not know at all that something internal is present within the Word, and why those who think that something is present there do not know exactly where. Such people are meant in Revelation 12 by the dragon which used its tail to draw from heaven a third part of the stars and cast them down to the earth, as will in the Lord's Divine mercy be shown elsewhere ¹ .

[3] Let those who wish contemplate whether anyone at the present day has any other idea than that the actual Divine Truth of the Word resides in its literal sense. But let them also consider whether anyone can know the Divine Truths of the Word contained in that sense except with the aid of teachings drawn from that sense, and that if a person does not possess such teachings to serve as a lamp he is carried off into errors, in whatever direction the obscurity of his understanding and the delight of his will lead and take him. The teachings that must serve as a lamp are those that the internal sense provides, so that they constitute the actual internal sense. This sense is to some extent open to every person who, though he may not know what the internal sense is, has his external subject to his internal, that is, has his internal man lying open. For heaven, which is in possession of the internal sense of the Word, flows into that person when he reads the Word, brings him light, gives him discernment, and in this way teaches him. Indeed, if you are willing to believe it, a person's internal man is of itself in possession of the internal sense of the Word since the internal man constitutes heaven in the smallest form it takes, and when that internal man lies open the person is consequently present with angels in heaven, and therefore also possesses discernment similar to theirs. This becomes additionally clear from the consideration that the interior concepts within a person's understanding are not like his natural ones, though they are in agreement with these. What they are like however a person does not know as long as he lives in the body; but when he enters the next life he knows them automatically because they have been implanted within him, and by means of them he lives instantly in company with angels. From this it is evident that the person in whom the internal level lies open is in possession of the internal sense of the Word, though he does not know he is, and as a consequence has enlightenment when he reads the Word. But this depends on how much light he can receive by means of the cognitions or knowledge residing with him. Who exactly those people are however, see 9025, 9382, 9409, 9410, 9424, 9430, 10105, 10324.

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