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

Notes de bas de page:

214. Desire, thought, and act occur on a sequence of similar levels, since every desire has to do with love, every thought with wisdom, and every act with service. Charity, faith, and good works occur on the same sequence of levels, since charity is a matter of desire, faith of thought, and good works of act. Volition, discernment, and practice occur on the same sequence of levels as well, since volition is a matter of love and therefore of desire, discernment of wisdom and therefore of faith, and practice of service and therefore of deeds. Just as all the elements of wisdom and love dwell within service, all the elements of thought and desire dwell within act, and all the elements of faith and charity dwell within deeds, and so on. This means all the elements that are of the same kind, that are harmonious.

188. I do not know whether anything has been well known heretofore regarding discrete degrees or degrees of height, or only regarding continuous degrees or degrees of breadth. And yet nothing of any cause in its true nature can be learned without a concept of both kinds of degrees. Therefore we mean to deal with them throughout this part of the work. For the purpose of this volume is to uncover causes and from their standpoint view effects, and thus dispel the darkness which envelops the person of the church in regard to God, to the Lord, and to those Divine matters in general which are called spiritual.

I can report the following, that angels sorrow on account of the darkness in this world. They say that scarcely anywhere do they see light; that people seize on fallacious appearances and defend them, and in so doing multiply falsities, one after another; and that in order to support these, they employ reasonings based on false assumptions and falsified truths to find arguments which, owing to the darkness they are in in regard to causes and their ignorance in regard to truths, can never be dispelled.

Especially do angels lament over people's arguments in support of faith separated from charity and of justification by it, including as well their ideas of God, their ideas of angels and spirits, and their ignorance of what love and wisdom are.