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:

57. This is why angels are not angels in their own right but are angels by virtue of their union with the Divine-Human One; and their union depends on their acceptance of what is divinely good and what is divinely true. What is divinely good and what is divinely true are God, and seem to emanate from him even though they are within him. Their acceptance depends on the way angels apply the laws of his design, which are divine truths, to themselves, using their freedom to think and intend according to their reason, a freedom given them by God as their own possession. This is what enables them to accept what is divinely good and divinely true in apparent autonomy; and this in turn is what makes possible the mutual element in their love, for as already noted [48], love is not real unless it is mutual. It is the same with us here on earth.

All this enables us finally to see that everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One.

4274. 'And a man wrestled with him' means temptation that concerns truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'wrestling' as temptation. Temptation itself is nothing other than a wrestling or conflict, for truth is attacked by the evil spirits and defended by the angels who are present with a person. And his awareness of that conflict taking place within himself is temptation, 741, 757, 761, 1661, 3927, 4249, 4256. But no temptation can arise unless the good of truth, that is, the love or affection for truth, exists in him. For anyone who does not love the truth he knows, or is not affected by it, does not trouble about it at all, whereas anyone who does love it is worried lest it should suffer harm. Nothing else constitutes the life in a person's understanding than that which he believes to be the truth, and nothing else the life of his will than that which, he has become convinced, is good. This being so, when that which he believes to be the truth is attacked the life of his understanding is attacked; and when that which, he has become convinced, is good is attacked the life of his will is attacked. And therefore when a person is being tempted his life is under attack.

[2] The reason why the conflict at first concerns truth or is about truth is that truth is what a person loves first. That which anyone loves is the object of evil spirits' attack, but once he starts to love good more than truth, which takes place when order is being turned around, the temptation of him concerns good. But few know what temptation is, because few at the present day undergo any temptation; for none are able to be tempted except those who are governed by the good of faith, that is, by charity towards the neighbour. If those who are not governed by such charity experienced temptation they would instantly give way; and in those who give way evil becomes more firmly established and falsity more firmly believed, because in their case the evil spirits with whom they are thereby associated are victorious. This is the reason why at the present day few are allowed to enter into any spiritual temptation, but only into some natural forms of distress in order that they may be held back by means of them from self-love and love of the world into which they would otherwise plunge without any restraint.