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

Note a piè di pagina:

54. The divine nature is not different in one subject than it is in another. Rather, one created subject is different from another: there are no two alike, so each vessel is different. This is why the divine nature seems to differ in appearance. I will be talking later [275] about its presence in opposites.

275, 3. The three levels of an earthly mind that is a form and image of hell are the opposites of the three levels of a spiritual mind that is a form and image of heaven. I have already explained [130, 248, 270] that there are three levels of mind called earthly, spiritual, and heavenly, and that a human mind made up of these levels looks and turns toward heaven. We can therefore see that when an earthly mind is looking downward and turning toward hell, it is likewise made up of three levels, with each of its levels the opposite of a level of the mind that is a heaven.

This has been made quite clear to me by things I have seen in the spiritual world. I have seen that there are three heavens marked off by three vertical levels and three hells also marked off by three vertical levels, or levels of depth, with the hells opposite to the heavens in every detail. Further, the lowest hell is the opposite of the highest heaven, the intermediate hell the opposite of the intermediate heaven, and the highest hell the opposite of the lowest heaven. It is the same with an earthly mind that is a hell in form. Spiritual forms are in fact consistent in their largest and smallest instances.

The reason the heavens and the hells are in this kind of opposition is that their loves are opposed in this fashion. Love for the Lord and a consequent love for their neighbor constitute the inmost level in the heavens, while love for themselves and love for the world constitute the inmost level in the hells. Wisdom and intelligence from their loves constitute the intermediate level in the heavens, while stupidity and madness from their loves (which put on the appearance of wisdom and intelligence) constitute the intermediate level in the hells. It is the final effects of these two levels, though, either coming to rest in the memory as knowledge or finding definition in the body in actions, that constitute the final level in the heavens; while the realizations of the two levels that become either knowledge or actions constitute the most superficial level in the hells.

The following experience showed me how good and true elements of heaven are changed into evil and false things and therefore into their opposites in the hells. I heard that a divine truth was flowing down from heaven into hell, and heard that on the way down it was transformed step by step into something false, so that when it reached the lowest hell it had turned into its exact opposite. I could see from this that depending on their level, the hells are in opposition to the heavens as far as anything good and true is concerned, and that things become evil and false by flowing into forms that are turned backward. It is recognized, that is, that our perception and sense of anything that flows in depend on the recipient forms and their states.

I was also shown by the following experience that things are turned into their opposites. I was given a view of the hells in their position relative to the heavens, and the people there seemed to be upside down, heads below and feet above. I was told, though, that they seem to themselves to be standing upright. We might compare them to people in the southern hemisphere.

We can tell from this experiential evidence that the three levels of an earthly mind that is a form and image of hell are the opposites of the three levels of an earthly mind that is a form and image of heaven.