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

სქოლიოები:

481. We come into heaven if our love is heavenly and spiritual and into hell if our love is carnal and worldly without any heavenly and spiritual dimension. My evidence for this conclusion is all the people I have seen raised into heaven and cast into hell. The ones who were raised into heaven had lives of heavenly and spiritual love, while the ones who were cast into hell had lives of carnal and worldly love. Heavenly love is loving what is good, honest, and fair because it is good, honest, and fair, and doing it because of that love. This is why they have a life of goodness, honesty, and fairness, which is a heavenly life. If we love these things for their own sakes and do or live them, we are also loving the Lord above all because they come from him. We are also loving our neighbor, because these things are our neighbor who is to be loved. ¹ Carnal love, though, is loving what is good and honest and fair not for their own sakes but for our own sake, because we can use them to gain prestige, position, and profit. In this case we are not focusing on the Lord and our neighbor within what is good and honest and fair but on ourselves and the world, and we enjoy deceit. When the motive is deceit, then whatever is good and honest and fair is actually evil and dishonest and unfair. This is what we love within [the outward appearance].

[2] Since these loves define our lives, we are all examined as to our quality immediately after death, when we arrive in the world of spirits, and we are put in touch with people of like love. If we are focused on heavenly love, we are put in touch with people in heaven; and if we are focused on carnal love, we are put in touch with people in hell. Further, once the first and second states have been completed the two kinds of people are separated so that they no longer see or recognize each other. We actually become our own love not only as to the deeper levels of our minds but outwardly as well, in face, body, and speech, since we become images of our love even in outward things. People who are carnal loves look coarse, dim, dark, and misshapen; while people who are heavenly loves look lively, clear, bright, and lovely. They are completely different in spirit and in thought as well. People who are heavenly loves are intelligent and wise, while people who are carnal loves are dense and rather silly.

[3] When leave is given to examine the inner and outer aspects of the thoughts and affections of people engaged in heavenly love, the inner reaches look as though they were made of light, in some cases like the light of a flame; and their outer manifestations are of various lovely colors, like a rainbow. In contrast, the inner reaches of people who are engaged in carnal love look gloomy because they are closed in, in some cases like a smoky fire for people who were inwardly maliciously deceptive. Their outer manifestations have an ugly color, depressing to look at (both the inner and outer aspects of the mind and spirit are presented visually in the spiritual world whenever it so pleases the Lord).

[4] People who are engaged in carnal love do not see anything in heaven's light. Heaven's light is darkness to them, while hell's light, which is like the light of glowing embers, is like daylight to them. In fact, in heaven's light their inner sight is deprived of light to the point that they become insane. As a result, they run away from it and hide in caves and caverns of a depth that corresponds to the false convictions that stem from their evil intentions. Exactly the reverse is true for people who are engaged in heavenly love, though. The deeper or higher they enter into heavenly light, the more clearly they see everything and the lovelier it all looks, and the more intelligently and wisely they grasp what is true.

[5] There is no way that people who are engaged in carnal love can live in heaven's warmth, because heaven's warmth is heavenly love. They can live in hell's warmth, though, which is a love of cruelty toward people who do not support them. The pleasures of this love are contempt for others, hostility, hatred, and vengefulness. When they are absorbed in these they are in their very life, with no knowledge whatever of what it means to do good for others out of sheer goodness and for the sake of the good itself. All they know is how to do good out of malice and for the sake of malice.

[6] People who are engaged in carnal love cannot breathe in heaven either. When evil spirits are taken there, they draw breath like someone who is struggling painfully. On the other hand, people who are engaged in heavenly love breathe more freely and feel more alive the deeper into heaven they come.

We may gather from this that a heavenly and spiritual love is heaven for us because everything heavenly is written on that love; and that carnal and worldly love apart from heavenly and spiritual love is hell for us because everything hellish is written on that love.

We can see, then, that people come into heaven who have a heavenly and spiritual love, and people come into hell who have a carnal and worldly love without a heavenly and spiritual one.

სქოლიოები:

10578. 'And He said, You cannot see My face' means that things which are interior and Divine in the Church, worship, and the Word cannot be revealed to the Israelite nation. This is clear from the meaning of 'Jehovah's face' as things that are interior and Divine in the Church, worship, and the Word, dealt with above in 10567, 10568; and from the meaning of 'seeing' them as the revelation of them. The impossibility of their being revealed to the Israelite nation is clear from the consideration that Jehovah's words are addressed to Moses, and Moses here represents the head of the Israelite nation, 10556. The meaning of 'Jehovah's face' as things that are interior and Divine in the Word, the Church, and worship is also evident from the consideration that 'Jehovah's face' has a similar meaning to 'Jehovah's glory', since Moses said, 'Cause me, I beg You, to see Your glory', and Jehovah replied, 'You cannot see My face'; and 'Jehovah's glory' means things that are interior and Divine in the Word, the Church, and worship, see above in 10574.

[2] The situation with all this may be recognized from what has often been stated before, to the effect that the Israelite nation was not at all able to see the interior things of worship, the Church, and the Word because their interest lay in external things separated from what was internal, and so they were incapable of seeing Jehovah's face, either. But all those whose interest in external things does not exclude what is internal see the interior things of the Word, the Church, and worship, and so see Jehovah's face. From this it follows that those governed by love to the Lord and also those governed by charity towards the neighbour see them; for love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour open the internal man, and when this has been opened a person is, on the level of his interiors, in heaven among angels where the Lord is.

[3] But a brief statement of what love to the Lord or loving the Lord is must be made here. Anyone who supposes that he can love the Lord without leading a life in keeping with His commandments is very much mistaken; for leading a life in keeping with them is what constitutes loving the Lord. Those commandments are truths received from the Lord, and so are such as have the Lord within them. To the extent therefore that those commandments are loved, that is, to the extent that a person is inspired by love to lead a life in keeping with them, the Lord is loved. The reason why this should be so is that the Lord loves the person and in His love desires him to be eternally blessed; and no one can become blessed except through a life led in keeping with His commandments. For by means of these the person is being regenerated and made spiritual, and can then be raised to heaven. But loving the Lord without leading a life in keeping with His commandments does not constitute loving Him, for then the person has nothing within him into which the Lord can flow and raise him to Himself. He is like an empty vessel, in that there is no life at all in his faith, nor any life at all in his love. The life of heaven, called eternal life, is not poured into anyone directly but through some agency. From all this it may be recognized what loving the Lord is, and also what seeing the Lord or His face is, namely seeing Him with that kind of faith and love.

[4] Leading a life in keeping with the Lord's commandments consists in leading a life in keeping with the teachings about charity and faith, which you can see in the preliminary sections to each of the chapters of the Book of Exodus. The Lord Himself also teaches in John that this is what it consists in,

He who has My commandments and does them, he it is who loves Me. But he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. If anyone loves Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words. John 14:21, 23-24.

What more is meant by 'Jehovah's face' will be stated in the paragraph immediately below.