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

V:

333. The premise is that for our salvation, divine providence begins at our birth and continues to the end of our life. To understand this, we need to realize that the Lord knows the kind of person we are and the kind of person we want to be and therefore the kind of person we will be. Further, he cannot deprive us of the freedom of our volition if we are to be human and therefore immortal, as amply explained above; so he foresees what our state will be after death and provides for it from our birth all the way to the end of our life. He does this for evil people by both allowing and constantly leading them away from their evils, and for good people by constantly leading them to what is good. So divine providence is constantly at work for our salvation; but it cannot save more of us than want to be saved. We want to be saved if we believe in God and are led by him, and we do not want to be saved if we do not believe in God and we lead ourselves. In the latter case, we are not thinking about eternal life or salvation, while in the former case we are. The Lord sees all this and still leads us, doing so under the laws of his divine providence, laws he cannot violate because that would be to violate his divine love and his divine wisdom, and therefore himself.

[2] Since he foresees everyone's state after death and foresees our place as well--in hell for people who do not want to be saved and in heaven for people who do--it follows that, as just stated, he provides places for the evil by permitting and leading them away and for the good by leading them to their places. It follows also that if this were not being done constantly for everyone from birth to the end of life, neither heaven nor hell would endure. Without this foresight and providence, that is, there would be neither a heaven nor a hell, only confusion. (See 202-203 above on the fact that we are all provided with places by the Lord in his foresight.)

[3] To illustrate this by a comparison, if an archer or musketeer were to aim at a target and a straight line a mile long were drawn behind the target, then if the aim were off just a hair, at the end of that mile the arrow or ball would have strayed far from the line behind the target. That is what it would be like if the Lord did not have his eye on eternity at every moment, every least moment, in his foresight and provision for everyone's place after death. The Lord does this, though, because to him the whole future is present, and to him everything present is eternal.

On the fact that divine providence focuses on what is infinite and eternal in everything it does, see above, 46-69, 214 and following.

8990. 'And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl' means a representative sign of obedience. This is clear from the meaning of 'ear' as obedience, dealt with in 2542, 3869, 4551, 4652-4660; and from the meaning of 'piercing it with an awl' - that is to say, onto the door or onto the doorpost - as affixing, or at this point pledging forever, since it refers to obedience; and this is why the words follow, 'he shall serve him forever', that is, be obedient to him forever. From this it is evident that his master's piercing his ear with an awl, fixing it to the door or to the doorpost, is representative of obedience.

[2] The implications of all this may become clear from matters stated previously, where it has been shown that those imbued solely with truths and not with complementary good, that is, with faith and not with charity, are not free but slaves. Those whose actions spring from good or charity are free. They act from themselves; for actions that spring from good or charity spring from the heart, that is, from the will, and so from what is a person's own, since what exists in a person's will is his own and a deed springing from the will is said to go out of the heart. But those who are imbued solely with the truths of faith and not with the good of charity are slaves in comparison. They do not act from themselves since they have no good within themselves for actions to spring from; instead good is outside them, and they base their actions on it as often as they call it to mind. Those who stay like this through to the end of their lives remain permanently in this state after death. They cannot be brought to a state in which their actions spring from charitable affection, that is, from good; they can act only in obedience. In the Grand Man, which is heaven, they constitute those parts that serve more internal ones, like membranes and skins, 8977, 8980.

[3] All this shows what the situation is with faith alone, that is, with those who doctrinally place faith first and the good of charity second, indeed last. Those who place them in this order in the actual lives they lead are 'Hebrew slaves' in the representative sense; but those who place charity first, in the actual lives they lead, are free or 'the children of Israel' in the representative sense. From all this one may also conclude what the situation is with those who make salvation rest entirely on the truths of faith and not at all on the good of charity, that is to say, not at all on the actual life they lead. One may conclude that they cannot enter heaven; for good reigns in heaven, not truth without good, and truth is not truth, nor is faith faith, except with those imbued with good

[4] That his master's piercing his ear with an awl, fixing it to the door, is representative of obedience is also evident from the consideration that fixing his ear to the door means causing him to attend to the things commanded by his master who is in the room, that is, to hear him at all times and obey his instructions. At this point the things which good wills and commands are meant in the spiritual sense, for spiritual good is represented by the slave's master, 8981, 8986. Since 'the ear' means the hearing of obedience, there flows into human speech from an origin in the spiritual world the expression to tweak the ear, which stands for causing a person to pay attention and remember, and in like manner the expressions to hear and to hearken to someone, which stands for obeying him. For the inner meaning that very many words possess has sprung from correspondences from the spiritual world, as with expressions such as spiritual light and being enlightened by it which people use when speaking about matters of faith, and also spiritual fire and being animated by it when speaking about matters of love.

[5] The reason why piercing the ear was done with an awl was that 'an awl' has the same meaning as a pin or peg, namely affixing and joining onto, and in the spiritual sense pledging something. But an awl was a tool used by a servant, and therefore it served to represent the pledge of everlasting obedience by a slave. The meaning of 'a pin' or 'a peg' as affixing and joining onto is clear from the places where this object is mentioned, as in Isaiah 22:23; 33:20; 41:7; 54:2; Jeremiah 10:4; Exodus 27:19; 38:31; Numbers 3:37; 4:32.