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

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526. I have at times talked with angels about this and have said that many people in the world who have lived intent on evil and have talked with others about heaven and eternal life say only that getting into heaven is simply a matter of being let in on the basis of pure mercy. This is true especially of people who make faith the only means of salvation, since from this fundamental tenet of their religion they do not focus on life or on the deeds of love that make up one's life. As a result, they do not focus on the other means the Lord uses to instill heaven into us and render us open to heavenly joy. So since they reject all the actual means, the necessary corollary of their premise is that we enter heaven on the basis of pure mercy, believing God the Father to be moved to it through the intercession of the Son.

[2] Angels have responded that they know this kind of dogma follows necessarily from acceptance of the principle of salvation by faith alone and that this dogma is the head of the others, a head into which no light from heaven can flow, because it is not true. It is therefore the source of the ignorance the church is mired in nowadays - ignorance about the Lord, heaven, life after death, heavenly joy, the essential nature of love and thoughtfulness, and in general about what is good and its union with what is true. This results in ignorance about human life, its source, and its quality. Life is never gained by mere thought, but only by intent and consequent deeds. It is the result of thought to the extent that the thought derives from intent, so it is from faith only to the extent that faith derives from love. Angels grieve that these people do not realize that faith alone cannot exist in anyone because faith apart from its source, which is love, is only information, or for some a secondhand belief that counterfeits faith (see above, 482). This belief is not part of our life but is outside it, since it is separated from us if it is not coherent with our love.

[3] Angels have also said that people who are caught up in this kind of principle concerning the essential means of our salvation cannot help believing in straight mercy because they can tell from natural light and from visual experience that faith by itself does not constitute human life - people who are leading evil lives can think and convince themselves of the same principles. This is why they believe that evil people can be saved just like good ones, provided in the hour of their death they talk about intercession and mercy obtained by it.

The angels kept insisting that they have never yet seen people who lived an evil life accepted into heaven out of straight mercy, no matter how fervently they had spoken in the world from faith, or from the trust that is meant by faith in its primary sense.

[4] When they have asked about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, about the apostles, whether they were not accepted into heaven out of straight mercy, angels have answered that none of them was. Each one was accepted on the basis of his life in the world. They should realize where they were. No one had more prestige than anyone else. They said that the reason these individuals were mentioned in the Word with such respect was that they referred in the deeper meaning to the Lord - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the Lord in respect to his divine nature and his divine human nature, David to the Lord as to the regal divine nature, and the apostles to the Lord as to divine truths. The angels do not pay any attention to these individuals when the Word is being read by people on earth because their names do not cross over into heaven. They are conscious of the Lord instead, as just noted. So the Word that is in heaven (described above in 259) never mentions them, since that Word is the inner meaning of the Word that exists in the world. ¹

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1888. To illustrate that the sense of the letter of the Word is representative of Divine arcana and is the receptacle of, and thus the storehouse containing, celestial and spiritual things which are the Lord's, let two examples be taken, which will consequently reveal the position with all else The first example shows that David is not used to mean David but the Lord, the second that names mean nothing other than real things. Of David the following is said in Ezekiel,

My servant David will be King over them, and they will all have one Shepherd. They will dwell in the land, they, and their sons, and their sons' sons even for ever. And David my servant will be their Prince for ever. Ezekiel 37:24-25.

And in Hosea,

The children of Israel will return and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king. Hosea 3:5.

These promises were written by prophets who lived later than David, yet it is explicitly stated by them that he 'will be' their king and prince. From this it may become clear to anyone that in the internal sense David means the Lord. The same applies in all other places, including the historical descriptions, where David is referred to by name.

[2] As regards the names of kingdoms, regions, cities, and men meaning real things, this becomes quite clear in the Prophets. Take this single example in Isaiah,

Thus said the Lord, Jehovih Zebaoth, Do not be afraid - O My people, inhabitant of Zion - of Asshur; he will smite you with a rod, and he will lift up the staff over you in the way of Egypt. Jehovah Zebaoth will lift up the scourge over him, as when Midian was smitten in the rock of Horeb, and his rod will be over the sea, and he will lift it up in the way of Egypt. He will come against Aiath; he will pass over into Migron; he will command his arms towards Michmash. They will cross the Mabarah. Geba will be a lodging-place for us. Hormah ¹ will tremble. Gibeah of Saul will flee. Make a noise with your voice, O daughter of Gallim. Hearken, O Laish. Wail, O Anathoth. Madmenah will wander about. The inhabitants of Gebim will gather themselves together. This very day he is in Nob to stay. The mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem, will shake her fist. He will cut down the entangled boughs of the wood with an axe, and Lebanon will fall by a majestic one. Isaiah 10:24, 26-34.

[3] These verses include little more than mere names, which would not make any sense at all if, without exception, those names did not mean real things; and if the mind remained fixed on those names, no acknowledgement that it was the Word of the Lord would ever be made. But who is going to believe that all those names in the internal sense contain arcana of heaven? Or that through them the state of people is described who endeavour by means of reasonings based on facts to penetrate the mysteries of faith? Or that by means of each name some particular aspect of that state is described? Or that those reasonings are dispersed by the Lord by means of the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith? That 'Asshur' means reasoning, which is the subject in these verses from Isaiah, becomes quite clear from what has been shown regarding 'Asshur' in 119, 1186; and that 'Egypt' means factual knowledge, from what has been shown in 1164, 1165, 1462. See these paragraphs and consider whether or not this is true. It is the same with all other names, and with individual expressions.

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