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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455. What evil people are like in their inner self and what good people are like in theirs can be seen from the following brief description of hell and heaven: Evil people's inner selves are connected with devils in hell. Good people's inner selves are connected with angels in heaven.

Because of the loves it has, hell enjoys the pleasures of all kinds of evil; that is, the pleasure in hatred, in revenge, in killing; the pleasure in looting and stealing; the pleasure in verbal abuse and blasphemy; the pleasure in denying God and desecrating the Word. These pleasures lie hidden in cravings on which we do not reflect. Evil people burn with these pleasures like torches on fire. The pleasures just listed are what the Word means by hellfire.

The pleasures in heaven, on the other hand, are the pleasure in loving our neighbor and the pleasure in loving God.

[2] Since hell's pleasures are opposite to heavens, there is a huge gap between them. The pleasures of heaven flow down into this gap from above and the pleasures of hell flow up into it from below. While we are alive in the world we are in the middle of this gap so that we can stay in balance and in a state of freedom to turn ourselves toward heaven or toward hell. This gap is what is meant by the great gulf fixed between the people in heaven and those in hell (Luke 16:26).

[3] These points show us the nature of the bond of love between evil people. In their outer selves, evil people simulate morality in order to expand their social network and explore where a potential exists for enjoying the pleasures that they love and that set their inner selves on fire. The only thing holding them back and limiting their actions is fear of the law and fear for their reputation and their life. Their friendship then is like a spider in a sugar bowl, a viper in a loaf of bread, a baby crocodile in a honey-cake, or a worm in spices.

[4] This is the nature of the friendship that evil people extend to anyone. The friendship between blatantly evil people, such as thieves, robbers, and pirates, is like family, as long as their minds have come together to target something to steal. During that time they kiss each other like kin and enjoy each others company with dining, singing, dancing, and plotting someone else's ruin.

But in fact, deep inside themselves they all regard their companions as their enemies. Clever thieves see this enmity in their companions and are afraid of it. Clearly, then, there is no friendship between them; there is instead a deep hatred.

455b. There are people who have not openly associated with evildoers or practiced a life of thievery, and who have instead lived a moral and civic life to gain various benefits; yet they have not bridled the cravings that dwell in their inner self. Such people are capable of believing that their own friendships are not like those I have been describing.

Nevertheless, I know for a certainty that evil people have this type of friendship, because of the many examples I have observed in the spiritual world. It can be found to one degree or another in all people who reject faith and who scorn the church's holy practices as having no value for themselves, however much value they believe those practices may have for the general public. In some of these cases the enjoyment of hellish love lay hidden like fire smoldering in a dry log still covered by bark. In some cases it lay hidden like coals burning under the ashes. In some cases it lay hidden like wax torches that would readily burst into flame in the presence of fire. In other cases it was hidden in other ways.

This is the nature of all people who have rejected matters of religion from their heart. Their inner selves are in hell. As long as they are still alive in this world - unaware of their situation because of the morality they imitate on the outside - they do not recognize as their neighbor anyone but themselves and their own children. They look on others with either contempt (in which case they are like cats ready to ambush birds on the nest) or hatred (in which case they are like wolves who see dogs and devour them).

The point of including this was to make it possible to recognize the nature of goodwill through its opposite.

545. THE LORD CASTS NO ONE INTO HELL; BUT THIS IS DONE BY THE SPIRIT HIMSELF

An opinion has prevailed with some that God turns away His face from man, rejects man from Himself, and casts him into hell, and is angry with him on account of his evil; and with some the opinion goes further, that God punishes man and does evil to him. They confirm themselves in this opinion from the sense of the letter of the Word, where similar things are said, not knowing that the spiritual sense of the Word, which explains the sense of the letter, is wholly different; and consequently that the genuine doctrine of the Church, which is from the spiritual sense of the Word, teaches otherwise, namely, that God never turns away His face from man, and never rejects man from Himself; that He casts no one into hell and is angry with no one. ¹ Everyone, moreover, whose mind is enlightened, perceives this to be true when he reads the Word, from a perception solely from it, because God is Good Itself, Love Itself, and Mercy Itself; and he has a perception that Good Itself cannot do evil to anyone, and Love Itself and Mercy Itself cannot reject man from itself; because this is contrary to the very essence of mercy and love, thus contrary to the Divine Itself. Therefore those who think from an enlightened mind clearly perceive, when they read the Word, that God never turns Himself away from man; and as He never turns Himself away from him He deals with him from goodness, love, and mercy, that is, wills good to him, loves him, and is merciful to him. And from this they see that the sense of the letter of the Word, in which such things are said, has stored up within itself a spiritual sense, and that these expressions, that are used in the sense of the letter in accommodation to man's apprehension and according to his first and general ideas, are to be explained in accordance with the spiritual sense.

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