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

Footnotes:

The leading scientific theory of creation is what’s called the “Big Bang.” It says that everything - all energy and matter in the universe, and even time and space themselves - started in one moment of unthinkable power in a point so small as to have no space at all. That power ballooned out to form time and space, and as it kept ballooning the power stretched and cooled enough to start forming patterns, which eventually got dense enough to form sub-atomic particles, which eventually clumped to form atoms, which eventually clumped to form stars, planets, air, water, simple life forms and ultimately people.

That theory has strong parallels to Swedenborg’s statements on reality. In a sense, Divine Love - the infinite love that is the essence and ultimate being of the Lord - is that infinite power that was without time or space at the moment of creation. Divine Wisdom - the “image of love,” as Swedenborg puts it - is that first ballooning to create time and space. It does not have any particular form; it can’t be identified or measured. But it exists, and its existence makes it possible for love to take form.

That sounds pretty distant from the idea of “wisdom” we all have. In everyday life, “wisdom” simply means the ability to make good, thoughtful decisions and judgments. If you dig into that idea, though, it’s not that different really. Those good, thoughtful decisons are generally not simply based in facts - they are a mix of facts and love, of facts and the desire for the best possible outcome. And when you get right down to it, true wisdom actually leads with love, with the desire for the best, most caring and most helpful outcome for all involved. The facts and ideas are really there to be organized by that desire, to give it a way to express itself. So just as in the paragraph above, wisdom is really an arena where love can take form, a medium that allows love to have an image.

Of course, such wisdom for us is sort of a mental area where we can do this kind of thinking. For the Lord this “mental area” is time and space itself, even reality itself, where love can be constantly channeled into forms that draw us toward heaven.

(References: Apocalypse Revealed 189; Arcana Coelestia 1226; Conjugial Love 130; Divine Love and Wisdom 34, 35, 39, 180, 213, 287, 358; True Christian Religion 242, 350)