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:

Providence is the way in which the Lord constantly governs everything. It is there in every moment of life and in every circumstance. We cannot put ourselves outside divine providence, which seeks in countless unknown ways to bring us into heaven, while always leaving us in freedom to reject its guidance if we so choose.

We are unaware of the activity of providence. If we were aware, we would try to avoid it or bend it, thinking that we know better.

For those who wish to live rightly and try to do so, providence is like an unseen and unfelt current that bears them along toward heaven like a ship on an ocean current. For those who wish to live in their selfish loves, providence keeps them in an equilibrium between good and evil influences so that they can, if they wish, change their ways.

Providence is the Lord’s, and He is infinite love and infinite wisdom, which we need to keep in mind if we find ourselves wondering if we could do better at running things.

Swedenborg published a 300 page book about the Divine Providence. The first chapter heading is definitive; "The Divine Providence is the Government of the Lord’s Divine Love and Wisdom." Everyone is under that government. We are free to accept the direction of the Lord’s leading or not; our freedom is paramount. The Lord will always knock, but we must open the door to Him.

There are five laws of divine providence:

1. A person should act from freedom according to reason.

2. A person should, as-from-self, remove evils as sins from his/her externals. In that way, and in no other way, the Lord can remove evils in the internal person, and then at the same time in the external.

3. People should not be compelled by external means to think and will, and thus to believe and love, the things of religion. Rather, they should persuade and at times compel themselves to do so.

4. People should be taught and led by the Lord from heaven by means of the Word, and doctrine and preaching from the Word, and this should happen, to all appearances, as if they are acting indendently.

5. People should not perceive and feel anything of the operation of the divine providence, but still we should know about it and acknowledge it.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 609, 1755, 3854, 3951, 5155; Divine Providence 21, 22, 23, 27, 55-60, 232, 234, 278 [1-3], 322)

3016. 'Abraham, being old, was advanced in years' means when the state was reached in which the Lord's Human could become Divine. This is clear from the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord, dealt with in 1893, 1965, 1989, 2011, 2172, 2198, 2501, 2833, 2836, and many times elsewhere; from the meaning of 'old' or old age as casting off what is human and putting on what is heavenly, dealt with in 1854, 2198, and when it has reference to the Lord, putting on what is Divine; and from the meaning of 'day' as state, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, and therefore from the meaning of 'advanced in years' as the point when a state has been reached. The reason why 'old' and 'advanced in years' mean these things is that with angels the notion of old age does not exist, nor that of getting older, meant by 'advanced in years', only the notion of state as regards the life that is theirs. Consequently when getting older or old age is mentioned in the Word the angels present with man can have no other idea than that of the state of life that is theirs or that is men's as they pass through the different stages of life until they reach the last, that is to say, as they accordingly cast off what is human and put on what is heavenly. For man's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death and the actual transition from one life to the next. Burial therefore is also resurrection since the casting-off process is completed then, 2916, 2917. Such being the idea that angels have, nothing else can be meant by 'advanced in years' and by 'old age' in the internal sense - the sense which exists primarily for angels and for men who have minds like those of angels.