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:

6008. 'And Joseph will put his hand on your eyes means that the internal celestial will impart life to it. This is clear from the representation of 'Joseph' as the internal celestial, dealt with in 5869, 5877; and from the meaning of 'putting a hand on the eyes' as imparting life. For 'putting a hand on the eyes' is used to mean that the external or bodily senses will be closed and the internal senses opened, thus that a raising up will be effected and life will thereby be imparted. A hand was placed on people's eyes when they were dying because 'death' meant an awakening into life, 3498, 3505, 4618, 4621. For when a person dies he does not really die; he merely lays aside the body that has served him for his use in the world and passes into the next life in a body which serves him for his use there.

5096. 'Who were bound in the prison house' means which were among falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'being bound in the prison-house' as being among falsities, dealt with in 4958, 5037, 5038, 5085. Those who are engrossed in falsities, more so those steeped in evils, are called 'the bound" and 'in prison', not because they are held in any physical bonds but because they are not in freedom; for people who are not in freedom are inwardly in bonds. Indeed once they subscribe to falsity they no longer have any freedom to choose or receive what is true; and those who subscribe heavily to it do not have any freedom even to see it, let alone acknowledge it and believe it, because they are quite convinced that what is false is true and what is true is false. That conviction is so powerful in them that it removes all freedom to think anything different, and is so strong that it holds their actual thought in bonds, in prison so to speak. This has been made clear to me from considerable experience among those in the next life who have become quite convinced of falsity by harbouring ideas that serve to prove to it. They are the kind of people who do not entertain any truths at all but turn or drive these away, doing so with a degree of ruthlessness which matches the intensity of their conviction. This is primarily so when such falsity is the product of evil, that is, when evil causes them to be convinced of it. These are the ones who are meant in the Lord's parable in Matthew,

Other seeds fell on the hard path, and the birds came and devoured them. Matthew 13:4.

'Seeds' means Divine truths, 'hard rock' conviction, and 'birds' false assumptions.

[2] People like these are not even aware that they are in bonds or in prison, for they are full of affection for their falsity, loving it because of the evil which produces it. This leads them to think that they are in freedom, since everything they have an affection for or love seems to make them feel free. But those who have not really subscribed to falsity, that is, who have not become convinced of it, entertain truths easily. They see them, choose them, and are full of affection for them, after which they look down on falsities so to speak, and then see how those convinced of falsity have come to be in bonds. Having such freedom they are able in their contemplation and thought to roam so to speak through the whole of heaven in search of countless truths. But nobody can have this freedom except one who is governed by good; for it is by virtue of good that he is in heaven and by virtue of good that truths are seen there.