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.

5365. 'And the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread' means the need of good which was felt by truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'crying out' as the expression of someone enduring pain and grief, and so of someone in need; from the meaning of 'people' as truth, dealt with in 1259, 1260, 3295, 3581; from the representation of 'Pharaoh' as the natural, dealt with in 5079, 5080, 5095, 5160; and from the meaning of 'bread' as the celestial element of love, and so good, dealt with in 276, 680, 2165, 2177, 3464, 3478, 3735, 3813, 4211, 4217, 4735, 4976. From these meanings it follows that 'the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread' means the need of good that was felt by truth in the natural. This meaning seems, it is true, to be remote from the historical sense of the letter. Nevertheless, since people acquainted with the internal sense understand 'crying out', 'the people', 'Pharaoh', and 'bread' in no other way than mentioned above, such is the meaning that emerges from those words.

[2] What is implied by the need of good which was felt by truth must be stated. Truth has a need of good, and good has a need of truth; also, when truth has a need of good, truth is joined to good, and when good has a need of truth, good is joined to truth. The reciprocal joining together of good and truth - that is to say, the joining of truth to good, and of good to truth - is the heavenly marriage. During the initial phases when a person is being regenerated truth is multiplied, but good less so. And because at these times truth has no good to which it is joined, truth is therefore drawn into and deposited within the interior parts of the natural, so that it may be called forth from there in the measure that good is increased. In this state truth stands in need of good, and in the measure that good enters the natural a joining of truth to good is effected. Even so, this joining together does not lead to any fruitfulness. But once the person has been regenerated good increases, and as it does so it stands in need of truth and also acquires truth to itself and becomes joined to it. This is a joining of good to truth, and when this takes place truth is made fruitful by good, and good by truth.

[3] This process is one about which people in the world are totally ignorant, whereas those in heaven have a very good knowledge of it. If people in the world however knew, and not only knew but also had a perception of what celestial love or love to the Lord was, and what spiritual love or charity towards the neighbour was, they would also know what good was; for all good is the object of those loves. Above all they would know that good had a desire for truth, and truth had a desire for good, and that this desire and the essential nature of it determine the extent to which the two are joined together. Such would be evident to them from the fact that whenever they are thinking about truth, good presents itself linked together with that truth; and when good is stimulated, truth presents itself linked together with that good. And whenever both present themselves together they are accompanied by affection, desire, delight. or sacred yearning, from which they would then know what the joining together was essentially like. But because no knowledge is acquired by them as a result of an inner awareness or perception of what good is, such matters do not begin to be recognized by them. For what people know nothing about is unintelligible to them even if it happens to them.

[4] Also, because people are ignorant of what spiritual good is - that it is charity towards the neighbour - controversy therefore exists in the world, especially among the learned, over what the highest good may be. Scarcely anyone says ¹ it is the feeling of delight, bliss, blessedness, and happiness which flows from mutual love that does not have any selfish or worldly end in view attached to it and which constitutes heaven itself. From this it is also evident that the world at the present day knows nothing at all about what spiritual good is. Still less does it know that good and truth form themselves into a marriage, or that heaven consists in this marriage, or that those in whom the marriage exists possess wisdom and intelligence, or that they enjoy feelings of bliss and happiness in endless, indescribable variety. The world knows nothing about even a single one of those variations; consequently it neither acknowledges nor believes that any such thing exists, when in fact it is heaven itself or heavenly joy itself, about which the Church has so much to say.

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