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:

180. It is even clearer that there are levels of love and wisdom if we compare angels' love and wisdom with our love and wisdom. It is generally acknowledged that the wisdom of angels is unutterable, relatively speaking. You will see later [267, 416] that it is also incomprehensible to us when we are wrapped up in our earthly love. The reason it seems unutterable and incomprehensible is that it is on a higher level.

14. Being and expression in the human God are, in a distinct combination, one. Wherever there is being, there is also expression. One is not possible without the other. For being exists through expression, and not apart from it.

This concept reason comprehends when it considers whether there can be any being that does not have expression, or any expression that is not one of being. And because one exists together with the other and not apart from the other, it follows that they are one, but one in a distinct combination.

They are one in a distinct combination like love and wisdom. Love, too, is being, and wisdom its expression, for love does not exist except in a state of wisdom, and wisdom does not exist except as a result of love. Consequently, when love is in a state of wisdom, then it has expression. These two are one in a relationship so formed that they can indeed be distinguished in thought, but not in fact. And because they can be distinguished in thought and not in fact, therefore we say that they are in a distinct combination one.

Being and expression in the human God are also in a distinct combination one like soul and body. A soul does not exist apart from its body, nor a body apart from its soul. The Divine soul of the human God is what we mean by the Divine being, and His Divine body is what we mean by its Divine expression.

To believe that a soul can exist and can think and be wise apart from a body is an error arising from misconceptions; for every person's soul exists in a spiritual body after it has cast off the material integuments which enveloped it in the world.