Commentary

 

The Big Ideas

By New Christian Bible Study Staff

A girl gazes into a lighted globe, showing the solar system.

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:

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #213

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213. As for love and wisdom, love is the purpose, wisdom the means, and service the result. Further, service is the composite, vessel, and foundation of wisdom and love, such a composite and such a vessel that every bit of love and every bit of wisdom is actively present in it. It is their total presence. We need to be absolutely clear, though, that in keeping with what was presented in 189-194 above, what are present in service are all the elements of love and wisdom that are of the same kind, harmonious.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #277

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277. Everything in the three levels of the earthly mind is enclosed in the works that are done by our physical actions. The information about levels conveyed in this part may serve to disclose this hidden principle, namely that everything proper to our minds, to our volition and discernment, is enclosed in our actions or deeds, much like the things we can and cannot see in a seed, a piece of fruit, or an egg. The actions or deeds themselves may seem to be nothing but what shows on the surface, but there are countless elements within them. There are the energies of the motor fibers of the whole body that are cooperating; and there are all those actions of the mind that are rousing and directing those energies, actions on three levels, as already explained [200-201]. Further, since all the actions of the mind are involved, so are all the actions of volition, all the desires of our love, that make up the first level. So are all the actions of our discernment, all the thoughts that shape our perception, which make up the second level. All the contents of our memory, all the images of our thinking that are closest to our speech, are also drawn from this source; they constitute the third level. It is from these, focused into actions, that our deeds arise, deeds in whose outward form the antecedents that actually dwell within are not visible.

On the final level as the composite, vessel, and foundation of the prior ones, see 209-216 above, and on the vertical levels finding their full realization in their final form, see 217-221.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.