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:

29. No one can deny that in God we find love and wisdom together in their very essence. He loves us all out of the love that is within him, and he guides us all out of the wisdom that is within him.

Further, if you look at the created universe with an eye to its design, it is so full of wisdom from love that you might say everything taken all together is wisdom itself. There are things without measure in such a pattern, both sequential and simultaneous, that taken all together they constitute a single entity. This is the only reason they can be held together and sustained forever.

123. Since the Lord appears in heaven like a Sun by reason of the Divine love which is in Him and from Him, so all in the heavens turn constantly towards Him, those in the celestial kingdom to Him as a Sun, those in the spiritual kingdom to Him as a Moon. But those in hell turn towards the dense blackness and darkness which are in the opposite direction, that is, they turn backwards, away from the Lord, the reason being that all in the hells are in the love of self and of the world, thus opposed to the Lord. Those who turn to the dense darkness, that is, in the place where this world's sun is, are in the hells behind, and are called genii; while those who turn to the darkness, that is, in the place of the moon, are in hells in front and are called spirits. This is why those in the hells are said to be in darkness, and those in the heavens in light. "Darkness" signifies falsity from evil, and "light", truth from good. They turn in that way because all in the other life look towards the things that rule in their interiors, thus to their loves, and it is the interiors that make the face of an angel or spirit. In the spiritual world, also, there are no fixed quarters, as in the natural world, but it is the face that determines them. Man also, in respect of his spirit, turns in the same way as a spirit does, backwards from the Lord, if he is in the love of self and of the world, and towards the Lord if he is in love to Him and the neighbour. But man does not know this, because he is in the natural world where the quarters are fixed according to the rising and setting of the sun. But, as this cannot be easily comprehended by man, it will be elucidated in subsequent sections which will treat of Quarters, Space, and Time in Heaven.