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:

41. Because this assertion is contrary to the appearance, however, it may seem not to merit credence unless it is demonstrated, and since it cannot be demonstrated except by illustrations that a person can perceive with his physical power of sensation, therefore we will demonstrate it by recourse to such.

A person has five outward senses, which we call touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.

The subject of which the sense of touch is predicated is the skin that envelops a person. The very substance and form of the skin cause it to feel whatever is brought into contact with it. The sensation of touch does not exist in those things which are brought into contact with it, but it exists in the substance and form of the skin, which are the subject of which it is predicated. The sensation is simply the affecting of it by the things brought into contact with it.

The case is the same with taste. This sensation is simply the affecting of the substance and form which constitute the tongue. The tongue is the subject of which it is predicated.

It is the same with the sense of smell. People know that an odor affects the nostrils and is sensed in the nostrils, and that it is an affecting of them by odorous emanations coming into contact with them.

So, too, with hearing. It seems as though the hearing of a thing exists in the place where the sound originates; but the hearing is in the ear, and is an affecting of its substance and form. The hearing of things at a distance by the ear is only an appearance.

[2] It is the same with sight. When a person sees objects at a distance, it seems as though the sight exists there, but in fact it is in the eye, which is the subject of which it is predicated, and the sight is similarly the affecting of it. Distance is only a conclusion of the judgment regarding the intervening space based on the objects that lie in between, or on the dwindling and consequent fading of the object seen, the image of which is produced within the eye in accordance with its angle of incidence.

It is apparent from this that sight does not go out from the eye to the object, but that an image of the object enters the eye and affects its substance and form. For the case is the same with sight as it is with hearing. Hearing does not go out from the ear to capture sound, but sound enters the ear and affects it.

[3] From these illustrations it can be seen that the affecting of the substance and form which produces a sensation is not something separate from the subject of which it is predicated, but simply causes a change of state in it, the subject remaining still the subject it was before and that it continues to be thereafter. It follows as a consequence that sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are not some aerial emanation flowing out from their organs, but that they are the organs regarded in terms of their substance and form, the affecting of which produces sensation.

52. Everything in the universe has been created by the Divine love and wisdom of the human God. The universe in its greatest and least elements and in its first and last elements is so full of Divine love and wisdom that it can be said to be Divine love and wisdom in an image. The reality of this clearly appears from the correspondence that all the constituents of the universe have with all the constituents of a human being. Each and every phenomenon that occurs in the created universe has such a correspondence with each and every constituent of the human being that one may declare the human being to be also a kind of universe. His affections and resulting thoughts have a correspondence with all the constituents of the animal kingdom, his will and consequent understanding with all the constituents of the plant kingdom, and the outmost constituents of his life with all the constituents of the mineral kingdom.

[2] The existence of such a correspondence is not apparent to anyone in the natural world, but it is to everyone who takes note of it in the spiritual world. That world contains all the phenomena that occur in the three kingdoms of the natural world, and they are correspondent manifestations of the affections and thoughts of the inhabitants there - of the affections emanating from the will and of the thoughts emanating from the intellect - and of the outmost constituents of their life. Moreover, these correspondent manifestations and phenomena appear round about them in a visible form like that of the created universe, with the difference that they do so in a lesser image of it.

[3] It is clearly apparent to angels from this that the created universe is a representative image of the human God, and that it is His love and wisdom which are displayed in an image in the universe. Not that the created universe is the human God, but that it exists from Him. For nothing whatever in the created universe is substance and form in itself, or life in itself, or love and wisdom in itself, indeed neither is the human being human in himself, but all is from God, who is human in Himself, wisdom and love in itself, and form and substance in itself. Whatever exists in itself is uncreated and infinite. Whatever exists from that, however - this, because it retains nothing in it that exists in itself, is created and finite, and it reflects an image of Him from whom it exists and takes form.