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:

493. Our first state after death is like our state in this world, since we are then similarly involved in outward concerns. We have similar faces, voices, and character; we lead similar moral and civil lives. This is why it still seems to us as though we were in this world unless we notice things that are out of the ordinary and remember that angels told us we were spirits when we were awakened (450). So the one life carries on into the other, and death is only a passage.

229. FROM THE WORK ON HEAVEN AND HELL.

It is unnecessary here to adduce anything from the Arcana Coelestia, since the things concerning the resurrection and the life of man after death have been fully treated in the work on Heaven and Hell, where they may be seen under the following articles:

I. Every Man is a Spirit as to His Interiors (n. 432-444).

II. Of Man's Resuscitation from the Dead, and His Entrance into Eternal Life (n. 445-452).

III. After Death Man is in a Perfect Human Form (n. 453-460).

IV. After Death Man has every Sense, and all the Memory, Thought, and Affection, which He had in the World; and that He Leaves Nothing but His Terrestrial Body (n. 461-469).

V. Man after Death is Such as his Life had Been in the World (n. 470-484).

VI. The Delights of Everyone's Life are Turned into Corresponding Things (n. 485-490).

VII. Of Man's First State after Death (n. 491-498).

VIII. Of Man's Second State after Death (n. 499-511).

IX. Of Man's Third State after Death, which is a State of Instruction for Those that Come into Heaven (n. 512-520).

X. That Heaven and Hell are from the Human Race (311-317).

Concerning the Last Judgment, spoken of above at n. 226, see the work on The Last Judgment, and Babylon Destroyed, from the beginning to the end; where it is shown that the Last Judgment will not be attended with the destruction of the world.