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

Notas de rodapé:

84. Because these two worlds are so distinct from each other, it is quite obvious that the spiritual world is under a different sun than is the physical world. There is just as much warmth and light in the spiritual world as there is in the physical world, but the warmth there is spiritual and so is the light. Spiritual warmth is the good that thoughtfulness does and spiritual light is the truth that faith perceives.

Now, since the only possible source of warmth and light is a sun, it stands to reason that there is a different sun in the spiritual world than there is in the physical world. It also stands to reason that because of the essential nature of the spiritual world's sun, spiritual warmth and light can come forth from it, while because of the essential nature of the physical world's sun, physical warmth [and light] can come forth from it. The only possible source of anything spiritual--that is, anything that has to do with what is good and true--is divine love and wisdom. Everything good is a result of love and everything true is a result of wisdom. Any wise individual can see that this is their only possible source.

11. It is generally recognized that everything in the universe involves what is good and what is true. That is, we understand "goodness" to mean that which everywhere comprehends and comprises everything that has to do with love, and we understand "truth" to mean that which everywhere comprehends and comprises everything that has to do with wisdom. It has not been generally recognized, though, that something good is nothing unless it is united to something true and that something true is nothing unless it is united to something good.

It does seem as though something good could be real apart from something true and that something true could be real apart from something good, but this is not the case. In fact, love (all of whose elements are called good) is the reality of anything, and wisdom (all of whose elements are called true) is the manifestation of that thing that follows from its reality, as I explained in Divine Love and Wisdom 14-16. Just as reality is nothing apart from manifestation, then, and manifestation is nothing apart from reality, so goodness apart from truth or truth apart from goodness is nothing. By the same token, what is something good apart from its relationship to something else? Can we really call it good? There is no effectiveness or perception involved in it.

[2] The element that has an effect when it is united to goodness, the element that makes perception and sensation possible, involves what is true because it involves what is in our discernment. Say to someone simply "goodness" without saying that some particular thing is good--is that "goodness" really anything? It is something only because of the particular thing that we identify with it. The only place this identification occurs is in our discernment, and our discernment involves what is true.

The same holds true for intending. To intend without knowing, perceiving, and considering what we intend is nothing, but together with these functions it is something. All our intending is a matter of love and involves what is good; and all our knowing, perceiving, and considering is a matter of discernment and involves what is true; so we can see that "intending" is nothing. Intending something in particular, though, is something.

[3] It is the same with all acts of service, because acts of service are good. Unless an act of service is focused on some benefit that is integral to it, it is not really an act of service, so it is nothing. It gets its focus from our discernment; and what is therefore united to or associated with the act involves what is true. This is where the act of service gets its quality.

[4] We can tell from these few examples that nothing good is really anything at all apart from something true, and that nothing true is anything at all apart from something good. We say that goodness together with truth, or truth together with goodness, is something. It follows, then, that evil together with falsity, or falsity together with evil, is nothing. This is because they are opposites to goodness and truth, and an opposite is destructive. In this case, it destroys the "something." But more on this later [19].