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:

129. It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Not Be Compelled by Outside Forces to Think and Intend and So to Believe and Love in Matters of Our Religion, but That We Should Guide Ourselves and Sometimes Compel Ourselves

This law of divine providence follows from the two preceding ones, namely, that we should act in freedom and in accord with reason (71-99), and that we should do this for ourselves, even though it is being done by the Lord--that is, in apparent autonomy (100-128). Since it is not from freedom and according to reason and not in autonomy to be compelled but comes from the absence of freedom and from someone else, this law of divine providence follows directly from the two earlier ones. Everyone recognizes that none of us can be compelled to think what we do not want to think or to intend what we think we do not want to intend. So we cannot be compelled to believe what we do not believe and certainly not anything that we do not want to believe; or to love what we do not love and certainly not anything that we do not want to love. Our spirit or mind has complete freedom to think, intend, believe, and love. This freedom comes to us by an inflow from the spiritual world, which does not compel us. Our spirit or mind is actually in that world. The freedom does not flow in from the physical world, which accepts the inflow only when the two worlds are in unison.

[2] We can be compelled to say that we think and intend something or that we believe and love something, but unless this is or becomes a matter of our own desire and our consequent reasoning, it is not something that we really think, intend, believe, and love. We can also be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act according to religion, but we cannot be compelled to think in its favor as a matter of our own faith and to intend it as a matter of our own love. In countries where justice and judgment are cherished, everyone is obliged not to speak against religion or to violate it in action, but still no one can be compelled to think and intend in its favor. This is because each of us has a freedom to think in sympathy with hell and to intend in its favor, or to think in sympathy with heaven and to intend in its favor. Still, our reason tells us what the quality is of the one and of the other and what lot awaits the one and what lot awaits the other. Our ability to intend on the basis of reason is our capacity to choose and to decide.

[3] This may serve to show that what is outside cannot compel what is inside. However, it does happen sometimes, and I need to show that it is harmful in the following sequence.

1. No one is reformed by miracles and signs, because they compel.

2. No one is reformed by visions or by conversations with the dead, because they compel.

3. No one is reformed by threats or by punishment, because they compel.

4. No one is reformed in states where freedom and rationality are absent.

5. Self-compulsion is not inconsistent with rationality and freedom.

6. Our outer self has to be reformed by means of our inner self, and not the reverse.

3419. 'Isaac came back and dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father' means that the Lord disclosed the truths that had existed with the Ancients. This is clear from the representation of 'Isaac' as the Lord's Divine Rational, dealt with already; from the meaning of 'coming back and digging again' as disclosing once again; from the meaning of 'the wells of water' as truths that are the sources of cognitions - 'wells' being truths, see 2702, 3096, and 'waters' cognitions, 28, 2702, 3058; and from the meaning of 'the days of Abraham his father' as a former time and state as regards truths, which are meant by 'which they had dug in those days', and so which had existed with the Ancients - 'days' meaning a time and a state, see 23, 487, 488, 493, 893. When a state is meant by 'days', 'Abraham his father' represents the Lord's Divine itself before this had joined the Human to Itself, see 2833, 2836, 3251; but when a time is meant by 'days', 'Abraham his father' means the goods and truths which came from the Lord's Divine before this had allied the Human to Itself, and so which had existed with the Ancients.

[2] The truths which existed with the Ancients have been completely effaced at the present time, so much so that scarcely anybody knows that they have ever existed or that they could have been anything different from those also taught today. But those truths were indeed quite different. People had representatives and meaningful signs of celestial and spiritual things in the Lord's kingdom, and so of the Lord Himself; and those who understood them were called the wise. They were also wise, because they were accordingly able to talk to spirits and angels; for when angelic speech which is spiritual and celestial and therefore unintelligible to man comes down to someone in the natural realm, it falls into representatives and meaningful signs like those that occur in the Word and consequently make the Word a sacred document. To make correspondence complete the Divine cannot present Itself before man in any other way. And because with the Ancients there were manifested representatives and meaningful signs of the Lord's kingdom, which hold nothing else than celestial and spiritual love within them, the Ancients also possessed matters of doctrine too which wholly and completely were concerned with love to God and charity towards the neighbour, by virtue of which also they were called the wise.

[3] From those matters of doctrine they knew that the Lord was going to come into the world, that Jehovah would be within Him, and that He would make the Human within Him Divine and in so doing would save the human race. From them they also knew what charity was, namely the affection for serving others without any thought of reward; and what was meant by the neighbour to whom they were to exercise charity, namely all persons throughout the world, though each one had to be treated differently. These matters of doctrine have now been completely lost, and instead there are matters of doctrine concerning faith, which the Ancients had regarded as being relatively worthless. These matters of doctrine, that is to say, those concerning love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, have at the present time been rejected on one hand by those who in the Word are referred to as Babylonians and Chaldeans, and on the other by people called Philistines and also Egyptians. They have become so completely lost that scarcely any trace of them remains. Who at the present day knows what charity is which is devoid of all self-regard and repudiates all self-interest? Who knows what is meant by the neighbour - that individual persons are meant who are to be treated each one differently according to the nature and amount of good that resides with him? Thus good itself is meant, and therefore in the highest sense the Lord Himself since He resides in good and is the source of good; for good that does not originate in Him is not good, however much it may seem to be. And because there is no knowledge of what charity is and of what is meant by the neighbour, there is no knowledge of who are really meant in the Word by the poor, the wretched, the needy, the sick, the hungry and thirsty, the oppressed, widows, orphans, captives, the naked, strangers, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the maimed, and others such as these. Yet the matters of doctrine which existed with the Ancients taught who each of these really was and to which category of the neighbour and so of charity each belonged. It is in accordance with those matters of doctrine that the whole Word so far as the sense of the letter is concerned has been written, and therefore those who have no knowledge of them cannot possibly know of any interior sense of the Word.

[4] As in Isaiah,

Is it not to break your bread to the hungry, and that you may bring afflicted outcasts to your house; when you see the naked and cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then will your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing will spring up speedily, and your righteousness will walk before you, the glory of Jehovah will gather you up. Isaiah 58:7-8.

Anyone who keeps rigidly to the sense of the letter believes that if he merely gives bread to the hungry, brings afflicted outcasts or wanderers into his house, and clothes the naked, he will on that account enter into Jehovah's glory, or into heaven. Yet those actions are solely external, which the wicked also can perform to merit the same. But by the hungry, the afflicted, and the naked are meant those who are spiritually such, thus differing states of wretchedness in which one who is the neighbour may find himself and to whom charity is to be exercised.

[5] In David,

He executes judgement for the oppressed, He gives bread to the hungry, Jehovah sets the bound free, Jehovah opens the blind [eyes], Jehovah lifts up the bowed down, Jehovah loves the righteous, Jehovah guards strangers, He upholds the orphan and the widow. Psalms 146:7-9.

Here the oppressed, the hungry, the bound, the blind, those bowed down, strangers, the orphan and the widow are not used to mean people who are ordinarily called such but those who are spiritually so, that is, as to their souls. It was who these were, what state and degree of the neighbour they belonged to, and so what charity needed to be exercised towards them, that was taught by the matters of doctrine which existed with the Ancients. Besides these verses from Psalms 146 there are others elsewhere throughout the Old Testament. Indeed when the Divine comes down into what is natural existing with man it comes down into such things as constitute the works of charity, each work differing from the rest according to its genus and species.

[6] The Lord also spoke in a similar way since He spoke from the Divine itself, as in Matthew,

The King will say to those at His right hand, Come, O blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; for I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me. Matthew 25:34-36.

The works listed here mean all the main kinds of charity and the degree of good to which each work - that is, to which each person who is a neighbour towards whom charity is to be exercised - belongs. Also taught is the truth that the Lord in the highest sense is the neighbour, for He says,

Insofar as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers you did it to Me. Matthew 25:40.

From these few places one may see what is meant by truths as they existed among the Ancients. The utter effacement of these truths however by those concerned with matters of doctrine concerning faith and not with the life of charity, that is, by those who in the Word are called 'the Philistines', is meant in the words that come next - 'the Philistines stopped up the wells after Abraham's death'.