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

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16. It therefore stands to reason that God is a person and in this way is God manifest--not manifest from himself, but manifest in himself. The one who is manifest in himself is the God who is the source of all.

256. It has been said above, that "the seven churches," which are here written to, mean not seven churches, but all who are of the church, and in an abstract sense all things of the church. That this is so can be seen from this, that "seven" signifies all persons and all things, and that by names things are meant. That the things written to these seven churches mean all who are of the church, or all things of the church, can be seen also from the explanation of all the things written to them. For all things of the church have reference to these four ¹ generals, namely, Doctrine: A life according to doctrine: Faith according to life: these three are treated of in what is written to six of the churches; Doctrine, in what is written to the churches in Ephesus and Smyrna; a life according to doctrine, in what is written to the churches in Thyatira and Sardis; and Faith according to life, in what is written to the churches in Philadelphia and Laodicea; and since doctrine cannot be implanted in the life and come to be of faith unless man combats against the evils and falsities, which he has by heredity, that combat also is treated of in what is written to the church in Pergamos; for there Temptations are treated of, and temptations are combats against evils and falsities. (That temptations are there treated of, see above, n. 130; that doctrine is treated of in what is written to the churches in Ephesus and Smyrna, see above, n. 93, 95, 112; that a life according to doctrine is treated of in what is written to the churches in Thyatira and Sardis, n. 150, 182; and that faith according to life is treated of in what is written to the churches in Philadelphia and Laodicea, n. 203 and 227.) Since what is written to this last church, that in Laodicea, treats of those who are in the doctrine of faith alone, and near the end treats also of the faith of charity, it should be added to what has been said, that love makes heaven, and because it makes heaven it also makes the church; for all the societies of heaven, and they are innumerable, as well as all within each society, are arranged according to the affections of love; so that it is affection or love according to which all things are arranged in the heavens, and not one person has his place according to faith. Spiritual affection or love is charity; it is evident, therefore, that no one can ever enter heaven if he is not in charity.

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