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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480. A great deal of experience has also convinced me that after death we remain the same forever in regard to our volition or dominant love. I have been allowed to talk with some people who lived more than two thousand years ago, people whose lives are described in history books and are therefore familiar. I discovered that they were still the same, just as described, including the love that was the source and determinant of their lives.

There were others who had lived seventeen centuries ago, also known from history books, and some who had lived four centuries ago, some three, and so on, with whom I was also allowed to talk and to learn that the same affection still governed within them. The only difference was that the pleasures of their love had been changed into corresponding ones.

Angels have told me that the life of our dominant love never changes for anyone to all eternity because we are our love, so to change it in any spirit would be to take away and snuff out his or her life.

They have also told me that this is because after death we can no longer be reformed by being taught the way we could in this world, since the outmost level, made up of natural insights and affections, is then dormant and cannot be opened because it is not spiritual (see above, 464). The deeper functions of our mind or spirit rest on this level the way a house rests on its foundation, which is why we do stay forever like the life of our love in the world. Angels are utterly amazed that people do not realize that our nature is determined by the nature of our dominant love and that many people actually believe they can be saved by instantaneous mercy, simply on the basis of their faith alone, regardless of the kind of life they have led, not realizing that divine mercy operates through means. The means involve being led by the Lord in the world as well as afterward in heaven, and the people who are led by mercy are the ones who do not live in evil. People do not even know that faith is an affection for what is true, an affection that comes from a heavenly love that comes from the Lord.

7021. 'For all the men seeking your soul are dead' means the removal of falsities endeavouring to destroy the life of truth and good. This is clear from the meaning of 'being dead' as the fact that they have been removed, since those who are dead have also been removed; from the meaning of the Egyptians, to whom 'the men' refers here, as those who are under the influence of falsities, dealt with in 6692; and from the meaning of 'those seeking the soul' as those who endeavour to destroy life. And since spiritual life is the life of truth which belongs to faith and of good which belongs to charity, it is called the life of truth and good. From all this it is evident that 'all the men seeking your soul are dead' means the removal of falsities endeavouring to destroy the life of truth and good. In the Word 'soul' (anima) is used to mean every living thing and is also attributed to living creatures (animalia). But the proper use of the word 'soul' is in reference to a human being; and when used in this way it can vary in meaning. A person himself is called a soul, because the life in general within him is called the soul; more specifically the life or activity of his understanding is called such, and so too is the life or activity of his will.

[2] But in the spiritual sense 'soul' is used to mean the life of truth belonging to faith and the life of good belonging to charity, or in general to mean a person himself in respect of his spirit that lives after death, which is the meaning that 'soul' has in Matthew,

Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Matthew 10:28.

In the same gospel,

What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul? Or what will a person give as a price sufficient for the redemption of his soul? Matthew 16:26.

In Luke,

The Son of Man did not come to destroy people's souls but to save them. Luke 9:56.

In Ezekiel,

You have desecrated Me among My people, to kill souls that ought not to die, and to keep alive souls that ought not to live. Ezekiel 13:19.

In these places 'soul' stands for a person's spiritual life, the life which is that of his spirit after death. 'Killing the soul', 'suffering the loss of one's soul', and 'destroying the soul' stand for dying spiritually or being subject to damnation.