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

Фусноте:

498. This first state after death lasts a few days for some people, months for some, and a year for some, but rarely more than a year for anyone. The difference for particular individuals depends on the harmony or discord between their inner and outer natures. These inner and outer natures must act as one and correspond for everyone. No one is allowed to think and intend one way and speak and act another way in the spiritual world. Everyone must be an image of his or her affection or love, which means we must be outwardly what we are inwardly. This is why the outer concerns of a spirit are first stripped off and brought into order: so that they may serve as a plane responsive to the inner ones.

1893. That 'Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no child' means that the Rational Man did not as yet exist will be clear from what is said later on, when Isaac is the subject, for everyone, as has been stated, has an internal man, a rational man which is in between, and an external man, which strictly speaking is the natural man. These, as they existed with the Lord, were represented by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the Internal Man by Abraham, the Rational Man by Isaac, and the Natural Man by Jacob. The Lord's Internal Man was Jehovah Himself, for He was conceived from Jehovah. This was why so many times He referred to Jehovah as His Father, and why in the Word the Lord is called 'the only begotten of God' and 'God's only Son'. The rational man does not exist with anyone when he is first born, only a potentiality to become rational, as may become clear to anyone from the fact that new-born babes do not possess reason but become rational as time goes by through the response of the senses to stimuli from without and from within, as knowledge and cognitions are bestowed on them. Rationality does, it is true, appear to exist with children; but rationality does not in fact do so, only something of the first beginnings of it, as may be recognized from the fact that reason resides with people who are adult and advanced in years.

[2] The Lord's Rational Man is the subject in the present chapter. The Divine Rational itself is represented by Isaac, but the first rational before it had become Divine is represented by Ishmael. Here therefore the statement that 'Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no child' means that the Divine Rational did not as yet exist. As stated already, the Lord was born in the same way as any other, and as regards what He derived from Mary His mother He was like any other. And because the rational is formed through facts and cognitions which enter in by way of the external senses, or the senses that belong to the external man, His first rational was therefore born as it is with any other. But since everything human in Him was made Divine by His own power, so was the rational made Divine. His first rational is described in the present chapter, and once more in Chapter 21, where again in verses 9-21 Hagar and Ishmael are the subject, where it is said that Ishmael was cast out when Isaac, who represents the Divine Rational, had grown up.