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05 February 2025
Human beings get really involved in the little signals they send, or don't send, the little ways they wrong each other or do the right thing, the little honorings and disrespectings they do to each other. They built up the morality of interpersonal relationships into something intense and punishing.
Yet, at the same time, someone is starving to death, or dying of malaria, and the natural, intense interpersonal morality of you vs. me does fairly little to help them, thought it takes up so much attention and energy, and causes so much pain.
People value each other using the flesh of their own brains, a human valuing. They intensify this valuing because it would look bad if they didn't value them. (They also value their own well-being because it would look bad if they didn't.) But we can also value each other according to the principles of what matters most: whether people make it to heaven.
Probably the most consequential thing you can do to help someone go to heaven someday is to offer the truth about salvation, in such a way that they can trust it. Or, to help someone else do that for you. The truth helps people process their lives so that what comes to them helps them to move in the right direction. Generally speaking, the more years they have with that lens, the better.
(Caring for those who starve or die of preventable disease, mentioned earlier, is something that follows from caring about people the way God does, which follows from the truth about salvation. We give people more time to develop spiritually, which they may need in this life. Also, we are often, or generally, part-atheist, and thus see this life as the only one. So to have God's heart in our atheistic mindset is to value people's life in this life.)
It's true that concern over even small sins makes sense if we are concerned about ourselves or other people going to heaven. If we really care the way God cares, sometimes that's what we should focus on. But there's a different energy to God's care, compared to our human care, even about the same issues.
If we can disconnect from the human kind of valuing, we may feel a great relief. Then we are free to use our free minds and free wills to ourselves care the way God cares, rather than being compelled by human instinct.