Unless you are an absolute hermit who lives in the backwoods and grows your own food, you are going to have to interact with people. God created this world to operate in such a way that we are reliant upon others for the things of this life. The farmer grows our food, the policeman protects us from criminals, the military protects us from attacks of other nations, and so on.
Think about that for a moment. God created us to rely on other people, and to interact with other people. We inevitably need other people. And that means that we need to have at least some idea of how those interactions should go. While God gives us things like His commandments to show us His design on how things should go, one of the other things we see is that our care for others is also important in our interactions.
The question can easily arise, though. Why should I care about the people I interact with? I may never see a majority of the people I interact with ever again in life, so why should I care about them? That would seem to be a good question, though I would also suggest that we are valuing people based upon the frequency of our interactions with them, rather than seeing each of them as a dear, precious creation of God for whom Jesus gave His life.
Why should I care? Because Jesus cares for them, and because Jesus now so closely relates to me that I am, in essence, His hands and feet and mouth to that person. That provides me with an opportunity to show Jesus' care to them, no matter how trivial the interaction may be. If I help the mother get a box of cereal off the shelf at the grocery store because she's managing her kids, I'm caring for her and her family as Jesus Himself would. Sure, Jesus would probably manage to do more than just help in that simple way, but you get the idea. We care for others, no matter how big or how small, because Jesus cares about them, and we may just be the one incident that day where they have an interaction with someone who truly cares for them.
Think about that for a moment. God created us to rely on other people, and to interact with other people. We inevitably need other people. And that means that we need to have at least some idea of how those interactions should go. While God gives us things like His commandments to show us His design on how things should go, one of the other things we see is that our care for others is also important in our interactions.
The question can easily arise, though. Why should I care about the people I interact with? I may never see a majority of the people I interact with ever again in life, so why should I care about them? That would seem to be a good question, though I would also suggest that we are valuing people based upon the frequency of our interactions with them, rather than seeing each of them as a dear, precious creation of God for whom Jesus gave His life.
Why should I care? Because Jesus cares for them, and because Jesus now so closely relates to me that I am, in essence, His hands and feet and mouth to that person. That provides me with an opportunity to show Jesus' care to them, no matter how trivial the interaction may be. If I help the mother get a box of cereal off the shelf at the grocery store because she's managing her kids, I'm caring for her and her family as Jesus Himself would. Sure, Jesus would probably manage to do more than just help in that simple way, but you get the idea. We care for others, no matter how big or how small, because Jesus cares about them, and we may just be the one incident that day where they have an interaction with someone who truly cares for them.
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