Thanks Mark for the reference to Paper 170!
I too was taught from an early age to not be ashamed or prideful of my station, profession, income, wealth, or social position nor to look down on anyone or admire anyone by such measures, but rather, to admire character and kindness and goodness and courage and loyalty and duty and skill and accomplisment and to avoid smugness, meanness, haughtiness, and similar expressions of self importance. To look up to others as God’s beloved children and be generous and forgiving and kind to all.
Which doesn’t mean I managed such lessons well, but such is the example of The Master in all his Biblical teachings and parables; the shepherd leaving the 99 to seek out the one, etc. “Jesus loves all the little children of the world”!
A fascinating reality is that we all collectively benefit by every act of love and kindness and generosity and mercy by every person everywhere. Individually we benefit by loving all others, but collectively we all benefit by the personalized, individual acts of love by others no matter how enlightened or inclusive those others may be.
The universe economics of love blesses the each according to personal enlightenment and spiritual progress, but blesses the all by every experience and expression of love everywhere by everyone regardless of individual spiritization of us or them.
(1862.7) 170:3.10 The religion of the kingdom is personal, individual; the fruits, the results, are familial, social. Jesus never failed to exalt the sacredness of the individual as contrasted with the community. But he also recognized that man develops his character by unselfish service; that he unfolds his moral nature in loving relations with his fellows.
(1862.8) 170:3.11 By teaching that the kingdom is within, by exalting the individual, Jesus struck the deathblow of the old society in that he ushered in the new dispensation of true social righteousness. This new order of society the world has little known because it has refused to practice the principles of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. And when this kingdom of spiritual pre-eminence does come upon the earth, it will not be manifested in mere improved social and material conditions, but rather in the glories of those enhanced and enriched spiritual values which are characteristic of the approaching age of improved human relations and advancing spiritual attainments.
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
