The Divine Art of Not Caring

Part of growing in Christian wisdom and grace is learning the divine art of not caring. A great deal of folly and destruction results from caring about all the wrong things and in the process, completely missing the most important things that you should care about. 

So for example, you should care a lot about what your mom thinks of your outfit, your friends, what you’re watching or listening to, and you should not care about what strangers on the other side of the planet or the other side of a screen think at all. And compared to your mom, your good friends should know that they barely rank. Or if you are woman, how do you evaluate the state of your home? You should care a lot about what your husband thinks and maybe a few godly friends, but you should not care what Instagram thinks, what strangers might think, or what the voices in your head say. 

Above and beyond these duties, you must care most of all what God thinks. And Jesus says that caring about what He thinks will sometimes seem like hatred of father and mother or children. And if allegiance to Jesus might get us accused of hating our own families, how much less should we care about what distant strangers think? Jesus says rejoice and be glad when people insult you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for His sake.

But do not miss the fact that this means caring about the things that Jesus wants you to care about, and it also means not caring about the things that Jesus doesn’t care about. And you’re constantly practicing. You’re practicing by how you spend your time, by what you read, what you think about, and how you evaluate your days. Did you honor your parents? Did you follow your husband? Was Christ pleased? Then rejoice and be exceedingly glad, and who cares what anyone else thinks. 

Love is not doing whatever anyone wants. Love is doing what God says. Love is doing what is actually needed despite what anyone thinks because that is how God loved us, and thank God He didn’t care what any of us thought about it.

Photo by Harley-Davidson on Unsplash