I’ve come to notice an important distinction between myself and many Christians.
When certain Christians encounter a stranger, they presume they’re going to hell and need to be saved by their urgent evangelization.
When I encounter a stranger, I presume they’re going to heaven.
This root presumption changes the entire way we relate to someone.
Now I want to be clear. I don’t know whether or not the stranger is going to heaven.
I don’t even know what’s going to happen to any of us tomorrow, or in the next five minutes, let alone after our physical death.
That’s not for me to know, to say, or understand.
So my presumption is more like a prayer than a prediction.
And yet, when I see someone, I’m seeing them on two dimensions.
There’s the deeper dimension where, regardless of anything that has or hasn’t happened, their unchanging essence is connected to God. A place where every soul is still a perfect child of God created in the image of the divine blueprint.
I see that part of them.
Then there’s the surface level, where human beings have forgotten the truth of who they are, how they were innately designed, and how to behave accordingly.
Here, humanity is lost in division, fear, anxiety, separation, various forms of low self-worth, self-loathing, and even self-hatred.
Self-destructive patterns and horrific cruelty towards others.
I see that part too.
As a healer, it’s essential to see and honor both dimensions.
My goal is for the surface level to become aware of the deeper level of who we really are.
Many Christians fixate on original sin and the fallen nature of the human being as the genesis point of who we are.
However, they neglect the fact that original sin is not the starting point of who we are. It’s actually the beginning of the second act of a three-act play.
In the first act, before original sin, was the original wholiness.
Humanity’s original and natural state of perfect communion and loving relationship with the Creator, and all of creation, in the idyllic Garden of Eden.
Then came “the Fall” and original sin, or what we could call “the original mistake” of separating ourselves from that perfect communion with our Creator and rejecting God’s eternal presence and love.
The third and final act is the divine reunion with God (Heaven), now with the mature wisdom of all the stages that came before it.
When I encounter someone, I see their suffering, their struggles, their fears, and their destructive patterns.
I also see the deeper dimension of who they truly are, their original wholiness, even when they don’t yet see or believe it’s there themselves.
My intention is to support people in connecting with that deeper dimension.
As Jesus said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21
Supporting others in entering into that deepest communion is our true purpose.
So while I don’t know whether or not someone is going to heaven, what I do know is that there’s a part of them that is there right now.
My dedication is to see that part in them even when they can’t see it yet, and help walk them home.
— Brian Piergrossi