# 1753: A Better Metric for Loving God

An episode of [Wisdom of the Sages](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1493055485), 6 Apr 2026, 56 min.

Audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/wisdomofthesages/ep_1753_A_online-audio-converter.com.mp3?dest-id=1755320

You can check every box of religious life and still be miles from God. The real spiritual metric is simpler — and much harder. Raghunath and Kaustubha open with a passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov — the dying words of the monk Father Zosima: love everything, love everyone, even in their sin, and you will perceive the divine mystery in all things. It's a vision shared across traditions — by Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, Black Elk, and Jesus himself, who loved those who were crucifying him — and it maps precisely onto a verse from the Srimad Bhagavatam, an ancient Sanskrit text on consciousness and devotion, where Krishna describes the saintly person as one who sees no friend, no enemy, and no stranger — only the same sacred spark in everyone. A better metric for loving God is not the intensity of your practice but how you love the people God puts in your life — including the difficult ones. The episode then moves into the opening of the Govardhan Lila, where Krishna poses a quiet but penetrating question: do you actually understand what you're doing — and why? ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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