Tolstoy: "I am a man [human]. How should I live? What do I do?"
Salt and Light
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet."
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." - Matt 5:13, 14
The Salt
We're humans. Therefore, how should we live? What do we do? Well, what good is salt if it's lost the reason for its existence—to preserve foods or make them taste better? Considering humans unparalleled potential for selflessness in contrast to any other living thing that's (supposedly) ever existed, wouldn't it become incredibly obvious what the reason for a creature as conscious and capable as a human is made to live for? Objectively? God or not: To strive to be as selfless as possible; to be able to acknowledge any of its more barbaric and selfish thoughts or behaviors—at all in the first place—and abstain from them, for a purpose outside of itself. This is the "salt": Selflessness; what good is a human that's lost its purpose? What good are humans as a whole if we've lost our purpose as a whole? Crippling ourselves, defiling our own minds from the images of our past or potential futures we create in our heads via the double edged sword that is our imagination, governing so much over how we feel and behave today; our desires and vanities for the sake of ourselves taking precedence over our design, i.e., building your house (your life) on the sand—like most people—opposed to on the rock, like Jesus or Socrates did.
Why don't we ever see birds, for example, sitting around all day, stimulating their sense organs or crippling themselves—opposed to being birds, as they do; chasing each other, having a time—sad about how they didn't fulfill xyz desire or vanity for the sake of themselves via the way mankind has manipulated its environment and organized itself? Because the extent of how much less conscious birds (nature in general) are of themselves. Could you imagine what would happen if bees stopped doing what they were made to do? In favor of what they want out of their lives? Life on Earth, yet again, would be led to be extinguished, as it did roughly six other times over the last 14 billion years. Is there anything unique that humans, as a whole, bring to the table, similar to how the species of bees do for all life on Earth?
"Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven." - Matt 6:9
A day, even millenniums from now, where violence, at the very least, is considered a laughable part of our past as the idea of a King is to us now for example; not by supernatural means, but seen in the sense of Tolstoy's personal, social, and divine conceptions of life: https://lemmy.world/post/23133528. Through a painfully slow millenniums long transitioning into it. Without humans, life on Earth continues as it did for the last 14 billion years, with no great potential for anything to act upon itself or everything else: Selfishness or selflessness (morality) upon an environment. This is what makes more conscious, capable beings—on any planet, unique: It's capacity for morality (selfishness and selflessness) in contrast. But what if these beings begin to do the opposite of what they were designed for? As salt is useless without its taste, so would humans—from the point of view of a God(s) or creator(s) of some kind, even from an atheists point of view—be useless without its purpose: Selflessness, to even and especially, the most extreme degrees; opposed to incessantly choosing itself all throughout its life as—out of inherency—a more conscious monkey would (selfishness).
When the storm of death begins to slowly creep toward the shore of your conscience, where will you have built your house (your life)? Out on the sand? As most people would be inherently drawn to? "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” - Matt 7:27
The Golden Rule
"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction [selfishness], and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life [selflessness], and those who find it are few." - Matt 7:13