Post Secret

I found this posting on the Post Secret website.

As much as I know of Buddhism, it is about trying to reach enlightenment or a godlike state within you. All of your life is spent trying to free yourself from your desire, your ego, and attachment to this world. Once you reach that place of complete selflessness called nirvana, you have become in a sense a god- a Buddha. This is self-realized awakening is attained by following the Noble Eight Path: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. It leaves all of the struggle and striving for freedom and spiritual perfection to our own devices.

This is essentially different from what God has done in Christianity when he entered the world as a mortal man. The essence of Christianity is rooted in the event when the holy, perfect God broke into this imperfect world, in the likeness of an imperfect man, to dwell with imperfect people. This was the meaning of the term Immanuel- “God with us.”

His job wasn't to call morally spotless, “good” people to himself. Jesus mentions to the religious people who were claiming to be perfect and sinless, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:17). If perfection could be reached by the mere efforts of sinful people God would not have come to this earth in the first place. There is one person who lived the perfect life however. When Jesus died and resurrected, no one helping him along in this feat, he is in essence saying, "Look, you're not perfect. That's why I am perfect. I lived it. I died it. You look to the perfection that is me. Don't trust in your own perfection." The ones to whom God's grace was offered were those who were willing to admit their brokenness, their imperfections, their need for a Savior.

"If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains" (John 9:41).

I remember one incident in the Light of Love Class, a church service for people with developmental disabilities. One of the students with mild mental retardation had misbehaved; he did something so utterly inappropriate to the environment of worship. It was one of those moments you get a glimpse of someone in their stripped bare human nature that it makes you uncomfortable. My face grew red hot with disgust and turned the other away; it embarrassed me. I found myself paralyzed to do anything at that moment, either to reproach him or to excuse him. But another volunteer teacher, much older than I squarely confronted him without blinking an eye, reproved him gently and gave him a big bear hug.

That same week I did something terribly shameful (for privacy I can’t disclose what it was). Afterwards I felt like utter trash and wanting to crawl into a hole. That's when I heard a quiet still voice in my heart.

"David I see you. I will not turn my eyes away." It was not a voice of condemnation but one of reassurance. "You want to run away from yourself. You want to separate yourself from this "real" you. But I see you. I see the whole you, even the parts you utterly despise. You don't have to hide it. I will not turn my eyes away in disgust. I will be here." It was an affirmation that God was accepting me, the whole of my being even with such fallacies.

I wondered how I would have fared if I were left completely and utterly to fend for my own spiritual well-being. Perhaps it would cure my laziness and dispel all my excuses of why I shouldn’t be in an exercise regimen, but would I really learn compassion? Would I really learn to love and accept myself the way I have? Would I really have a peace of mind and rest in God?