DALAI LAMA DREAMS THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM
By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on Nov 19, 2008 in Current Issues
In an essay aptly titled A Human Approach to World Peace Dalai Lama, supposedly the current manifestation “of the Bodhisattva (Buddha) of Compassion, who chose to reincarnate to serve the people” expresses a dream which, alas, can never be:
We practitioners of different faiths can work together for world peace when we view different religions as essentially instruments to develop a good heart – love and respect for others, a true sense of community. The most important thing is to look at the purpose of religion and not at the details of theology or metaphysics, which can lead to mere intellectualism. I believe that all the major religions of the world can contribute to world peace and work together for the benefit of humanity if we put aside subtle metaphysical differences, which are really the internal business of each religion.
(Online source)
But the genuine Christian knows that according to the Word of our Creator in the Bible the highlighted above is the fundamental flaw in his pie-in-the-sky dream of Utopia. Those of us in Christ are well aware of just how evil the human heart is — The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
And not simply before conversion; no, according to the inspired Apostle Paul it’s because we’ve been literally been regenerated i.e. born again that now:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:14-25)
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’ … Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.” (Matthew 10:34-36; Luke 12:51-52)