Good Friday

Cosmic Personalism At Work

Many people in the West have adopted what we may call the Buddhist view of the death of Christ.  The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth has meaning, even great significance, in the Buddhist world-view.  For the Buddhist, life is pain and suffering.  The goal is to escape existence and achieve nothingness.  For the Buddhist, the Cross of Christ signifies the essence of life, which is suffering.

 This view of life equates roughly to the materialist, secularist view, prominent in the West.  Existence and self-consciousness is a random consequence of the collision of sub-atomic particles.  The great goal--the only true goal of this life--is to escape the existence of self-conscious being which is a mirage and reach the state of impersonal non-being which is the truth and the future of all.

Both the Buddhist and the Western materialist have the same view of Jesus dying at Calvary.  The Cross witnesses to the vale of tears that is existence in this life.  It supposedly makes humans long for the state of nothingness when all consciousness will cease and personhood will dissipate like a cloud of vapour.  Both the Buddhist and the Western materialist recognise the Cross as a siren call teaching us to yearn for our future of non being and nothingness.

The Christian doctrine of Jesus on Calvary's cross could not be more diametrically opposed to these interpretations.