BTO Souls

Vesak Day is the commemoration of the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha by the Buddhists. Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths - the first truth is that all life is suffering, pain and misery. The second truth is that suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire. The third truth is that this suffering can be overcomed. The fourth truth is that the way to overcome this misery through the Eightfold Path.

In his first epistle, 1 Peter 4:12-13, the apostle Peter gives us another perspective of suffering:

“Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad - for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.”(NLT)

Bishop Fulton Sheen that there are fractions of truth to be found in all religions. Instead of pointing out the errors of non believers, we can affirm the truths that can be found in them. For example, instead of judging the Confucians about their failure to accept Christ, we can affirm that they are right to emphasize the brotherhood of men. However, to achieve the brotherhood of men, we need the Fatherhood of God. And we can share how Christ died so that we can become the children of God and brothers and sisters in Christ.

Likewise, we can affirm the first three truths that Buddha taught - that life is suffering, suffering is caused by our selfish desires and that we can overcome suffering by getting rid of our selfish desires. To get rid of our selfish desires, Buddha prescribed the Eightfold Path comprising of the eight practices of right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right samadhi.

However, Christ died on the Cross to provide us with a simpler and better way by identifying ourselves with his death so that we can have BTO (Broken To Obey) souls. So often God needs to break our hardened hearts so that our minds will be open to see His perfect will for our lives. Only then will we be able to obey God’s commandment to love Him and to love others as ourselves.

Matthew 5:3 reminded me of the first step of Surrender in the Twelve Steps programme:

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule.” MSG

Another author, Lysa Terkeust, shares the following insights in her book, “Unglued’. These are the fruit of a surrendered life to God:

“We can’t always fix our circumstances, but we can fix our minds on God.”

“I can face things that are out of my control and not act out of control.”

“Renewing our minds with new thoughts is crucial. New thoughts come from new perspectives.”

We need to understand that there is a spiritual warfare that is raging in and around us. Richard Parrott draws attention to the truth that we are living in the world of the unholy trinity - sin, death and the devil and hence our families are dysfunctional. The devil and his world system tempts us to be a chameleon who needs everyone to agree with us, or a bully, forcing everyone to agree with us, or a rebel, proving that nobody agrees with us.

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He has already won the battle. As a child of God who is secure in God’s love for us, we will not need everyone to agree with us or to force them to do so and it will not matter when nobody agrees with us.

But we will live as BTO (Broken To Obey) souls who find our greatest joy in obeying what God commands us to do. We will fear God because we love Him rather than trying to love God because we fear Him. So let us learn to see our times of trouble as opportunities to hand over our lives to God so that He can turn us into His masterpieces of love:

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”