In the early stages of developing my business and my vision, I was consumed with the image of a lotuslilly. This in my mind was a hybrid of thought. It was and still is my desire to maintain the culture and beauty of yoga while channeling our souls toward Christ and none other. These two flowers are significant: the lotus is to Buddhism what the lily is to Christianity.
Yet, as I dove further into the illusive pond of the lotuslilly, I discovered something controversial.
The lotus is the lily and the lily is the lotus. The ancient flower mentioned in the Bible is likely to be none other than the water lily also known as the lotus. So, is that the end of my insight: all paths are one. By no means! We know Jesus is the only way. But what if we shake up our perspective once in a while. Images in the Bible and images of Christ are sometimes Americanized because we are Americans here. What if we opened our minds to foreign perspectives and realized we are all searching for reality from the cultural context in which we live and develop.
I believe yoga is popular because we all yearn for unity with the divine.
Our perspectives may start in different ways that make each other uncomfortable. We see God in ways we can understand and relate. We find Him black. We find Him white. We find Him female. We find Him homeless. We find Him strapped for battle. We find Him dressed for court. The way we perceive Him isn’t always the way He truly is. Who are we to keep Him in a box? Instead, let’s learn from each other.
How do you perceive Christ? How have you been surprised by the way you may have made assumptions and Americanized something of Bible?
To see Christ in His Spirit and Truth, we must look in the Bible. He is the Word. To see Him in His physical being it helps to read books that tell of customs in the Eastern countries and in the Bible times. It really brings a lot of things to light when we find out how people lived and still live in those countries. And of course, Jesus was a Jew.
Very true. It’s good to put Christ and scripture into context by taking Him out of the cultural box we relate to and setting Him in the culture in which He was born.