Basically, the son of a wealth king - Gautama Siddhartha - just woke up one day and declared he was Buddha. His religion consists of 4 truths: life is suffering, the cause of all suffering is desire, the way to end suffering is to end desire, and spend your life learning to eliminate desire.
How often in times of suffering we mask the pain? How often in hard times we declare we will chose not to be sad? I think it happens all the time.
Larry Crabb says " we Christians are often practicing Buddhists. He goes on to say that "we kill desire in an effort to escape pain, then wonder why we don't enjoy God." How's that for hitting it home in your heart? That one really struck me hard.
As a Christian we are also taught truths. There are also four of them.
1- Life includes suffering, but life is good.
2- The cause of all suffering is seperation.
3- The way we handle suffering is to discover your desire for God.
4- The new life provided through Jesus must be accepted as a gift of love.
Bottom line, as a Christian when we hurt - we should really hurt. And hurt openly in the putrescence of our God. In this life, we will suffer. But take heart because our Savior has overcome the WORLD!
This post was adapted from ideas in Shattered Dreams by Larry Crabb. Specifically chapters 6 and 7
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