The White Temple

The White Temple is one of the most startling artchitectual complexes in the world. It is one man's vision and understanding of the world shaped by his Asian culture and his Buddhist upbringing.

Here I am standing in front of the main temple on the site. It is an amazing building. And you are not supposed to take pictures inside and so I did not. But in the creator of the White Temple's understanding of god, humanity must go through hell, in order to reach heaven. Here is his depiction of hell.

It is a really graphic horror . . . one that will give you cold chills. And the other horror that evangelical Christianity does not address in any adequate manner, is that that this fellow's perspective that you must go through hell to reach heaven is the mainstream understanding of the majority of the world. I am not stating that he (they) are correct, only that evangelicals are the miniscule minority with the PollyAnna concept of reality.

The wealthy culture surrounding Western Christianity makes it a destitute thought-system in the two-thirds world. We have sacrificed so little, suffered too little, been hungry so little, been thirsty for clean water so little, lacked for so little, that we have little to offer the two-thirds world which is in a daily sumo-wrestling match with these life and death issues.

The perspective of the world we say we are called/trying to reach is, you have to go through hell to reach heaven. We say that Christ already has, so that no one else is required to do so. In the 2/3's world few of them have heard of Christ's perspective. So do they now go through hell and stay there, or do they reach heaven? And whose fault is it either way?

It seems to me that we do not seriously believe our own theology. Not when 95% of what we make in life is spent on us, and only a tiny fraction of "the church" lays down their life for these said beliefs. No wonder they don't believe us, even the few that get to hear.