“I wish to make men the way the eyes sees them, allowing their for accident of perspective…” Lysippo
Following a guru instead of Jesus proved to be about as unsuccessful a life as a knowing Christian can imagine. But even after denouncing my Middle Eastern guru, it took me several years to acknowledge Christ. My pride was wounded, I was stubborn and I was afraid.
Have you ever watched an ant on a counter top? They scurry around, stop if they find something, register whether it’s worthy of an army, if it’s not, they continue along endlessly until they find a treasure. A cake for example is a cache for an ant but it’s delights last only as long as it takes for the human to discover their invasion, then they’re all doomed. They don’t know they’re ruined either, not until the first blast of bug spray. Then they scurry in every direction, completely out of sorts with their original task, and die. Ugh.
That is my definition of most unbelievers, going from one earthly delight to another, feasting unaware until something comes along and blasts them right out of the frosting. Hopefully it won’t be death and they’ll have a second chance, accept Christ, and be free. If not, they’ll die without having ever lived.
I almost squandered my second, third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh, eight…one-thousandth time (isn’t God wonderful?) chance, and I’ve struggled for years to tell my story. Fear was the first deterrent. I thought the guru group might come after me, either legally or with their voodoo. Secondly, I thought people would think I was stupid for having been duped by a kangaroo church in the first place. Any warning I’d heard about the church, I’d deflected with the usual cult thinking: “Well, they can’t understand because they’re lower than I am on the evolutionary scale.” Simple. Done and forgotten.
You can’t be “reasoned” out of a wrong path, not if you’re convinced, and I was convinced an Indian a guru was going to save me.
Finally, I was seriously angry with God for “letting me believe that the guru was a blessing.” In truth, it was me who thought he was a blessing, not God, but it took me awhile to unhinge that realization. I’d become brainwashed in a church that claimed I was “special” and “chosen” by not one guru, but a line of guru’s going back thousands of years and so powerful that all I had to do was whisper one of their names and receive an “instant blessing.” Along with that baloney, if I’d just do everything the guru instructed (through his minion disciples) I’d stop the endless reincarnated lives of torture and wake and realize I was God! Yippee!
Thankfully God didn’t squash me like the ungrateful ant that I’d become. Instead, he began to build in me the foundation I would need to both accept Christ and know forgiveness.
