Compare best with best...

I heard it said...somewhere...I don't remember where, that a big mistake people make when comparing their own religion to another religion is that they compare the best of their religion with the worst of the other religion. To be truly fair one should compare best with best and worst with worst. I am sort of doing the opposite with my study of Buddhism. Christian, SDA is my religious background, but I tend towards comparing SDA's worst with Buddhisms best. This is probably because I haven't been giving my own faith background a fair shake. I am not really bitter against my background. I have had mainly positive experiences in the church, but I see a lot of things lacking and I see a lot of teachings which haven't been backed up properly by church authorities. Although I love SDA people I have become pretty disillusioned with their way of presenting the "TRUTH" and find it very shallow. So when I study Buddhism, I tend to compare it to shallow SDA presentations rather than the deeper gems of Christianity. Studying Ecclesiasties for my talk this coming Saturday is helping me a lot. I have heard that Ecclesiasties reads like a Dharmic text. I am seeing a lot of the themes of Buddhism mirrored there. Maybe I am not really looking for another religion. Maybe Buddhism can help me find what is deep and meaningful in my own religion. I just need to stop comparing SDA's worst to Buddhism's best.

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