Breastplate of Righteousness : 八正道

Righteousness. The right living. Living right in all aspect of our life encompassing the mind, body soul & spirit. Problem with modern Christianity or the form that I have grown up in namely, Methodism, evangelicals, Pentecostal especially when it comes to explaining spiritual concepts like Armour of God, kingdom of God and in this case Breastplate of Righteousness they got lost in the symbolism of the analogy , giving almost poetic explanations and clarifications and beautiful theology but no bloody practical good or application. 

Compare the above analogy of breastplate of righteousness to the 8 Noble Path described to protect our mind and heart. 

I am not a Buddhist. I am a human being. My objective is Right Living. Whatever religions or sects to me are but concepts and templates that somebody has discovered. And they are all good if it works for you. So if someone were to just show me the diagram above with the wheels and spokes with no titles and headings. What I would see is a wheel and spokes and at the end of each spokes there is a label for an idea. Right Intention, speech, action, livelihood , effort, concentration , action and right views. I may not know how to apply each individually but immediately I get a picture of a certain way of living and it encompasss these 8 things which I should be mindful of in my daily life. Voila !!!

Instead the biblical image is still stuck in clarification. Saying things like the Righteous shall not be shaken and get all worked up about it. But how ? How are we suppose to do it ?? Okay the bible says Christ has settled that because God has made him an offering ! Right ?? And ? And nothing you dumbass, nit wit, just believe and everything will be okay. Really ?? Yes really by Grace have you been saved !! O ok ??!! While all that might be true at the very highest conceptual level but it does no practical good at the ground level and there’s still people waiting for God to show up. The church has to wake up and be accountable for this grave error.

And really it’s not that hard. We humans have a conscience. You see someone being bullied. You see a dog being kicked, you see someone in trouble, automatically you want to do something. That’s in plain English, of course I can embellish it with spiritual and biblical terminology. But the crux of the whole things is Live Rightly. Let’s not get too religious about it.