The Hard Way?

On the comparison and contrast of this form of Buddhism and western philosophies, mainly Chrsitianity:

Trungpa Rinpoche says to the reader that from his time spent in the west he has seen a weakness to our common religions. (This is what I gathered from his teachings on pages 244-254.)On page 245 he insinuates that westerners generally believe that if we accept the religion placed before us then "...we do not have to do anything on our own..." I disagree with this thinking. I can only offer what I've known and seen of Christianity. All humans are not called to be babies and let someone else take care of their every need, nor are we asked to forget our problems and let someone else handle them. We are called to accept the free offer of help and redemption from God through his son Jesus. In doing this we choose to draw near to God. At some point we discover that God wants us to surrender ourselves to him. This requires a tremendous act of faith, trust, and self sacrifice. Yes, there is an amazing reward; that of abundant life on earth and eternal life after death, and as Trungpa says that accepting the Hard Way means giving up our ambition to get something in return for our gift I offer this question: If we are truly concerned mostly about a reward for our actions then why bother with religion? Does it not take a significant amount of self sacrifice and to offer up your entire life to someone else who you can't even see? And if a person is truly devoted to God, then they will act in ways that they know is pleasing to God, not themselves...


Simply "facing the facts of life" definitely sounds like a hard path to choose to walk on....
But
Accepting that we are imperfect and faulty and being willing to hand over your life to someone who you may barely know but you trust for some reason, is also a hard thing to do.


What do you think?


P.S. John, please let me know if you think I'm straying too much into religion.
-sleepy