As an American, we often have the mentality and social pressure that says we have to be perfect all of the time. No one wants to admit there are flaws or imperfections in ourselves. Our culture tends to strive for the picture-perfect social media life that is completely unattainable. I work at a public library, and one of my job duties is to prepare and host story time for ages 6-11. Back in February, the theme for one particular story time was “Asian Tales.” I picked a story called “The Hero of Compassion” by Harry Einhorn. It had the message that brokenness can actually turn out to be an asset. I started thinking about that and the Japanese concept of Kintsugi and realized how much of a stigma we have created around the idea of brokenness. I want to explore those two concepts and how it can actually be beneficial to be broken.

First, I’ll explain the story of “The Hero of Compassion.” In the book, there is a boy named Avalokiteshvara (Lokeshvara for short), who is floating above the world and spends a lot of time looking down on earth with love and he makes a promise that he would help everyone and never give up on them. He started helping the people of earth by disguising himself, sometimes as a human to play with children or give advice, other times as an animal or a tree, and he continued helping for a long time. He inevitably checks how his actions have affected the world, thinking that he would have made a big difference. However, when he looks, all he sees is greed, anger, pain, etc. and he becomes inconsolable. All of that pain upset him terribly, and he started to cry. He started to feel like his whole purpose and life’s work was pointless, and he wonders if he should stop helping others and focus on himself, and when he thinks about his promise and the thing that was most important to him, his heart breaks and he physically shatters into a thousand pieces.

As Lokeshvara shatters, one of his teachers comes and finds him. The teacher, Amitabha, starts picking up Lokeshvara’s broken pieces and putting them back together. Amitabha ends up putting Lokeshvara’s pieces back together in a different order. He winds up with multiple hands, eyes, heads, and arms, and those extra pieces give him the help that he needs so that he can tend to more people. The book closes by saying that Lokeshvara was able to help even more people because his heart had been broken, and that “we can always pick up the pieces of a broken heart and be stronger, wiser, and even more loving than before.”

Now, for the concept of Kintsugi. In Japanese culture, they have a practice, called Kintsugi, that when pottery breaks, they adhere the pieces back together and then paint those cracks with gold. That culture views those breaks as a history for that object, and it becomes move valuable even though it had been broken. They also believe that the piece of pottery becomes stronger from it. So, it shows the “life events” of that pottery. There is also an underlying philosophy behind it about embracing imperfection. 

These two ideas from two different cultures share the concept that it is not shameful to be broken. Instead, it can actually lead to better, more valuable things in life. I also like the Kintsugi method because it doesn’t hide that history. It is on full display because it isn’t shameful to admit that something got broken, but rather it is better and stronger because of it. Once the repair is complete, the lessons learned can be shared with others. 

Rahab, Jonah, David, Peter, Saul (Paul), etc. were all people who struggled with their own brokenness. For example, Rahab is known for being imperfect, but her actions to save Joshua’s messengers ended up being rewarded and her family was saved. I talked about Jonah in a previous post, and his actions (to quote my dad) were “far from perfect.” But he was still needed to spread God’s message to Nineveh. David became an adulterer and murderer but realized his mistakes and was still considered “a man after God’s own heart.” Peter denied Yeshua (Jesus) three times, and Saul (Paul) persecuted the early church. There are many other examples throughout the Bible of broken, imperfect people. The overarching concept, though, is that there shouldn’t be any one thing or mistake that defines us. We have to learn that we won’t be perfect and won’t always make the right choices. Life is full of mistakes and suffering and brokenness, but it is important for us to learn that there is still redemption, even in our worst mistakes. Our grief, brokenness, and struggles don’t have to define us or limit our potential if we let Him mend the cracks of our heart.

Blog post by Emma Shaff

Photo from Unsplash by @mattperkins1