A few summers ago I spent just under two months in the central part of China with a missions team. On one of the afternoons we took a short bus trip to the Ta’er Lamasery, a prominent Tibetan Buddhist monastery just outside of Xining, the city where we were living. I read somewhere that the name literally translates to ‘10,000 figures of Buddha’. That would not be an exaggeration.

These idols were everywhere, from small simple figures tucked into stone alcoves to the larger free-standing statues along the sides of the rooms. In one room alone, there were over 5,000 small golden statues. Silks and gems ornately covered the walls of these rooms, their colors rich in intensity: teals, navy blues, oranges. Dim candles draped the room in a yellow pallor.

My friends and I wandered from room to room silently, my heart sick. With thousands of rooms in the compound, these places of worship flowed right into each other. Men and women crowded the kneelers in front of the larger figures. Others stood still, their heads tilted to the side, eyes closed, and lips moving wordlessly in prayer.

I remember walking out into the thick air, my arm linked with a friend’s. That was when I felt my chest constrict. Around the perimeter of the monastery were prayer rugs set back a few feet from the wall. A single elderly woman stood at the edge of the rug, bent down, and threw herself prostrate on the ground, her face in the dust. After about thirty seconds she got up and did it all over again. And again and again. Her face was crumpled with shame; her slight body, heavy with the lines of submission. It was her act of atonement.

Strangely, I found a tragic beauty in watching her repeatedly bury her face in the dust. The beauty certainly wasn’t in watching her try (and fail) to appease the thousands of gods she served. I found it instead in the lines of her face, her knit eyebrows, the sorrow that hung over her body like a cloak. I found beauty in her ability to recognize her sins and feel such distress over them that she would choose to repeatedly throw her body to the ground.

Here’s the tragic part of it. I live in a country where I can practice my faith freely, without discrimination. But I can’t remember the last time where I mourned and wept over my sin as that woman had done.

Please don’t misunderstand me- I’m not laying this out as a dogmatic argument on the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, and their means of salvation. I write this because of the significance of the moment. Thankfully, Jesus already atoned for any sin that we have or will ever commit in our lives. But that shouldn’t make us any less inclined to feel deep sorrow or conviction from our sins. I want to feel that sorrow on a deeper level, that gratefulness that Jesus’ death gave me new life and freedom– so much so that I would throw myself on the ground as an act of worship. How radical would that be?