Why would someone need to be saved from themselves? I mean, you can't be anything other than yourself. If you believed you needed to be saved from yourself all the time, wouldn't that encourage such immense dissatisfaction with one's own existence that it would lead to mental illnesses like depression and possibly resolve in suicide?
This is interesting. First, yes we can be something other than ourselves. This happens all the time as we grow and develop, casting of the negative things which are part of us in favor of a new more healthy self. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago, in effect. Even though it's "me", entire modes of thoughts and behaviors have been literally transformed.
As far as dissatisfaction with ourselves, well of course. Why else would we be motivated to change or grow if we were satisfied? It's always a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. It's the tension that leads to the emergence of a new thing. It's the nature of ternary systems as opposed to binary systems which seek simple equilibrium. But this dissatisfaction does not have to lead to a pathological self-loathing. That's an unhealthy response towards ourselves because of things which dissatisfy us about ourselves.
Ok, so now to the whole Christian idea of salvation. I see it as no different than the Buddhist and Hindu seeking of Enlightenment. It's essence, the goal of salvation is Union with God. In Enlightenment, the blinders of illusion, the illusion of the separate self falls away and you find Truth, or "God". It's the same thing in the Christian idea of "reconciliation" with God. In Christianity however, the whole idea is simply wrapped up in their particular mythology of the Fall of man, casting out of the garden, and the result of living in sin. Buddhism speaks of suffering caused by clinging to the world. Christianity teaches to die to the self, and so on and so forth.
It's simply the language wrapper, the story it dresses up these existential truths about being self-aware humans in this world, longing and reaching to move beyond this 'prison' of impulses and desires which keep us from realizing Ultimate Reality, or God. Listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it, taking into account his notions of some 'law of sin' as his system frames this,
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Why would anyone seek God or the gods, if they weren't dissatisfied with their current state of being?
