Lao Tzu and the Spiritually of Christ

This quote from Lao Tzu is getting at some of what I was scratching at in my earlier diatribe about Abraham and Moses below.

"People through finding something beautiful

Think something else unbeautiful,

Through finding one man fit

Judge another unfit.

*

Life and death, though stemming from each other,

Seem to conflict as stages of change,

Difficult and easy as phases of achievement,

Long and short as measures of contrast,

High and low as degrees of relation;

But, since the varying of tones gives music to a voice

And what is, is the was of what shall be,

*

The sanest man

Sets up no deed,

Lays down no law,

Takes everything that happens as it comes,

As something to animate, not to appropriate,

To earn, not to own,

To accept naturally without self-importance:

If you never assume importance

You never lose it."

--Lao Tzu

There is some of this sentiment in Christian mysticism, for example, in the teachings on not clinging to or looking for results, etc., but there really is a way of going about your business that doesn't put yourself in the other guy's face. Now I am no example of this at all, as I love to rub dog shit on the snout of the dog who defecates in the improper place but not being an example of what I might preach doesn't disenable me to the beauty and indeed, the practical utility of Lao Tzu's thoughts.

I think that Mother Theresa embodied both the splendid teachings of Lao Tzu and the spiritual mastery of Christ in her life. She simply was not interested in grinding any axes. She had more than enough to do pushing her own cart and knew that the results spoke for themselves in a way that words could not. This being said, there is a place for those who defend or want to defend society against the depredations of the devolved. As Lao Tzu also said, "he who sees all men as part of his own body is a sound man to guard them."

It would be interesting to have a better way of describing this sort of wisdom. Any phrases or bits come to mind? To behave in this way is more excellent, more Godlike than almost anything else for it combines charity with knowledge and action with wisdom. One serves without serving oneself or even needing to see oneself in the process as a larger and more sure identity than mere egoism (no matter how well informed spiritually and intellectually) has been assumed. There is a kind of shifting of gears whereby one shunts the ego aside to allow a larger sense of self to come forward and this is, as Aristotle might have indicated, part of the art of living but a very difficult art indeed as it cannot be mocked-up or readily mimicked by the mind: it has to actually be done. Only the will can shunt the chattering demands of local consciousness aside and allow the non-locality of the Divine will to envelope us. And is our locality moved by grace or is grace simply the manifestation of something else, the trailing edge of divine consciousness or our own future identity in God calling us to ourselves?

"Be ye as wise as serpents and as mild as lambs," also comes to mind and indeed the extraordinary example of the life of Christ wherein He who had the power, did not use it as we would have used it, allowed the devolved to revile and crucify Him.

Only those very sure of foot can walk such a path and who but God could guide them?

________________________________

All of this is entirely true but clearly one of the reasons that the

> Jews rejected Jesus was they were smart enough to know that what he

> was talking about meant a rejection to their claim as the only people

> of God. Even though much of what I have poked fun at is

> tongue-in-cheek, it is this claim of exclusivity that plagues most of

> the main line religions in one form or another. If you have the

> exclusive brand that can only mean that the other guy’s brand is

> inferior. Some of you may well be saying, “well duh” and of course

> that is part of the problem of falsehood and evil in general;

> legitimacy is obfuscated.

>

> Now I happen to believe that we do have the exclusive brand but I’m

> suggesting that playing the “whooz got the truth” game ultimately goes

> around in circles. At some point the truth has to be demonstrated by

> people who live it. Most good Catholics do this to some degree but

> they lead with their heads, instead of with their faith, and like

> bulls, they lock horns. When Jesus was questioned by both Pilate and

> Herod he did not use arguments to defend himself. (If I recall

> correctly, even Christ called Herod a fox.) At some point, arguments

> have to stop and something larger has to take its place. This to my

> mind is that multi-dimensional modality that we call faith. No longer

> do we simply reside within the arguments of four dimensional space but

> we have an extra dimension that allows us access the Divine more

> directly when intellectual tools cease to work.

>

> Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son is a marvelous example of

> and testament to his faith but as far as the exclusive covenant with

> God, it is precisely on this point that Christ decisively rejects the

> Old Covenant. NO ONE PEOPLE IS GOD’S PEOPLE ONLY THOSE WHO DO THE WILL

> OF THEIR HEAVENLY FATHER. There is a curious Democracy injected into

> our relationship with God by Jesus. Everybody now has access through

> the new system that Christ sets up but the key to the system is faith.

> The system (the Church) is designed to support the development of

> faith but what has happened to my incredulous eye is that faith has

> been hijacked to support the system. We don’t have faith in the West,

> what we have is a process that incorporates faith into a system and

> essentially minimizes it through a kind of legal calculus. This is no

> argument for Protestantism, nor is it even Theology, it is simply an

> anthropological* observation if you will. (I have this marvelous

> distinction courtesy of Fr. Gruber. All this time I was an

> anthropologist and I didn’t know it. J)

>

> Jesus laments: “When the Son of Man comes again, do you think he will

> find faith?” I for one cannot answer this question with certainty and

> therein, perhaps, lays my concern.

Was Abraham the Biggest Swindler of All Time?

Bruce Fieler, author of Abraham notes in an interview with BookBrowse

http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=813

that "Abraham embodies the fundamental human yearning to be descended from a sacred source...We can tap into his vast history and draw out a figure for our times...Abraham can be a source of hope and unity in a fractured world. He can play such a role because he is the most prominent figure that Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold in common -- the father of all."

As I was reading this piece, I had a moment of revelation. We should study Abraham because it is precisely with Abraham that the nonsense begins. Abraham may be guilty of one of the biggest swindles in human history--claiming that God chose one people above all others and thus giving them privilege and dominion over the lands and lives of others. Our Jewish friends have used this particular piece of nonsense to their advantage to claim lands lost for nearly two thousand years and we in the West are, in a sense, co-conspirators by buying into it. Anyone using God to justify the dominion of one set of human beings over another is not only a borderline fanatic (no matter how devout) but he or she is missing the larger message (the sensus plenior) of revelation as a whole. God is talking to all of us all of the time, as Neal Donald Walsch notes, and why? Because we are all his children. Perhaps even Christ was too circumspect to tell the Jews of His time more directly than He did that the meaning of his new testament (after all what was he testifying about?) was that we are all brothers and sisters and that the old testament of Abraham was pretty far outside the outlines of His Father's program.

Christianity (and I tread on difficult ground here but must) is also guilty of the same concoction though derivatively so. Claiming that Christ was to come from the Chosen People would only enhance the pedigree of Christ for those needing a pedigree. Quite frankly, I find it hard to believe that Christians haven't fully reflected on the notion that Christ was only half Jewish. Why would the Jewish half need any further justification? Human beings tend to like stories that overlap and that have parts that fit together nicely and allegorically. Doesn’t this sound like what fairy tales do?

To fulfill the prophecies strikes me as yet another contrivance, another support in the whole process of justifying the superiority of one religion over another for purposes of control, conversion and subjugation—in short manipulation—the raison d’être of all belief systems. This is different from preaching the gospel and converting by force of example, as opposed to making war with ideologies. What happens when belief systems become a substitute for faith? There seems to be an obvious flaw in all belief systems. Ideas cannot be substituted for faith and this is not to say that faith and reason are irreconcilable—far from it. Reason is the vestibule and the very chalice of faith but once the vestibule has been entered, and the chalice has been drained, action—stepping forward into the power of God is required—and that is a great mystery. How do we step forward into that great freedom unless moved by Freedom itself? What is it that prevents us from choosing this freedom that has existed since before the world began?

I digress. How about this: God came when He chose to do so and human beings have made up a lot of stories about how and why He came because they can't quite wrap their brains around a God who would just show up to save his children. “I have come so that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”

If there is any message that all the prophets can espouse it is this: to believe is to have life more abundantly but with this comes the temptation not to lead by example but by force. In this, the example of Christ was paramount; he led by the force of his person and his relationship with the Father, and not by any other form of power other than that of the Spirit. Imagine telling a man to get up from his nets and follow him. This would be like going up to a grocery clerk, a stockbroker, a banker, a construction worker or even a travel writer and saying, “come follow me” and having the individual get up and follow you. Who would follow unless a divine power were not with you?

Should Jews Decapitate with Their Blessed F-16's the Head of the Islamic Snake?

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.

This sort of psychotic reasoning can only lend ammunition to the State of Israel for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. We are dealing with an invasion from hell. Time to seal the breach with the holy fire of Jewish F-16s.

My God, what sort of lunatics are we dealing with? Perhaps we should all wear our Bush amulets more frequently...