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Originally Posted by thankyousir
I have been a Christian my whole life (and still am). I recently picked up a copy of the Tao te Ching and the Chuang Tzu and I fell in love with Taoism. Overall, Taoism matches up with Christianity pretty well (not judging, a time for everything, etc) except in a few arenas, the biggest being morality.
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Bear in mind that it's pretty hard to understand writings that are so far out of our cultural context, not to mention being thousands of years old and translated from a different language. We (at least, Westerners) have generally a much easier time with Christianity, because we're steeped in it's context.
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
The Taoist version of morality, at least from how I see it, is: "If you want to be one with the Tao, accept where life takes you and do what your heart (the internal Tao) tells you. If you don't want to do that you don't have to, it is also a part of the way of things for you to not be "one with the Tao". the Taoist is content even with this.
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At least some theories of the Tao Te Ching that I've read are that it is more targeted at a Ruler (the Sage) that the common man. Christian teaching is targeted towards the common person (the salt of the earth).
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
The Christian version of morality is "love your neighbor as yourself. and love God with all of your heart and mind. which means following all of the commandments. Try to be perfect even though there is no possible way for you to even try to be perfect, so drive yourself crazy trying to be perfect"
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I disagree pretty strongly with your last sentence. That's not Christian morality as I understand it at all. Your first two sentences are straight from the gospels (Matthew, IIRC), but in reverse order. Love God, with your neighbor (and, by implication, yourself), being the second commandment (and "like unto the first").
Christian morality asserts that there is such a thing as absolute good, embodied by God. That there are consequences for turning your back on God (Hell). That *all* have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God. No person can be perfect. So instead of beating yourself up about it, and becoming obsessed with meeting a standard that no one (except, according to Christian tradition, Christ himself) can meet, one accepts one's flaws and mistakes (sins), admits them to God, asks for forgiveness, and tries to live a life guided by love.
That concept is what draws me to Christianity - that instead of a fixed set of laws (though Christ says he does not do away with the old laws, a bit complicated there), or being guided by not hurting other people, or somesuch, one is to be guided by love. Love for God, "thy neighbor", and oneself. It seems pretty hard to come up with a situation where you could be too wrong being guided by that principle. Most of the 10 commandments follow pretty directly from those principles.
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
but "good" needs "bad" else it wouldn't be "good" I could go up to a mountain and try to become the most sinless ascetic ever, but I would be doing the world less good than if I just did what I was best at. In my opinion.
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Not quite sure what to make of that, except that I think one should not be motivated by avoiding sin, but instead by...yeah, the L word again. :-)
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
Who says that abortion is immoral? isn't it more immoral to force someone to be "moral" if they don't want to? shouldn't people at least have the option to have a safe clean abortion lest they resort to more barbaric methods? wouldn't that be more loving towards the mother? this is my opinion at least
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Well, the gospels don't refer directly to abortion - but they do assert that there is more to life than just the physical body. That all people have a soul. Many Christians take that to mean than an unborn baby is just as much of a person as someone else, and has the right not to be killed. Some Christians disagree. The abortion debate is a long one, and isn't split on Christian/non-Christian lines.
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
is the mere act of copying a cd illegal? were our founding fathers disobeying God by rebelling against the governing authorities and starting a great nation? it is like in Chuck
Chuck (when reviewing Harry Tang's rules): No swearing, No expectorating, no fornicating... were people getting freaky in the break room?
Morgan: No, but I like to know I have the option.
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I don't know if I follow you here. Illegal and immoral are two different things.
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Originally Posted by thankyousir
Taoism says that when you impose more rules people become less and less moral, which makes some sense, they aren't doing what they are doing because they want to, just out of fear of getting in trouble.
So Taoist morality makes much more sense to me, "do what you do best because you are only a small fragment of mankind". However, I still wish I could reconcile the two systems. Perhaps I am looking at stuff the wrong way.
I hate thinking about ethics because it is so subjective, yet you don't think it should be. Does anyone have any food for thought?  |
I don't think the two are all that different, or irreconcilable. Christianity is difficult for me because it still has the underpinnings of legalistic, 'old testament' thinking, which Christ explicitly supports. It also requires accepting things that have no proof on faith alone - that there is a God, and it's the Christian one. That there's a Hell, and people are really sent there. Taoist philosophy is difficult for me because a lot of it sounds very much like navel-gazing mumbo-jumbo. It doesn't include the exhortation to Love. Much of it seems more geared towards a leader, not a 'normal' person.