The Tao of Meekness

I am a follower of Jesus who loves the Tao Te Ching, the ancient poetic classic written by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu five hundred years before Christ. I loved it before I became a Christian, and I have loved it ever since. It is no accident that the Chinese translation of the Gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Tao." It is a quote from the Tao Te Ching. Tao means "Way" in the sense of the eternal Way, echoed in Jesus' words, "I am the Way the Truth and the Life."

I am not engaging in religious syncretism that compromises the gospel of Christ. I am professing the teachings of the apostle Paul who wrote, "Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:20). "God has not left himself without a witness" among all the nations. (Acts 14:17)

Theologians call it natural or general revelation. The apostle John was testifying to this when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Logos" (the Greek word for Word). When John chose that word, the concept of Logos already had a rich history in Greek philosophy, analogous to the role of Tao in Chinese philosophy. The apostle was connecting the general revelation of God available to all peoples to the specific revelation of God in Christ.

Truth is truth wherever it is found. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu understood the virtue of meekness. His words are a better commentary on the beatitudes than any Christian writer I have ever read. He knew what Jesus meant when he said, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5) Lao Tzu wrote:

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 8)

He also wrote:

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.  (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78)

Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let  him hear." I say, "Are we meek enough to hear?"

Jerks in the Kingdom of God

Twenty-seven years ago my father died after a three-year battle with cancer. In one year I lost both grandfathers and my father. I was the eldest male in the family at the ripe old age of thirty-three. My soul ached. I clung to scripture for comfort. I opened the Bible to Romans 5 and tried to persevere to find meaning and hope in my suffering. But mostly what I felt was grief.

I think grief is the most difficult experience in life. I find it worse than physical pain or illness. It is an aching void in the soul that nothing can fill. No words will comfort. Yet Jesus says that mourning is one of the blessings of the spiritual life. "Blessed are those who mourn."

I don't think he is speaking about losing a loved one, or a job or a home. I think he is talking about losing everything when we choose God.

During WWII Kamikaze pilots used to cut their hair and fingernails before their suicide mission so that their family would have something to bury. They considered themselves dead from that moment on. Likewise Christians are dead when they give their lives to Christ. The apostle Paul stressed this repeatedly. "You died with Christ, died to the world."  "We died to the world, crucified with Christ, and were buried."  "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

When we die, we lose everything. We can take nothing with us through the portal of death - neither loved ones, nor possessions nor egos. So it is when we decide to follow Jesus. We have to leave it all behind. That is why we mourn. The reason why most Christians do not mourn, and consequently do not experience the comfort that Jesus promises in this beatitude, is because we have not left it behind. We try to take it with us.

There is a bittersweet moment at the end of the movie "The Jerk" with Steve Martin. Martin's character has lost everything in bankruptcy.  He is leaving his mansion a broken man, yet desperately clinging to the remnants of his former life. As he departs, be begins to grab bits of stuff. He says sobbing, "I don't need anything... except this. All I need is this ashtray. That's all I need. And this chair. All I need is this chair and this ashtray. That's all I need. And this remote control, and this paddle game, and this lamp...."

We say that all we need is Jesus, but we try to bring all sorts of stuff from our former life into our new life in Christ. It won't fit. According to Jesus, entering the kingdom is like going through the eye of a needle. We can't take anything with us.

That is why we mourn. And it is proper to mourn. In fact it is absolutely necessary to mourn. Those who are blessed will mourn, and then they will be comforted. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Looking For Loopholes

Comedian W.C. Fields spent the last weeks of his life in a hospital. A friend stopped by to visit him and caught him reading a Bible. Knowing that Fields was an avowed atheist, he asked him why he was reading Scripture. Fields replied "Just looking for loopholes."

That is the way most of us read the Sermon on the Mount. The opening verses of this famous sermon are the beatitudes, a succinct summary of what it means to be blessed by God. It would not be the list I would compose. If asked to enumerate the blessings of God I would list family and health, friends and freedom, and even material security. But Jesus starts his list saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3)

Preachers usually spiritualize this verse to suit their audiences. It is easy to do; after all it says poor "in spirit." But when Jesus preached this same sermon a second time in the Sermon on the Plain, he changed it to simply, "Blessed are the poor." I guess his "apostles in training" had also been looking for loopholes.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This has to do with unattachment to material things. It is an inner attitude of nonchalance to the things of this world. If we are possessed by possessions, we cannot be possessed by God.

I will be honest. I am neither poor nor "poor in spirit." Likely you aren't either. If you have an annual income of $50,000 a year you are in the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world. I have a house, two automobiles and health insurance (for the time being). My tendency is to look for loopholes to protect my assets. I want the blessing, but without the price tag.

We say, "God bless America" but do we really want America to be blessed by God's standard? The American Church is the wealthiest group of Christians in the history of Christianity. The total income of American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion. It would take just one percent of the income of American Christians to lift the poorest one billion people in the world out of extreme poverty.

But we do not use our tithes and offerings to aid "the least of these my brothers." (Matthew 25:40) Instead we build expensive church buildings and pay religious professionals to produce Sunday morning entertainment that we euphemistically call worship. How can we say the love of God abides in us? (I John 3:17)

Think of the most spiritual people who have ever lived. All of them were poor in the world's wealth. To our shame, many nonchristians have taken the standards of the Sermon on the Mount more seriously than us who profess to be Jesus' followers.

In his autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi writes that when he read the New Testament "the Sermon on the Mount went straight to my heart." Speaking to the British he said, "When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world."

When Gandhi died he owned six worldly possessions, the most valuable being a watch, spectacles, sandals and an eating bowl. When he was asked why he never became a Christian since he admired the Sermon on the Mount so much, he answered, "When you can convince me that Christians live by it, I will be the first to become a Christian." Truth be told, we hang ourselves with our own loopholes.

A Bear and a Man on a Mountain

Last autumn I visited my son for a week at his home in South Tamworth, New Hampshire. His new bride was in California visiting a very pregnant friend, so I took advantage of her absence to have some alone time with my younger son. One day while he was at work, I decided to take a hike up a little mountain behind his home. It is so little that it is called Little Larcom. My plan was to sit on the rocky outcrop at the summit and meditate. I like to pray on mountaintops. I know I am not any closer to God, but I feel that way.

I got to the summit and was settling into a posture of prayer, when I heard a bellow. It is nothing, I thought. Then I heard some thrashing in the undergrowth. A moose? No, I have heard moose before, and this is no moose. It sounds more like a bear. (I had come face to face with a bear once before, so I have some experience with bear sounds.) Well, I can't concentrate on prayer when I might have a bear at my back. So like the fool that I am, I decided to approach the noise and see if I could get a glimpse... maybe even a photo ... of the critter.

More thrashing and growling. Yep, it's a bear! And it is coming my way! It had clearly smelled an intruder and was defending its territory. My mind went to the Old Testament story of bald-headed Elisha and the bears that rushed out of the woods, mauling whomever was in their path. (2 Kings 2:23-25) You never saw a bald-headed 230-pound man get down a mountain quicker than I did! And I did some mighty powerful praying on the way down!

When I finally reached the bottom, I met a native calmly walking her dog and carrying a bear bell. (I recognized the bear bell from our visit to Yellowstone years ago.) I figured she would know about the mountaintop guardian. "A-uh," she replied, "There are two mother bears with cubs in this valley. She was just defending her own." 

The most powerful spiritual teaching ever given was proclaimed on a mountain. It is not what you might expect. When I climbed Little Larcom, I expected a pleasant commune with the God of nature. I expected a "still small voice" and heard the roar of a bear. The same thing happens when you really listen to the Sermon on the Mount.

In the coming weeks I am going to be exploring the Sermon on the Mount in this blog. I do not shepherd a congregation now. I am "a free-lance pastor," as a colleague described his situation recently. In short, that means I can offend anyone I want, without bearing the consequences. (Pun intended.) So let's climb a mountain. It's been a while since I heard a bear roar.

Climbing the Tree of Life

As a boy I was a climber of trees. I guess most boys are. While growing up, my favorite spot on earth was high in an old pine or oak. At my grandfather's house in New Hampshire, I built a tree house (actually just a platform made of a few planks) as high as I could in a tall white pine. I envied the Swiss Family Robinson and Tarzan, because they got to live in trees.

In Sunday School, my favorite Bible story was about Zacchaeus, the little guy who climbed the sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. Later on the story became even more meaningful when I learned that Christ climbed another type of "tree" to save me from a Fall. (Galatians 3:13)

The Garden of Eden also fascinated me. The storybooks always pictured the serpent entwined around a sturdy branch on the Tree of the Knowledge offering Eve some fruit. At some point during my Christian education, I must have made a comment about wanting to join the snake. For I remember being sternly warned that the serpent was "bad," and I should not want to be anywhere near him. Too bad, I thought. He had the best seat in the garden.

The Book of Revelation ends the way Genesis begins - with the Tree of Life. This wondrous tree in the New Jerusalem is much better than the old Edenic variety. It is no longer a solitary tree in the middle of a garden. In New Earth, the Tree of Life grows on both sides of the River of Life that flows from the throne of God. "The Tree of Life was planted on each side of the River, producing twelve kinds of fruit, a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations" (22:2).

I once read that largest single living organism on earth is an aspen tree in Utah. It is known as Pando or the Trembling Giant. It appears to be many trees, but is in fact one massive root system with many trunks. This "tree" weighs over six thousand tons. It is considered by some to be the oldest single living organism on earth, having an estimated age of eighty thousand years. That is how I picture the Tree of Life in the garden of New Earth.

Robert Frost wrote a poem entitled "Birches." He reflects on seeing white birches in New Hampshire leaning unnaturally toward the ground. He writes: "I like to think some boy's been swinging them. / But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. / Ice-storms do that."

So when you get to heaven and are walking along the streets of gold by the riverside, you may see some branches of the Tree of Life that look as if some boy's been swinging on them. If you see such a tree, look high into the highest branches. You may discover that I got there before you and have found the perfect spot. To paraphrase Frost's closing line: One could do worse than be a climber of trees.

Searching For Shangri-la

I remember when I first read Lost Horizon by James Hilton. I was a preteen and came across an old yellowed paperback copy that my mother owned. It was a rainy summer day. I found a comfortable chair next to an open window. With a showery breeze blowing in, I entered the mystical city of Shangri-la. 

I would read it several more times in future years, as well as watch the old film by Frank Capra. The most poignant scene is at the very end when Robert Conway returns to the Himalayas, desperately searching for - and eventually finding again - his lost paradise. It was the first time that the hunger for heaven awakened in my soul. C. S. Lewis describes a similar childhood experience that he had in seeing a miniature garden in Surprised by Joy.

It doesn't matter if you call it Shangri-la or Shambhala, Eden or El Dorado, it reappears with frequency in the mythology and literature of the world. It is Melville's white whale and the medieval Holy Grail. It represents the search of the human soul for the dwelling place of God.  Jesus told his disciples he knew where it was. Furthermore he promised to reserve a room for them there, and one day return to take them home to live there forever. (John 14:2-3)

Revelation 21 pictures it as the New Jerusalem with pearly gates and streets of gold. It is no ordinary city. It is a perfect cube of light, a heavenly Holies of Holies, coming to earth. But this is not our earth. The old heaven and earth had been rolled up like a window shade to reveal a new heaven and new earth.

This place is clearly not on any map or even in this universe. This is the spiritual city of the soul. We need to remember that the whole book of Revelation is a vision that the seer John had while "in the spirit" on an Aegean island. This is mystical language describing a spiritual experience.

John himself is the "new creation." (2 Corinthians 5:17) Shangri-la is not in Tibet. It is in the human soul. By his grace, God makes us a new creature and comes to dwell in us.   As Peterson's translation so colloquially renders it, "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women!" (21:3) As Jesus said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:20-21)

The "Judge Not" Juggernaut

 "Judge not, lest ye be judged!" I have had those words thrown at me like a javelin when I have ventured an opinion on some topic of morality. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." That is another hardball that is thrown at Christians to shame us into silence.

It doesn't matter that these verses are taken out of context and that other biblical verses calling us to judge correctly are conveniently omitted from consideration. Furthermore, it never seems to dawn on the speakers that they are using those words to judge others. Nevertheless the zingers are still effective in bringing any reasoned discourse to a halt. As the adage says, "When in doubt, shout!"

In his book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters, David Kinnaman explores the most common attitudes that young people have toward Christians. They are all negative. Two of the top six are that Christians are judgmental and hypocritical. Ouch! Who threw that!

The truth is that it is impossible not to judge. You can no sooner "not judge" than you can have a one-sided coin, breath in and not out, or only eat and not .... Well, you get what I mean.   We live in a world of duality - light and dark, front and back, left and right, good and evil, male and female. You can't have one without the other. It is the nature of existence.

The creation story of Genesis says that as soon as God created light on Day One, he had to separate the light from the darkness. Get it? Without darkness there would be no light! The postmodern phobia about judging just means people don't like being judged. But we don't have a choice.

Revelation 20 pictures a Judgment Day, a heaven and a hell. (Once again, you can't have one without the other.) It is not just those judgmental Christians that believe these things. Every religion of the world from Hinduism to Islam, has some type of judgment after death. Buddhism has layers of hell that makes Dante's Inferno look like a pleasant visit to a sauna.

There is no life without death. We didn't choose to be born, and we cannot choose not to die. We cannot choose not to be judged. Nor can we choose who will be the Judge, any more than a defendant gets to choose who sits on the bench. But we can influence the outcome of the judgment.

You can read the basis for the final Judgment in Revelation 20:11-15. But before you reject this concept as unenlightened, unspiritual or unchristian, let me just say one last word: "Judge not, lest ye be judged!"