Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Love, Truth, Joseph Smith and Lao Tzu

The thing about love and truth is this:

It seems like every spiritual quest is a search for truth.  And that every religion has found its truth at the expense of someone else's truth being wrong.

I remember going to a friend's child's baptism in the Mormon Church.  It was cool.  They showed a movie.  My kids were totally into it.  The other kids not so much.  They had seen it before.  The movie explained that Joseph Smith had seen the many conflicting religious sects in the America of the early 1800s and upon hearing the many various interpretations of the truth, decided that only one could be right.

I totally admire this guy's zeal and the Church he founded.

But came to exactly the opposite conclusion.

Recently I came across this quote by Lao Tzu:

"If one tries to formalize discoveries of spiritual truth into rigid doctrines to be taught to others as a means of establishing a train of follower, then one will inevitably mislead people and impair their inner growth.

If people take these truths for granted, their significance is diminished and they become mere emotional tranquilizers for the undeveloped majority of mankind."

Everyone must find their own way to the truth.

Buddha apparently felt this as well but continued to teach anyway.

It explains why Eastern religions are not missionary.

Was Jesus trying to start a Church?  Or just trying to show us the way?

Would we all have been better off if he and Mohammed six centuries later had been literate and been able to read the Tao or the Vedas?  

Who am I to concern myself with someone else's truth?

Heck, I've had a hard enough time just beginning to discover my own!





No comments:

Post a Comment