My Sad Allegiance to Confucius

I love Lao Tzu and see in him as refiguring Christ. Lau Tzu promoted the growth of the human heart and healthy consciousness. Confucius embodied the Roman solution to the earth’s problems: power, authority, calculation.

While I was reflecting on my need to be more positive in my communication with Ginger, I heard the unexpected words coming straight from my own lips. “My desires are with Lau Tzu, but my allegiance is with Confucius.” In my heart I hope for following the example of Christ, but with my mouth I dwell on what’s going wrong, what’s about to be lost, what trend society is on, ad nauseum.

This squinty-eyed vigilance comes from my enneagram 6 personality. I trust in numbers more than in people. That’s my nature, the foundation of my personality. And if I want to defend that skepticism by saying that people are not inherently trustworthy, then I should remember my Hawaiian passage on this very point.

In Hawaii I experienced rapid-fire proof that people really aren’t trustworthy, but simultaneously I learned to trust God. In the light of my confidence in Him, it was as though I learned to trust others. I would even tell people, “The more I learned to trust God, the more I learned to trust others.” Now I can state it more accurately, “The more I trusted God, the less I feared the machinations of others.” I found that God could bring good from all things.

The question is not whether people are trustworthy, but whether God is. I believe that people can mess things up royally and God can use the mess to the good of anyone open to His voice. He can use anything as an object lesson leading us to greater understanding. I believe that, so I should talk from that position of trust, if not in people, in their Creator.

If I am so taken by Lao Tzu’s confidence in the Way, I need to quit calculating the perils as though I clung to Confucius’ more mechanistic philosophy.