No Records Found
No Records Found
No Records Found
BY GREGORY T. SMITH
How do you describe Ultimate Reality? Judaism called it YHWH. Jesus translated this as “Ego Eimi.” Lao Tzu called it the Tao, or “The Way.”
Christians often view God incorrectly as an old grandfather in the sky. It’s no wonder—throughout Church history, artists depicted God in this way. When pressed, believers often admit that God is ultimately indescribable. But an indescribable God is hard to wrap your head around. Jews, Christians, and Taoists Jesus and the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (Laozi) shared much in common. One common denominator was their attempt to describe the indescribable. Here’s how Lao Tzu put it in the Tao Te Ching, Taoism’s most sacred text:
Tao Te Ching – Verse 1
J.H. McDonald Translation
The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.
The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.
Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.
Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.
Lost in Translation
The opening lines of the Tao Te Ching remind the Christian reader of words that echo back to the beginning. Genesis says that in the beginning, Earth was formless and void. No word had yet been spoken. No differentiation was yet made. That void, formless and dark, was the womb of nascent creation. It was in that unspoken essence that the Eternal can be understood in its most pure form. Yet, at some point, long after the first words were spoken, we decided we must call it something. So, we called it by the many names of God. Yet, by our naming, something got lost in the translation.
I AM Who I AM
For Jewish believers, the pronounceable name of God is not the eternal God. When Moses asked who he should say was sending him to Pharoah, the burning bush answered, “I AM WHO I AM.”
Solar storms that caused pretty auroras can create havoc with technology — here’s how Billions are spent on educational technology, but we don’t know if it works Driving Innovation on National Technology Day: Celebrating India's breakthroughs and the brilliant m Paris-bound Olympic sailor Nethra Kumanan felicitateted
SRM Institute of Science and Technology, on What is ‘techno-optimism’? 2 technology scholars explain the ideology that says technology is the an
Home
