The Non-Anthropomorphic God

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”(Matthew 5: 44–45)

Are you turned off, just like most atheists and secularists do, by the words like “God” or “the Lord”? Don’t be. Remember that ancient people had no word for “Nature,” “Evolution” or the “Universe.” So, Jesus used the word “Father.” The ancient Chinese used the word “Heaven”( 天). To the ancient Chinese, whether there is to be a drought or a flood is determined by “Heaven.”

So, Jesus said that the Father causes the sun to rise for both the evil and the good. And the Father also sends rain to both the righteous and the unrighteous. In Jesus’s eyes, the Father is impartial. Father does not take sides. In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu said that “Heaven and Earth are not kind; they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs.” For a long time, I had a problem understanding this saying. Why are heaven and earth not kind? It was only a few years ago that it dawned on me that Lao Tzu probably meant that nature is not partial. Nature does not play favorites. It treats everybody the same. It does not even give special treatment to humans. The Tao is neither anthropocentric nor anthropomorphic. This is Lao Tzu’s vision of nature’s God. Jesus…