Thoughts from Madison Nef
Chapter two is segmented, as chapter one was. It begins with the telling of three different religions in three different cultures: the Christian theological view, the Greek pagan view, and the Chinese Taoist-Confucianist view. Yutang states that he did not include Buddhism because he found the religion “too sad”.
Yutang started off by describing the Christian faith. Just going off of how he described the faith, I would say that Yutang did not agree with the faith at all. In fact, he almost went out of his way to point out the logical, but doubtful questions about it, STARTING with the Devil himself. He said that Christians didn’t want a “Not-God” to be of an equal level as their God, so they made the Devil a fallen angel. Yutang then states that for there to be a fallen angel, there had to be ANOTHER Devil of some sort to influence the angel to fall.
Yutang also made a point of how Christians today overlook the worse parts of their religion- and I agree with him. Too often people are gung-ho about Heaven and they tend to forget that if there is a Heaven, there is also a Hell. They love and praise God, but if there is a God then there is also a Devil. To every religion there is a not so nice part, and if you are going to truly devote yourself to religion then you should look at it with truth and not through rose colored glasses.
Next, Yutang speaks of the Greek culture. He says that what struck him most about their religion was that their gods resembled men- they quarreled, lied, loved, went hunting, and engaged in all sorts of human activities and were modeled after men- not men modeled after God. Apart from their immortality, many of the Greek gods were the same as humans! In comparison to the Christian God, whom was looked upon as perfect, Yutang found it refreshing to see imperfection in religion.
He also liked the fact that the Greek gods were so close to men. The Greeks themselves knew they were different from their gods- they were mortal, their gods were divines. And they didn’t mind that! They were more focused on trying to find the happiness in life, in discovering the good morals and the beautiful things in their world. There was no worry over what was scientifically correct or not; nor were there any squabbles between them. They took life as it was, with no exceptions or otherwise, and believed that it was a great gift to be mortal and be able to understand things on a different speculative level.
The Taoist-Confucianist religion is something completely different from both Christianity and the Greek religion. They believed in great spirits, or “geniuses”. Every mountain, every river, anything that had been around for more than a century or so, was considered a genius. Each mountain had a spirit that owned it and controlled it, and every flower had a fairy to take care of it. There were celebrations for larger spirits, such as the Queen of All Flowers and All Souls’ Day for those who had died at sea or in other unreachable places.
It was also the Chinese belief that the spirits of dead people could and WOULD wander if they were not properly buried after death. If the person was murdered or died in some other way, their spirit would stick around until their murderer or the guilty party was dealt with. Then, they would have peace and all the craziness that was believed to be brought with the vengeful spirit would end.
Looking at this chapter as a Catholic, I think that Yutang did a great job of putting three very different religions into perspective for others. He raised good points that I had not thought of about my own religion, and I learned a little something about two other religions I otherwise wouldn’t have researched.
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