There is, in my stunted mind, one unhurdable problem with the traditional Judeo-Christian view of God, and it's precisely that problem which steers me toward Taoist philosophy.
It's the fact that orthodox Christianity posits a God who is supremely involved in the lives of humans. That doctrine befuddles me. Ordinarily, befuddlement would be fine, since I don't pretend to understand concepts like the Trinity. But then, the idea of a roll-up-your-sleeves deity goes a step farther and flat-out repulses me, and that's quite a bit more problematic.
Don't be mistaken. My beef with regular-old Christianity is NOT the oft-asked "How can a loving God allow sh!t to happen!?" No, it goes more like this: I can't believe in a God who's managing the day-to-day operations of Earth, Inc. It's too cruel, too arbitrary, too incompetent on God's part.
Answer this one: "How does a person believe that God actively protects their four-year-old child while the four-year-old across the street gets inoperable cancer, or the six-year-old across town shoots himself with his dad's gun?" (That's not the same question as "Why does God allow evil to do its thing?")
So let's grant that you're a good, upstanding believer. Let's grant that you believe God has the power to influence events. (Otherwise, well, your God isn't very Judeo-Christian, is He?)
Either you believe this Divine Being sometimes exercises that power and steps in to interact positively with people, or you believe that Being doesn't ever go that route.
If you believe that Being doesn't, you kind of have to ask yourself if your god cares about people at all, and if a "personal relationship" is possible with such a god. You might also want to rethink your understanding of the Bible.
Put it another way: Either you believe God intervenes, or you believe God set the world in motion and then stepped out of the way to let events run their course.
But I can't have it this way: God gets occasionally involved, and sometimes lifts a finger to prevent calamity, and sometimes God can't be bothered. That way leads to madness. For me. Maybe you can deal.
And I don't think I'm falling prey to an either/or logical fallacy here. (Please point it out, if I am.)
I know it sounds like I'm saying, "The world sucks a lot for a lot of people, through no fault of their own, so if you think God's in charge, that's a mighty sadistic/lazy/incompetent God you got there."
If you think that, congratulations, you are getting warmer. But you're off the mark. Mostly, I don't have the patience to put my faith in a lousy God. And that makes me feel so much more at home in a philosophy where the divine is experienced through wonder and meditation, where the divine is not knowable on a personal level like I know my wife, but on a deeper plane, in a mystical communion.
And yet I'm a Christian; the more I read the Gospels, the more I fall in love with the essence of the Christ figure. Still trying to figure out what that means.
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