Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison.

• Luke 12:58

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and todayand forever.

• Hebrews 13:8

“In 220 CE, the ruling Chinese Han Dynasty collapsed, heralding an era of moral confusion. Philosopher Wang Bi helped to bring order to this chaos by reconciling two dominant schools of thought. He argued that Daoist texts should not be read literally, but more like works of poetry, thus making them compatible with the highly practical Confucian ideals of political and moral wisdom. His fresh appraisals of Daoism and Confucianism ensured the survival of both, and paved the way for the spread of Buddhism across China.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Wang Bi, courtesy (style) name Fusi (226-249AD), was a Chinese minor bureaucrat and philosopher.  His inclusion in the “one hit wonder philosophers” is partly due to his death in an epidemic when he was 23 years old.

But this is a very interesting phenomenon in eastern Culture.  Wang Bi reconciled Taoism, started by Laozi, and Confucian philosophy.  This allowed them to coexist if you will, but what resulted is the rise of Buddhism.  Laozi predated Confucius by possibly one hundred years or less, but Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism was born 12 years before Confucius and outlived him.

And then Wang Bi came about 250 years later to propose something that could end the strife in the nation after the fall of the Han Dynasty.  And that reconciliation changed the philosophy of the region for centuries to come.  There was moral decay.  If you wanted to reconcile with a neighbor, who was the authority now that the dynasty had collapsed?

But that only points to the fragility of schools of thought.  There are still people who follow Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.  But an astute bureaucrat makes a small change in reasoning, and the balance of “power”, if you will, shifts in a third direction.

God never changes.  And the foundation of the Christian Church has not changed in 2,000 years.  But even the Bible speaks of a day when The Antichrist will come and declare that he is the supreme ruler of the entire earth, worthy to be worshipped.  And the End Times will have begun.

Philosophical thought will come and go, but God is eternal, and when we push God too far, His Mercy will take a back seat and the final judgment of this fallen and broken world will begin.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.