Problem Attic. Insert witty tagline here.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

31st Stanza

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

The tenth stanza:

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

(Yeah, I know, more Left Behind. Sorry.)

• A Review of the Movie (I’m kinda curious to watch it for a laugh sometime)
• A scary, scary Hal Lindsey comic book (4MB PDF; dangerous paranoid nonsense, but bizarrely and surreally entertaining.)

This makes a pretty good argument, I think:

But if you read such passages looking for any excuse to exempt yourself from the apostle’s condemnation, this offers an ideal escape hatch. Preaching against self-love, ingratitude, love of money or love of pleasure can be a two-edged sword. But if you’re heterosexual, and you’re preaching against homosexuality, then you’re safe. You’ve found the ideal target for self-exempting, self-justifying self-righteousness.

(Tangential to the Left Behind stuff, found in the same place.)

And I quote:

I refer to Left Behind and its many sequels and prequels as the Worst Books Ever Written because they’re so consistently awful in so many different ways: theologically, politically, ethically, stylistically, all presented along with howling errors of continuity, logic and even basic geography. All of which combines to make these books not merely bad, but instructively bad.

Actually worth a read; he has some interesting things to say.