Christian and Confucian Values Bible Essay

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Gospel of Luke / Confucius REVISED

Although Jesus and Confucius are both seen as sources of wisdom in major religious traditions, it is useful to distinguish between the two of them. For a start, Confucianism is not a religion per se -- it offers no particular view of God or the afterlife, and instead concentrates on social relationships, aiming at rules of proper behavior. A comparison of certain well-known sayings by each sage -- taken from the Gospel of Luke and the Analects -- might clarify some of the differences between these two ethical worldviews.

Confucius notes "While your parents are alive, you should not go too far afield in your travels: if you do your whereabouts should always be known" (Lau 74). As Confucius is mostly concerned with principles of social organization and behavior, the right relation of children to their parents quite nearly provides the basis for his view of society:

Tzu-yu asked about being filial. The Master said, "Nowadays for a man to be filial means no more than that he is able to provide his parents with food. Even hounds and horses are, in some way, provided with food. If a man shows no reverence, where is the difference?" (Lau 64)

Confucius is here concerned with distinguishing between pro forma demonstration of filial piety and the actual meaning of it. The difference, as Confucius notes, is reverence.

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But Christ's famous "Parable of the lost prodigal son" in Luke 15:11-32 depicts a moral order that Confucius might very well have found horrifying. It begins with a man who has two sons: the younger asks for a portion of the family fortune and takes it to a foreign country where he squanders it on loose living and prostitutes. The moral comes at the end:

Now his elder son….became angry and refused to go in... Then the father said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found." (1859-60).

What sort of filial piety does the prodigal son evince? None whatsoever, as the elder son points out. He has violated Confucius' rule of filial piety that one should never travel too far, or to unknown destinations, when one's parents are alive. Yet Jesus is here speaking in a parable -- he is not actually offering direct advice to his followers that they should go out and spend their parents' money on whores.

However, Confucius elsewhere, in Analects XIV:10, has….....

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