Page 11 - Built For God Handbook (Annotated and Explained Edition) - The Christian Edition of the Tao Te Ching - The New Evangelization - Pope John Paul II

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At first glance, you might think the Bible and the ancient
Chinese book, the Tao Te Ching, would have little in common. As a
lifelong Catholic, I certainly thought so for most of my life—or would
have, if I had given the topic any thought. After all, the Bible and the
Tao Te Ching come from different times and different cultures. The
Bible is primarily a religious book, while the Tao Te Ching isn’t
religious at all. The Bible is some three-quarters of a million words
long and would take weeks (or longer) to read in its entirety, while
the Tao Te Ching contains only eighty-one brief chapters and can
be read in a single afternoon.

My own personal journey has brought me to a place where
I see the Bible and the Tao Te Ching have much in common. In
fact, as I see it, God’s truth as revealed in the Bible also flows
through the Tao Te Ching in the form of principles—some might
even say spiritual principles—that, when put into practice, can help
you achieve your goals without wasted effort, experience serenity
whatever your circumstances, and otherwise improve your life,
sometimes dramatically.

Just what are these principles? To my mind, one of the
most powerful is what the Bible might call “living in the Spirit”—that
is, praying to understand God’s will, putting forth the effort to
accomplish it, and (this is crucial) trusting that as you cooperate
with the Spirit, the Spirit will add God’s energy to your endeavors,
so you can actually accomplish more with less work. The Tao Te
Ching has a similar, paradoxical teaching called wei wu wei, which
can be described as “action without action.” It refers to the idea that
when you cooperate with the Tao, or the Way of the universe, your