> Prior to Christianity, value systems and myths were all oriented around strength, excellence, and achievement. Or around 仁, 義, 禮, 智, and 信. Humanitarianism,

> Prior to Christianity, value systems and myths were all oriented around strength, excellence, and achievement. Or around 仁, 義, 禮, 智, and 信. Humanitarianism, justice, tradition, wisdom, devotion. Confucius defined 仁 as: > Now the ren man, wishing himself to be established, sees that others are established, and, wishing himself to be successful, sees that others are successful. When asked for a definition another time he was more succinct. > Love others. This is certainly not Christianity, mind you. He did not, and I suspect would find it unnecessary, to go so far as condemning strength and elevating the meek. Still, he had some words of caution: > Riches and honors are what all men desire. But if they cannot be attained in accordance with the Way they should not be kept. Poverty and low status are what all men hate. But if they cannot be avoided while staying in accordance with the Way, you should not avoid them. I wrote the above to try to break into this here in the post: > At its core, all humanists, Marxists, and progressives want to find a way to justify Christian morality without Christian metaphysical belief. I did recognize the problem pretty early on. And I went searching. I found that others, far away in time and space, had seen the problem too. Some metaphysics required. For Confucius, it was the Way. Much closer to home and now, Tu Wei-Ming is an American philosopher and Confucian thinker. This is how he put it, better than I could: > We are here because embedded in our human nature is the secret code for heaven’s self-realization. Heaven is certainly omnipresent, may even be omniscient, but is most likely not omnipotent. It needs our active participation to realize its own truth.