Tao Te Ching 19

Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit, and there won’t be any thieves.
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It takes time to come to grips with this chapter. It appears to strike at the heart of the American way. Actually, it strikes at the heart of our ego-centered and insecure need to compete and compare and, more importantly, at the heart of our self-righteous need to pass judgment on others.

Over the years, each of us has constructed our personal concepts of holiness, wisdom, morality, justice, industry and profit. Sensing that we are an insufficient foundation for our own proclamations, we attribute our concepts to our God, to our Country, to our Constitution, to our Partisan Truth, to our form of Capitalism, to our American Way of Life. People in other religions, nations, parties, socio-economic models, and ways of life do the same thing. Truth dons a million masks.

We become laws unto ourselves, and then we become the judges who interpret, apply and execute those laws. We become like God – knowing good from evil.

The Book of Genesis teaches us that the original sin of mankind is not found in an inherently sinful nature, but is found in our desire to “be like God, knowing good from evil.” That was the serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden – to be like God. God allowed Adam and Eve to eat from every tree in the Garden but one – the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam and Eve that “when you eat of it you will surely die.” How true that is.

Once we take upon ourselves the role of God, the role of judge, and believe that we possess the truth – knowledge about what is and is not holy, wise, moral, just, industrious and profitable – then we are on the road to death in various forms and degrees.

If we lay aside our self-righteousness and trust in creation, in the way of life and in our inherent nature, then we will find happiness and do the right thing. Then we will stop stealing the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then, we will once again have the eternal life that we had on the Seventh Day of creation when God rested and invited us to enjoy life in the Garden.