Taoism and Chinese Folk Religion

The Way That Cannot Be Named

One of the most famous books in Asia opens by admitting that words will fail it: “The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name” (Tao Te Ching 1, Legge). Anyone who has stood under the night sky and run out of words can feel what that line is reaching for.

That book is half of this study. The other half is rarely read at all, because it is lived. At the new year in Honolulu's Chinatown, lion dancers go from shop to shop, believed to carry a blessing. In the spring, families gather at the Manoa Chinese Cemetery for Ching Ming. The 2020 Census counted more than 200,000 people in Hawaii with Chinese ancestry. Your neighbor, your in-laws, or your own grandmother may be part of this story.

This study sets out what Taoism and Chinese folk religion teach from their own sources, answers from Scripture, and helps you share the Gospel with a Chinese friend, with open eyes about what following Jesus may cost a family.

One word ties all of this to the Bible. The most widely used Chinese Bible opens John's Gospel with 太初有道, “In the beginning was the Dao,” and Dao is the newer spelling of Tao. But the Tao of the old book and the Word of John are very different. One cannot be named. The other has a name, a mother, and an empty tomb.

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”JOHN 1:14 · KJV