Choice of faith

Author: Chen Weiwei / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features:
3. The Ultimate Nature of Faith
In one's life, there are many beautiful aspirations and different levels of pursuits. Faith is not just ordinary aspirations and pursuits, such as wanting to attend a good university, find a good job, or raise a good child. None of these qualify as faith. Faith is a fundamental ideology, a pursuit of the highest value. The so-called "fundamental ideology" refers to faith as the core of spiritual realm, determining one's worldview, life philosophy, values, and basic attitude toward life. The "core" is what Confucianism calls " (ren)," the nucleus, the central idea, around which other viewpoints revolve. As the saying goes, "，" (The landscape may change, but one's nature is hard to alter). Faith reflects a person's nature—it is difficult to establish and even harder to destroy. Once destroyed and rebuilt, it becomes even more challenging. Unlike general science and common sense, both philosophical faith and religious faith pursue the ultimate ideology.
Poezzi has a poem: "Life is precious indeed, love is even more so; if for freedom's sake, both may be cast aside." This shows that life is more valuable than ordinary things, love surpasses the value of life, and in the face of the ideal of freedom, both life and love seem insignificant. "Freedom" is Poezzi's "ultimate ideology." Wen Tianxiang, a famous national hero of the Southern Song Dynasty in China, left a message on his undergarment before his execution: "Confucius said ' (ren)'—to achieve benevolence; Mencius said ' (yi)'—to seek righteousness. Only by fulfilling righteousness can benevolence be attained. What have I learned from reading the classics? From now on, I hope to be blameless!" Truly, it is awe-inspiring for generations. After his death, his enemy Kublai Khan called him a "true man"! "" (Benevolence and righteousness fulfilled) is Wen Tianxiang's "ultimate ideology."
As communists, we believe in communism and must take it as our "ultimate ideology," rather than just keeping it as a slogan or in writings, using a lofty ideal to merely decorate ourselves. A true communist must be willing to abandon everything for the great goal of communism. When analyzing the psychology of some corrupt officials, it seems they treat the lofty ideal of communism as a mere decoration. For them, "decoration is precious indeed, official position is even more so; if for money's sake, everything can be abandoned." In the end, they even lost their heads. P8