A simple critique of a chinese deity

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I was just thinking on the bus the other day: the chinese worships a deity by the name of Guan Gong, who is actually the deification of the historical character, Guan Yu, from the era of the Three Kingdom. From what we know from Hong Kong serial, generally two groups of people worship the deity: the policemen to ask the deity to help them find justice and protect them, and the crooks for the deity's value of 'yi' which means camaraderie.

Now, I highly suspect what we see in dramas is true and if this is so, I would say this is a very conflicted deity. With police and thief worshipping him, he cannot possibly answer the prayer of both sides. To answer the prayer of the police to find justice is to defy his crooked worshippers, but to answer the latter's prayer is to defy the value of justice which he seems to embody. Either way, he contradicts himself.

The conclusion? Deification is a human invention and therefore the deities mirror human behaviour, even to their sins and morals. This was exactly the kind of thing that Socrates questioned but no one dared to face up to reality for a very long time. For Chinese in Singapore, no one would really dare to realise that they do not know what they worship.

It is indeed a sad spiritual case.

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