The fifth chapter of the Book of Amos is a wonderful exhibition of the wrath of the prophet projected onto God and ruling the spirit of the times: “I hate, I despise your feasts and take no delight in your solemn assemblies…” This is a perfect example of the Biblical way of perceiving the power of the puppets over the puppet master, imagining that the people control God with their behavior, for better and for worse. It is absurd to think that God, with compete power to arrange things to God’s liking, is utterly at the will of the people who control and determine what God does throughout their lives.
I much prefer the Taoist idea of merging with the flow of the Tao in living at one with the drift of one’s the natural impulse of our bodies in conjunction with the way of things generally, in light of the seasons and the tides, with no sense of managing nature according to our wants and desires, but of tempering our preferences for our way in order to align ourselves with The Way that can be intuited and grasped in sensing/knowing the oneness of the Moved with the Mover throughout our lives.
The Tao doesn’t love or hate us, reward or punish us, but simply guides and directs us through our choices and decisions in aligning ourselves with the way of nature in being who we are and doing what is ours to do as only we can do it in each situation as it arises here, now, always and forever.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 