Confucius said: Stay away from ghosts and gods.

If you want to explore the original meaning of a sentence, especially the famous sayings of the ancients, you'd better understand it in context.

Fan Chi turned to Confucius for wisdom. Confucius said: serving the people honestly and not engaging in ghosts and gods is the wisdom of being an official.

This idea is in line with our slogan of being an official in contemporary times. Kong is a saint after all.

"Away from ghosts and gods" here, according to the social environment at that time, should refer to all kinds of ghost sacrifices. Confucianism came into being because Zhou ethics has become a school, that is to say, this is the rice bowl of Confucianism. Why did Confucius put forward "far"? Because by the time of Confucius' development, Confucianism had formed and divorced from all kinds of rituals and sacrifices, and had formed the guiding ideology of respecting heaven and earth and doing everything possible.

Primitive worship originated from ignorance. In fact, during the Shang Dynasty, the Central Plains was similar to India, with ghosts and gods everywhere, and primitive worship was extremely developed. The rulers of the Zhou dynasty were not very interested in ghosts and gods, but were more concerned with personnel-that is, the origin of Confucianism. Moreover, the rise of kingship gradually reduced the divine right. Until the formation of the "divine right of kingship" of Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty, China had no chance to keep pace with the imperial power for thousands of years. They are all in power, whether Buddhism or Taoism. Being a "Buddhist teacher" is already the highest goal.

The concept of despising ghosts and gods lies in the fact that Confucianism, as the official school of practical learning, cannot and will not let things like ghosts and gods stop serving the world and imperial power. The "divination" in the Eastern Han Dynasty was one step short and was immediately pulled back.

Therefore, we also call the Spring and Autumn Period a historical period in which simple materialism prevailed. However, due to low productivity, backward science and many unexplained phenomena, all kinds of beliefs born of ignorance have been deeply rooted.

Confucius' theory focuses on personnel. As a discipline that doesn't care about ghosts and gods, there is no theoretical evidence to prove that ghosts and gods don't exist and don't want to offend.

If there are ghosts and gods, it will be known after death that it is the basis for Confucianism to respect heaven and ancestors. If there is no ghosts and ignorance after death, what else can make people in the world fear and be filial? So this thing itself has contradictions, and Confucius' solution is to ignore it and refuse to discuss it.

"How can you deal with ghosts if you can't deal with people?" It's his famous saying. Not only did he not talk about ghosts, but he even avoided talking about ghosts. He said, "If you don't know life, how can you know death?"

Therefore, "staying away from ghosts and gods" is a compromise method of Confucius' theory of ghosts and gods.