What is the relationship between faith and culture?

Let's talk about what culture and belief are.

Culture is a very broad category, which can include words, works, customs, lifestyles and even beliefs. So faith is an aspect of culture.

Faith is a spiritual, internal dependence and object, and its object can be ideal, character, spirit, or general "equality". Nowadays, beliefs in western culture are mainly Christian beliefs, that is, spiritual beliefs based on the Bible with Jesus as the object.

If we compare the scope of culture and belief, belief is a small but important aspect of culture. If the culture is 100, belief is only one of them at most, 1, or even less. Therefore, it is very one-sided to consider how it affects a civilization and whether it will fall behind because of the problem of faith.

Now people in China generally feel that they are backward. They think that they are backward because of the relationship between civilization and culture, because China's culture is backward to China's. Is that really the case? Not to mention culture, it can be said that China is inferior to the West in many aspects, such as economy, science and technology, including politics. The fastest economic development in these areas can also be developed, generally less than 50 years, which can be verified by a large number of actual historical materials in the history of world economy. Followed by science and technology, the development of science and technology will take at least 50 years. Look at South Korea's economy is not as advanced as the world, but its scientific and technological strength is still very backward, and it is also limited by many aspects. Let's talk about politics. Because the Cold War, especially for us in China, whether the so-called capitalist system is better or the so-called socialist system is actually a false proposition, just an ideology. After all, the political system serves the society and has no color. Capitalism is only good in the west because it has developed for hundreds of years. He is good not because he is good at capitalism, but because he has been improving and improving for hundreds of years. Therefore, the development of the political system needs hundreds of years of accumulation. And the political system is only one aspect of culture. Then the development of culture will take longer, and the culture of 1000 years is just immature. The oldest culture in the world is of course China culture. In today's world, only China culture has been truly passed down for more than 5,000 years. Why are other cultures cut off? Because time and practice are the best and cruelest meat grinder. A culture without depth and breadth will only be ruthlessly eliminated by history. In fact, what I mean by this is that China culture has been passed down not by luck, but by its root causes and advantages. It takes hundreds of years for the political system to develop and mature, but the more precious it is, the longer it will take to establish it. You can imagine how precious the culture of China is.

So why do people in China generally feel that their culture is failing, even worse than western culture? First, because most people have lost their understanding of their own culture, which is caused by historical factors, the popularization of cultural quality in China is still very low. Although China's culture is highly respected overseas, China people know nothing about their own culture. They know nothing about foreign culture, but blindly think that western culture is very advanced. The so-called self-knowledge, how can we talk about self-knowledge if we don't know ourselves? However, the western countries carried out economic system reform earlier, and the capitalist social system sprouted and developed, which promoted the supremacy of interests and efficiency, gave birth to the industrial revolution and economic development, stimulated social development and take-off in the economic, scientific and political systems, and left China, an ancient feudal economic system, far behind. So that after hundreds of years of catching up, China still lags behind others in all aspects. Because China has fallen behind others in economy, science and technology and political system. In another 50 years, it is hard to say that China cannot surpass the West in these respects.

Nowadays, many experts have joined the "ultimate" thinking of thinking and comparing Chinese and Western cultures. One of the most interesting viewpoints is that China culture has no faith. Recently, even the "old gentleman" in Yi Zhongtian mentioned the category of China culture, as if he wanted to call for a "spiritual pillar" for China culture. In fact, China culture has developed for five thousand years, and there is no shortage of "faith", but now there is no faith. When it comes to faith, China culture has no shortage of faith than any other culture, and the fashionable thing "faith" has long been the leftovers of China culture. China used to have faith. Anyway, many of them were abandoned after being civilized, because China's cultural platform is so extensive and profound that it is no longer possible for a few gods to represent and wear such a big hat. Having said that, I just want to say that the culture of China has been internalized and spiritualized. Or we can simply say that China culture is spiritual and China culture has been upgraded to spiritual culture. Western Christian culture has not evolved to the point where we can get rid of confusion and find spiritual sustenance. Christian culture also emphasizes original sin and self-salvation. But at the same time, it has become an excuse to get rid of sin. Europe and America have always been tolerant at home, extremely cruel at home and double standards at home, which is actually a reflection of their culture.