The Mozi Connection

What Does BMOZI Mean?

People ask this all the time. The name looks like it should be pronounced a certain way, like it belongs to a language you almost recognize but can't quite place. That reaction is not accidental.

The short answer is that BMOZI is an acronym:

Five pillars. Five words that together describe a life lived on purpose, oriented around God and turned outward toward other people. That alone would be enough of a story.

But there is a deeper layer.

The name BMOZI also deliberately honors a man named Mozi — written 墨子 in Chinese, pronounced "Moh-Dzuh" — a philosopher who was born around 470 BC, roughly 2,400 years ago. That is approximately 470 years before Jesus walked the roads of Galilee.

Mozi lived on the other side of the world from Palestine. He had never read the Hebrew scriptures. He had no access to the teachings of Moses or Isaiah or any of the prophets. He was working within an entirely different intellectual tradition, in the middle of one of the most turbulent centuries in Chinese history.

And he arrived at essentially the same conclusion that Jesus would teach five centuries later.

That story — the story of why two men separated by 500 years and 5,000 miles said the same thing about love — is what this page is about. It is the story behind the name, and I think it is one of the most intellectually compelling arguments for the universality of the gospel that I have ever encountered.

Who Was Mozi?

To understand why Mozi matters, you have to understand the world he was born into. China in the 5th century BC was not a unified empire. It was a collection of warring kingdoms — a period historians literally call the Warring States — where nobles fought constantly over territory, commoners suffered the consequences, and the intellectual class was trying desperately to answer the question: why is the world so broken, and what would fix it?

Multiple schools of philosophy emerged in response to that crisis. Confucius, who died just a few years before Mozi was born, had argued that the answer lay in restoring proper social relationships — hierarchy, ritual, filial piety, the right ordering of society from the emperor down. Confucianism was already the dominant intellectual framework by the time Mozi began teaching.

Mozi did not agree.

According to the historical record, Mozi was likely a craftsman by trade — some accounts suggest he was a carpenter or artisan, skilled with tools and practical problems. That detail matters. Like Jesus of Nazareth after him, Mozi was not a nobleman or a scholar by birth. He was a man of the working class who thought deeply about justice, observed suffering firsthand, and asked hard questions about why the powerful so consistently harmed the weak.

He founded what became known as the Mohist school, and in his time it was considered one of the two great philosophical traditions alongside Confucianism. The Mohists were known not just for their ideas but for their willingness to live them out. His followers practiced severe self-discipline, lived simply, worked with their hands, and were willing — according to ancient accounts — to die in order to defend cities against unjust military aggression. They were philosophers who showed up on the walls.

Mozi himself traveled constantly, moving from kingdom to kingdom, trying to persuade rulers to abandon plans for aggressive warfare. He argued with kings. He lost sleep. He wore out sandals. Ancient accounts say his legs had no hair on them from the road. He did not sit in a comfortable academy and lecture students. He went to where the suffering was and tried to stop it.

He also challenged the dominant intellectual establishment of his era — Confucianism — in ways that made him unpopular in elite circles. He was criticized, dismissed, and ridiculed. He did not stop.

Sound familiar?

Universal Love — 兼愛 Jian Ai

Everything in Mozi's philosophy flows from one central insight, captured in two Chinese characters: 兼愛, pronounced jian ai. The standard translation is "universal love" or "impartial caring." But to really grasp what Mozi meant, you need to understand the diagnosis he started with.

Mozi looked at all the suffering in the world — the wars, the exploitation, the corruption, the cruelty — and asked: what is the common cause? His answer was precise and devastating. Every form of human harm, he argued, traces back to the same root: people love their own group and are indifferent to everyone else.

A king loves his kingdom and attacks his neighbors. A lord loves his family and exploits other families. A man loves his clan and ignores the suffering of strangers. When you only extend care to people who are like you, close to you, or useful to you, the natural result is a world that looks exactly like the Warring States period: fractured, violent, and unjust.

The solution, Mozi argued, was equally radical. If partial love is the disease, then impartial love — 兼愛 — is the cure. Every person, regardless of their family, their nation, their social status, or their relationship to you, deserves the same moral concern you give to yourself and your own family. Not less. The same.

His critics thought he had lost his mind.

The Confucian philosopher Mencius — one of the great minds of the era — attacked Mozi's teaching with a pointed objection: you cannot love everyone equally. To love a stranger the same as your own father is absurd. It violates the natural order of human relationships. It ignores the proper gradations of affection that make society function. Mencius called it "love without discrimination" — and he meant it as a condemnation.

Mozi's reply, paraphrased from his actual writings, was essentially: yes, you have described my teaching correctly. That is precisely what I am arguing. Everyone deserves equal concern. Not because the feelings are identical, but because the obligation is.

He went further. He grounded this ethic in what he called 天志 — tian zhi, "Heaven's will" or "the will of Heaven." Mozi argued that Heaven — the highest moral authority in Chinese religious thought — cares about all people equally and wants human beings to do the same. Heaven does not play favorites. Heaven's will is that no one be neglected.

He also developed a remarkably practical extension of the argument. He asked his opponents: if you were going on a long journey and needed to leave your family in someone's care, would you choose a friend who practiced 兼愛 or one who only cared for his own people? Everyone, he pointed out, would choose the one who practiced universal love — because that person is more trustworthy. The ethics are not just idealistic. They are the foundation of a functioning world.

"If everyone cared for others as they care for themselves, would there be anyone left unloving? Would there be anyone unfaithful? Would there be fathers and sons who were not kind and filial? There would not." — Mozi, Book of Universal Love, c. 400 BC

The Parallels with Jesus

Now hold Mozi's teachings next to the life and words of Jesus Christ. Not to conflate them — they are not the same person, they did not teach the same doctrine, and Mozi's philosophy lacks the atonement, the resurrection, the covenants, and the saving power that are at the center of the gospel. That matters enormously.

But on the question of love — who deserves it, how much of it, and what it requires of us — the convergence is extraordinary. Read the parallels below and tell me these two men were not perceiving the same truth.

Ten parallel teachings. Ten areas where a man born in 470 BC China and a man born in a stable in Bethlehem arrived at the same conclusion. The specifics of doctrine are different. The covenantal framework is different. The saving power is entirely different. But the ethics — who deserves love, what love requires, what kind of world love builds — are the same.

That is not a coincidence. That is a signal.

What This Means for BMOZI

The BMOZI brand carries both meanings simultaneously: the acronym and the philosopher. That double layer is intentional.

When someone downloads Covenant Path, they are joining a community built on the conviction that love — the Christlike love described in Matthew 22 and 1 Corinthians 13 and Moroni 7 — is not a sectarian preference or a culturally specific value. It is a universal truth. It is what the best human minds have always arrived at when they search seriously for the answer to human suffering.

Mozi looked at the Warring States period and diagnosed it correctly: we love too narrowly. Jesus looked at first-century Palestine and said the same thing in different words: love your neighbor, and your neighbor is everyone. The Book of Mormon adds a third witness from yet another civilization: even a king is here to serve.

The name BMOZI is a statement that this brand belongs to no single cultural tradition while being fully rooted in one. We are a Christian app. We believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe in the Atonement, in the covenant path, in the restoration. And we also believe that the core ethical insight of that gospel — love God, love everyone — is not our private property. It is a truth that human beings across history have independently discovered, which is exactly what you would expect if the God who revealed it to Moses and Jesus is the God of the whole earth.

The character 墨 (mò) in Mozi's name means "ink" — the mark you leave on the page, the trace of thought and intention that outlasts you. Mozi left his mark. Jesus left the deepest mark in human history. BMOZI exists to help ordinary people leave their own mark by becoming the kind of person who loves the way both of those men said you should: without limits, without partiality, without conditions.

The B in BMOZI: Belief as the Radical Act

The B stands for Belief. It comes first in the acronym because everything else flows from it. But belief in what, exactly?

Here is what I mean when I say Belief: the conviction — held against all evidence to the contrary, against every cynic who says people are fundamentally selfish, against every news cycle that seems to confirm that the world runs on power and fear — that love is the answer. Not love as a soft sentiment. Love as the organizing principle of a life. Love as the most demanding and most transformative discipline a human being can undertake.

Mozi held that belief in 470 BC. He was ridiculed for it. The Confucian establishment called his 兼愛 naive, impractical, and socially destabilizing. They said you cannot love everyone equally. He said: watch me try.

Jesus held that belief in 30 AD. He was crucified for it. The religious establishment called his teachings dangerous and his claims blasphemous. He said: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor the same way you love yourself, and on these two commandments hang everything.

Two men. Five centuries apart. Five thousand miles apart. Both arrived at the same belief. Both were opposed for it by the dominant intellectual and religious institutions of their day. Both changed the world anyway.

That is not a coincidence. When two independent thinkers, working from completely different traditions, with no access to each other's texts, arrive at the same conclusion, the most rational explanation is not that they were both wrong in the same way. The most rational explanation is that they were both perceiving the same reality.

The belief that love is the answer is not naive. It is the most radical, counter-cultural, world-changing idea in human history. It has toppled empires. It has ended slavery. It has built hospitals, schools, and communities that have outlasted every civilization that rejected it. It is the most dangerous idea ever conceived, which is why every authoritarian system in history has tried to extinguish it.

"The first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." — Matthew 22:38–40

The B in BMOZI is a declaration that we believe this. We are betting our company, our app, our time, and our effort on the conviction that helping people grow in love — love for God and love for each other — is the highest and most useful thing we can do with whatever days we have been given.

Continue the Journey

The parallels between Mozi and Jesus open doors into some of the richest territory on this site. Here are the pages that connect most directly to the ideas on this page.

Common Questions