Harry Riches Answer requested by anonymous person
Harry Riches Answer requested by anonymous person
How can a Christian effectively answer Gandhi's quote "I love your Jesus, but not your Christians?"
Is someone who really views things this way potentially close to faith?
Or do you mean, Is someone who stated the following close to faith?
Gandhi attended a meeting where South African preacher Andrew Murray was speaking. I have read a number of biographies on Gandhi, and in one, which I have not come across since, Gandhi is quoted as having said that he had to exert all his will power to resist the preaching of Andrew Murray as he felt the urge to respond to the call to publicly acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord.
Andrew Murray was heralded by many who knew him as a man of God. Gandhi, on the other hand, was a lawyer who resented colonization. He believed every individual was acculturated to his tradition as children and to reject this was to reject one’s origins. For Gandhi to acknowledge Lord Jesus Christ as Creator meant that he had to deny his Indian heritage and forgive all those people who ill-treated him in South Africa for being a colored man. Unless one is subjected to this form of racism, one would not know how ingrained it can become, irrespective of which side of the coin one might find oneself.
One person I know, who became a Christian after more than thirty years of adventure and searching for the truth throughout the world, had to overcome his ingrained acculturation when a black man in a restaurant was invited to join us. This now retired man had spent the first twenty-five years of his life in South Africa. Although he came from a respectable white professional family, this man was a rebel and did not finish high school, whereas his brother became a professor in a UK university. When in South Africa, this man got drunk regularly and had even been locked up with blacks and coloreds in jail, but was always treated as their superior. Racism is just as obstinate as pride.
South Africa is where Gandhi came to understand racism. Gandhi became a racist and claimed that caste and religion can be swept aside, but race prevails. Anybody who asserts that they belong to a particular culture becomes a racist. Gandhi also claimed that everybody was born into their culture and they become acculturated and should not change. His pacifism was meritorious in that he was able to mobilize the resentment of Indians against their British overlords, channel it into peaceful protest and gain independence for India. Unfortunately, he was not like Lord Jesus Christ, for when Gandhi was shot by a disgruntled Hindu nationalist, there were no reports of his resurrection from the dead.
Many people read the Gospels and recognize the message of Jesus of Nazareth was mixed, for He spoke of people being condemned to eternal punishment, yet He Himself harmed no one. Instead of resorting to violence to defend Himself, Jesus restored even the ear of a soldier who came to arrest him, after it had been cut off by his disciple Peter. Such was the compassion of Jesus of Nazareth, even though He had foretold what was to become of Him, and understood where the soldier was going to take him. For Jesus was to be brutally and physically ill-treated beyond comprehension; yet he possessed the will to carry his own cross to the hill of crucifixion at Calvary, a forsaken individual—even by those who had shared His table—so that every human being could be reconciled to their Heavenly Father, if they so desired.
Gandhi may have claimed that he admired Jesus of Nazareth. Yet he did everything possible to deny Jesus the right to be Lord of his life when presented with the opportunity at that Keswick Convention Meeting in London, where Andrew Murray was speaking, and later at a convention in South Africa. The Commonwealth of the Kingdom of God transcends the nationalism and the racism that Gandhi sought to establish on behalf of the oppressed Indian. Unfortunately, Islam was not as accommodating, and the subcontinent was divided into Pakistan and India. If Gandhi truly admired the words and life of Jesus, He would have followed the only person to have risen from the dead, rather than seek to become a political player in the world that we live.
Many people claim to be Christian but instead they are like Gandhi, merely born into a culture without having any say as to who their parents would be. If Gandhi truly understood the words of Jesus, rather than pointing the finger at those who were like him—merely born into a culture without request—He would have acknowledged the highest authority as Savior.
- For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? (Matthew 16:26)
What is the point of being born only to die? What is the point of the suffering in the world? Every one dies. If people are born to die and then they suffer in between, how can the world experience true love?
Gandhi died at the hands of a nationalist. Gandhi’s killer apparently believed the man of peace was ceding too much wealth and too many rights to newly partitioned Pakistan.[1]
Lord Jesus Christ died because He came to provide people the means to possess eternal life. In this is love, not that we can love God, but rather that He has loved us and given His Son so that we might know true love—righteous love—and eternal life.
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