Gandhi Was onto Something
Gandhi Was onto Something
If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably heard this quote before:
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Non-Christians love to use it as an explanation for why they don’t want anything to do with Christianity.
Tim Challies recently wrote an article for Christianity.com in which he argued two reasons why he thinks Christians should disregard Gandhi’s remarks about the Christian faith — one reason being that Gandhi didn’t understand who Jesus really was, and the other being that he didn’t accept the real good news of Jesus Christ for himself.
Challies’ reasons are factual. Gandhi never accepted Jesus’ claims that He was the Son of God and one with God. It’s also true that Gandhi believed he was good enough — or capable of becoming good enough — by his own merit to not need salvation by grace through faith.
These facts do, to some degree, discredit Gandhi’s making authoritative remarks about true Christianity.
I disagree with Challies, however, that this means Christians should disregard Gandhi’s remarks about our faith altogether. Rather, I think we need to take a good, hard look at what Gandhi was trying to communicate and what his statement (based on his personal observations and experiences) meant, not so much about Jesus or Christianity, but about those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.
If we can truly say that we, as Christians, are like Christ, then Challies is right. We absolutely should ignore Gandhi’s commentary on Christians.
From my own personal observations and experiences, however, I cannot say that. I can’t say it about the general population of Christians (or those who call themselves Christians), and most of the time, I can’t even say it about myself.
Can you?
When non-Christians make disparaging remarks about us that cause us to become defensive, or to feel as if we need to go on the offense in response, pointing fingers back at them and discrediting them — more often than not, what this means is that they hit the nail right on the head.
Whether or not Gandhi liked the real version of Jesus or some version that he’d made up of his own liking, the reality is, the Jesus of the Bible is far better than we are. So rather than ignoring or disparaging Gandhi’s words, I think Christians should vehemently agree with him on this!
Let’s humbly acknowledge that, even though we’ve put our faith in Jesus Christ for our salvation, and we’ve committed our lives to following Him, we still fall incredibly short of His likeness. Let’s make much of the fact that we still have a long way to go — that we’re just scratching the surface of His goodness, and that it’s going to take time along with a willingness to admit we’re not like Jesus for us to become pliable enough for Him to do the work of changing us and making us more and more like Himself (Philippians 2:13).
The point is that, though none of us likes to be the excuse given for why someone refuses to put their faith in Jesus, that’s not an excuse for us to dig our heals in and say that they’re the problem, not us.
For those who blame others for their refusal to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, their excuses will fall flat when they stand before God.
But so will ours, if we say the reason we never actually humbled ourselves and allowed God to transform us into the likeness of Christ was that we refused to be held accountable by people who called out our unloving behavior and said that they didn’t think we looked like Jesus, simply because we didn’t believe they were a credible authority on the matters of Christianity or what Jesus really looked like.
We are so unlike our Christ.
Admitting it goes a long way.
Not being okay with it — not being okay with staying that way for the rest of our days here on earth — goes a lot further.
The Apostle Paul gave us this exhortation:
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. - Ephesians 4:1-3 (NIV)
We come to salvation by humbly acknowledging our need for Jesus; and we become like Him by humbly acknowledging how much we are nothing like Him, and by letting Him fundamentally change us from the inside out — one day, one thought, one belief, one behavior at a time, for the rest of our earthly lives. This is what it means to live a life worthy of the calling we received.
So rather than getting offended when someone says, “You’re nothing like Jesus,” agree with them. Let that be the starting place of an opportunity to tell them about the real Jesus — the one you are nothing like yet, but whom you are slowly becoming more and more like, one day at a time!
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. - Philippians 1:6 (ESV)
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