I am not the man I want to be

No, really. I am not the man I want to be.

I suspect lots of us aren’t the people we want to be, really. Part of this stems from our own consciences (a word that seems to have fallen out of favor). Our views on life might shape how we view particular details, but when it comes to the larger questions, we frequently agree more than we disagree:

For whenever people of the nations that do not have law do by nature the things of the law, these people, although not having law, are a law to themselves. They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them and, between their own thoughts, they are being accused or even excused.

Romans 2:14,15, New World Translation

And so I keep trying to put on the “new personality”, because I believe every human on earth should keep working towards some higher goal. I don’t really have the words to completely express my feelings here.

I’ve done a good bit of reading about Gandhi lately. Here in the West, we seem to mostly get a soundbite version of him. A skinny Indian man who had something to do with getting rid of the British Empire and salt. Oh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. cited him as an influence and inspiration. (This last bit seems to comprise the only reason most Americans know anything about Gandhi.) So I started reading about satyagraha and ahimsa, the two core concepts that Gandhi taught.

For the record, I subscribe to neither the Hindu nor Buddhist belief systems, and I do not have some notion that Gandhi was inspired (at least not in the “god-breathed” sense understood by Jews / Christians / Muslims). But I do think that his teachings exhibit a great deal of compatibility with the Sermon on the Mount, as he mentioned quite a few times. Whatever wisdom and moral strength he had could therefore shine a little more light on what I see as the right path to follow.

But when I look at what satyagraha, loosely translated as “civil resistance”, actually includes, I feel intimidated. It goes far beyond the concept of ahimsa, or “nonviolence”. One following this path chooses to suffer violence and oppression actively, as a way of converting the oppressor. It comes from a position of inner strength, not weakness, and a total commitment to the truth. Gandhi also called it “soul force”, the term King preferred during the civil rights struggle in the US. I see this as a logical extension or consequence of Christ teaching us to “love your enemy” and “turn the other cheek.”

I see the strength of these men and the millions of anonymous people who have tried to follow these sorts of paths but whose names don’t make it into the history books. And I wonder whether I would, or could, have the same strength that they did.

Hypocrisy in Christendom

When I first saw the tweet from @human3rror (whom I originally followed for WordPress conversations) regarding the post 10 Reasons I Don’t Like Most Christians, I thought it was something else. But then I read it and thought about it (and realized the author’s focus differed from what I originally envisioned).

The core point focuses around what I consider the hypocrisy of most people calling themselves “Christians.”

I certainly don’t believe that “Christians hate people with money,” though that’s mostly because it seems to me that many who claim to be Christian have a strong focus on money and materialism in this society. And the concept that Christians “worship their theology more than Jesus” also rubs me the wrong way: that doesn’t even parse to me. Does the author really believe that doctrine doesn’t matter? The fact that the statement itself states a core doctrinal disagreement in our theology points up the difference there.

The last point, really, reflects more about today’s pop culture than it does about Christianity. Sit down and listen to Bach’s Johannes Passion or Matthaeus Passion and tell me about mediocrity. Go spend some time contemplating the Pieta and tell me about mediocrity. So-called “Christian rock” has little artistic redeeming value, certainly. That likely stems, however, from trying to conform to a bland aesthetic that doesn’t actually challenge anyone’s status quo.

I do agree, though, that many in Christendom focus more on labels and groups than on following the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44-47) and the rest of the Scriptures. That feeds into his first point that ‘most Christians are angry and bitter and worried,’ which (to me) further leads to the admonitions for Christians to ‘let our light shine’ in Matthew 5:14-16 and not to focus on judging others (Matthew 7:1-5). In fact, his core message is that most professed Christians stray pretty far from the way we should live, and that we should focus on both living an upright life and attracting others to serve God. On this, we do agree.

I don’t dislike Christians. I dislike the claim that one serves God through following Christ when in fact doing nothing of the sort. We should recognize the difference between struggling with our own imperfections, something every one of us do daily, and struggling with broken subcultures and the misguided focus on trying to help people to serve God without actually shaking things up.

Neither Jesus nor the apostles displayed a fear of reproving those needing it nor showing kindness, consideration, and affection to those needing those things. When we work towards following God’s requirements and follow the cramped, narrow road that leads to life, then we become the sort of Christians that inspire and motivate others to ‘take in knowledge of the only true God and of the one whom he sent forth’ (John 17:3).