Why Some Good People Do Not Become Christians
Exhibit A: Gandhi
Mohandas K. Gandhi, the nonviolent leader of India’s
revolution, learned a lot about Christianity but never became a
Christian. INFO ON NEW BOOK He read the whole Bible and was
particularly enthralled by the Sermon on the Mount. He read
countless books given him by Christian friends, acquaintances, and
strangers. He attended Christian prayer meetings, worship services,
and preaching meetings. But he found that the spiritual curiosity
awoken by his contacts with Christians led him to a deeper
appropriation of his native Hinduism. STICK IN SOME DATES.
One
reason that Gandhi never became a Christian was the distinction he
saw between the ethical seriousness of Jesus’ teachings and
the behavior of most Christians--and the explicit attitudes of some
Christians. He tells in his autobiography of his encounter with one
Christian who regarded any moral earnestness, any concern with
personal moral growth, as dangerous, since all that could be done
with sin was to throw it on the atonement won by Jesus. It added to
the matter that this Christian misunderstood Gandhi’s
earnestness (probably because of a standardized understanding of
non-Christian religions that the man had been taught). MORE ON
GANDHI’S EARNESTNESS AND AWARENESS OF SIN
Earnest
people will not be won by a religion that rejects moral
earnestness. This Christian as much as said: “There is no
redemption to be found in Christianity.” If there is no balm
in Gilead, then one who knows the need for balm, and Gandhi was
such a one, will seek elsewhere.
There
were other reasons that Gandhi gave for his not becoming a
Christian, reasons arising from his own understanding of religion
in general, but we have to think that this refusal of Christianity,
as it was sometimes interpreted, to offer any redemption from sin
was very important. Gandhi believed, in effect, that ethics was
bigger than any religion, that it stands behind religions. Also
rejected idea of divine and human coming together. Also standard
modern rejection of miracle. But Christian rejection of moral
earnestness was even more basic/pervasive than even he let on.
This
especially so because of the identification of Christianity and
Christendom, the latter being the colonial powers of Britain and
white South Africa, where nearly everyone was nominally Christian,
where being Christian was consequently part of fitting in rather
than evidencing redemption, where Christianity was, in fact,
closely linked with the military/colonial success of the
society.
Exhibit B: Nachmanides
As the ancient world was gradually replaced by the Middle Ages
Christianity was established as the dominant religion of Europe and
the religion of its rulers. The Jews of Europe had the unique place
of being the outsiders inside that Europe, a role that they carry
on in a modified way in Europe and America today. Efforts have
always been made to persuade Jews of the superiority of
Christianity and of the desirability of abandoning Judaism for
Christianity, and these efforts have often been linked with
Christian efforts to oppress, ostracize, and occasionally kill off
Jews.
Among
those efforts to convert Jews were debates ....
Nachmanides: The Messiah has not come because redemption has not
happened.
How could
he believe that redemption had occurred given what he and his
people experienced from Christians? The linking of government by
force with Christianity destroyed any possibility of conversion of
more than a few Jews. The same remains true today: When we offer
Christian faith to Jews today, we are asking them to have a short
memory, to abandon attitudes toward Christian faith and
Christianity that were established centuries ago and have had
little reason to go away. We are also asking them to ignore
residual Constantinianisms of today, most fundamentally the sense
shared by Christians that because of (or even despite) the nominal
Christianity of many people, that Christianity has a fundamental
claim on our society/nation/culture.
So also
with Gandhi explicitly in re. Constantinianism
The Jews:
Constantinianism is the reverse of redemption/earnestness (again,
Earnest souls put off by unearnestness)
Constantianism is a trading of earnestness for something easier
How
Constantianism works today For example, right to life (granted
it’s an attempt to save human lives, but better to make it
unnecessary for anyone in the church to have an abortion than to
seek to outlaw it for everyone in and out of the church). Christian
earnestness and moral Constantinianism are not the same thing; they
might even be opposites. At least I find it easier to say what can
be done through laws about the obvious and external sins of some of
my neighbors than to deal with my own internal sins. And which of
the two to focus on seems to be the most important lesson we can
draw from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount about
murder, divorce, and promise-breaking (Matt 5:21-37). It’s
easy to be aware of the destruction wrought by drug dealers, but if
that had been in Jesus’ day the issue it is today, he might
well have began a teaching with: “You know that it is against
the law to sell illegal drugs. But I say to
you...”—what? Don’t carry the attitude of a drug
dealer into your relationships? Do something for those whose lives
are such that they see no possibility more interesting than getting
high?
If
Christianity has a fundamental claim on a society/nation/culture
(ours, for instance, since some people think it does), then that
society/nation/culture has a fundamental claim on Christianity: The
alliance cuts both ways, so that Christianity must fail to be what
it is supposed to be, must fail to stand against culture with
Jesus’ transcendent call/claim. “Come apart and be
separate.”
Some of
what the harder way is (how to learn from the earnestness of
Gandhi). Christianity can be judged ethically by non-Christians,
and Christians can learn to hear Christ better from non-Christians
(but what is required by others/the world does not program what
Christianity is).