slowmutant wrote:
Fnord wrote:
The Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Ghandi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Ghandi he asked him, "Mr. Ghandi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?"
Ghandi replied, "Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Apparently Ghandi's rejection of Christianity grew out of an incident that happened when he was a young man practising law in South Africa. He had become attracted to the Christian faith, had studied the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, and was seriously exploring becoming a Christian. And so he decided to attend a church service. As he came up the steps of the large church where he intended to go, a white South African elder of the church barred his way at the door. "Where do you think you're going, kaffir?" the man asked Ghandi in a belligerent tone of voice.
(Kaffir, which once was a blanket term for black southern Africans, is now utilized exclusively as an ethnic or racial slur. The original meaning of the word was 'heathen', unbeliever or infidel, from the Arabic Kafir, but is now equivalent to the infamous "N-Word" of American culture.)
Ghandi replied, "I'd like to attend worship here."
The church elder snarled at him, "There's no room for kaffirs in this church. Get out of here or I'll have my assistants throw you down the steps."
From that moment, Ghandi said, he decided to adopt what good he found in Christianity, but would never again consider becoming a Christian if it meant being part of the church.
And people wonder why I'm so down on religion in general, and Christianity in particular.
That story is not a fair representation of the Christian faith. As always, Fnord, you drill down on the negatives and completely disregard the positives. Well done.
it's a highly accurate representation of the christian populous as well as faith. it's positive about the positives of christianity and negative about its followers. i think it's fairly accurate and lovely folks like the reverend andy above simply re-enforces such points (not to mention the loud, positive audience response to it).
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Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823
?I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.? - Hunter S. Thompson
14 Oct 2008, 3:34 pm
