Ghandi

Whoa, 3 entries in one day!  Holy smokes!  My husband and sons are working on a construction project and I actually have some real time to dump my thoughts!  I have a thing for Ghandi.  I have mentioned it before on this blog.  One of my favorite quotes on Christianity comes from him, " I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  I think I love this quote because I can totally identify with it.  In a previous post I mentioned rejecting people that didn't accept my values.  There could be some self-identified Christians in that group.  It is important to note that in my vernacular, "reject" is NOT synonymous with "condemn".  I simply mean that I won't share my private time with them, but I will still show them love as best I can.


I think one of my stumbling blocks with finally owning my faith was that I felt I wasn't perfect enough to be Christian on the one hand, and I knew too many Christians that were flat out jerks that told me I wasn't good enough, or living righteously enough on the other.  Because of this I felt unworthy of Christ, like an ugly duckling and I my feelings were only being reinforced by people that should've been accepting and supporting me.  Talk about confusing.  I didn't and don't want to be associated with people that were and are so mean.  I want to be careful to not morph, accidentally, into a self-righteous jerk.  To prevent this I will be selective in who I let "into my head".


On the other hand I have known many people that don't yet know what they believe, or don't believe that Jesus is Christ, or don't believe in God for that matter.  I will always keep these people in my life, so long as they continue to accept me.  Why?  Because they live like Christ even if they don't share my faith in him.  I would rather have a friend that accepts me, and lives a life style in keeping  with my own, that will encourage me even if they don't agree with me.  They will rejuvenate me and enrich my life more than a self-identified Christian trying to pick, "a log out of their neighbors eye".  Even if they don't want to admit it, these friends of mine are more Christ like than the droves of Christians that actually drove me from Christ.


I have also been lucky enough to have plenty of Christian Friends that have given me strength to own my faith.  Friends that don't just have a bumper sticker relationship with Christianity, but they actually live the life a Christian is called to live.  Without those types of friends I would not be able to write this blog at all.  But, it's those friendships in which we disagree on fundamentals and yet can still get support, that Christ's love, as Ghandi would see it, is embodied.  So in short, faith Christ isn't my determining factor in who to include in my life, and my children's lives, but life styl, and willingness to support my faith in Christ is.  If one looks outwardly for the truth, and inward to judge we will most likely get along.  No one is perfect, most definitely not me.  I have chosen to live a life-style that actively rejects what the world embraces, and will surround myself with people who do the same.  You don't have to be a Christian to do that, but I need strength from Christ to become better than who I am, and to weather the criticism of the world that I am actively rejecting.  Why we are doing it may be the core difference in our values, and yet matters least in how we treat one another.  Behaviors, not beliefs is what matters most to me.


Religion, Spirituality, is a journey EACH ONE OF US takes.  We all seek answers to the same questions.  Some of us actively seek out answers, reading and researching for answers.  I, like Lee Strobel, took the journey and came to one conclusion.  Other's take the journey and come to yet another conclusion.  Some keep the journey locked within themselves never looking openly for answers, and never finding them.  No matter what another human's journey is, it is their's and not mine.  Who am I to tell them what they should do, where they should go.  It is simply my job to love them, and most of the time I fail them.  My job is to judge inward, not outward, so that I might love them better.  Really none of us knows (intellectually) the truth about much of anything.  Faith is something you can't know intellectually at all anyway.  It is something you live.  The rest of it is just a bramble of formalities many people get caught up in.  


I will discuss Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in a different post.  Reading his outlook on friendship and virtue really helped me navigate my way through this conundrum.