Mahatma Gandhi was once invited to speak at the House of Commons in England. He spoke for over 2 hours and brought an essentially hostile audience to a standing ovation before he was done. Following his speech, some reporters approached his secretary, Mahadev Desai, inquiring if indeed it was possible that Gandhi could mesmerize his audience for that long without using any notes whatsoever. They did not believe it.
Desai responded:"What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does are all the same. He does not need notes....You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track."
Gandhi himself once was quoted as saying, "My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another. My life is my message."
My question is this: why don't I live this way?
Here in Ukraine, there is a rich historical tapestry of foibled religiosity. One group cries: "Come as you are!" ...as they claim the only way to honor God is by wearing a suit and speaking in pleasantries. Another assures us that the "Devil" has no power over us, and at the same time decrying us to not wear ties because they point down to "him". "My God shall supply all your needs... now let us take up the offering!" And these are just the silly examples. While I realize that problems of this sort are not unique to this Eastern-bloc country; nevertheless as a newly acquainted student of foriegn culture, I am accutely aware of all the problems within my corner of the religious world.
So, I guess the flip-side is this: why do we continue to live that way instead?
What would happen if what I thought, felt, said, and did were all one and the same, if my life were an indivisible whole, and what would that look like? Im fairly capable of letting my words and actions match, but somehow that's a hollow victory if it's not what I truly think and feel. It would only make me a hypocrite of the worst sorts: those who simply "perform" so they may prove to observers their own goodness. But those spectacles are nothing close to who they really are. A man once said that who a man is, is determined by what he does when no one is looking. When you are alone, do your true colors reveal themselves for only you to see?
Perhaps the problem with us, is the problem the plagues our religion: we have lost our focus. We have allowed the peripherals to dominate the main spheres of our lives. Perhaps its time to go back to basics. "Love God'" "Love man." maybe if we would re-shift our focus to living these out and let those be our actions, and the words we say, let that permeate our thoughts and soak in our hearts... perhaps then the peripherals wouldn't matter. Maybe we make so many rules and arguments because we're afraid of what will happen if we actually lived this way. My hero, Jesus did this and started a movement that has lasted two-thousand years. His immediate followers turned the face of the world upside-down. Maybe, the truth is that we are comfortable and we are afraid of unsettling that comfortableness, petrified of what it will become. Maybe. Yet this is the message we preach. This is not the way we live.
What would happen if we as religious people, if I as a Christian lived my message?