I like your Christ, I do not Like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
- Mahatma Gandi
This was what the Father of the Nation in India told us when he was thrown out of the train in south Africa as he sat in a compartment ment only for white passengers.
This was how the incident happened:
Mahatma Gandhi
In 1893 Ghandi was taking a first class train to Pretoria in the Transvaal, a journey that first took Ghandi to Pietermaritzburg, as a legal counsel to Dada Abdullah. Ghandi had bought a first class ticket and was seating at the first class cabin when a European( a Christian) who entered he compartment summoned railway officials, who ordered Ghandi to remove himself and move to the third class. Ghandi had objected to this and was thrown out the train at the next station. Ghandi considered one of those who are very rational. Luckily he didn’t judge Jesus Christ through us, but he judged human themselves. But bear in mind that not everyone judge Christian similiar to Mahatma Gandi.
The question is after 116 years, do we as Christians improve ourselves?
Rich Stearns in his book called “The Hole in Our Gospel” (current World Vision CEO) has reproduced one of the key tables from the Barna research on which a recent book, titled UnChristian, is based.
Phrases that Describe Religious Faith
Even though the research was done in America, but this table applies to all around the world. According to Rich Stearns’ book and Barna Research, as recently as 1996, 85% of “Outsiders” – individuals who had no strong religious convictions themselves – still felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society. But just about ten years later, only 16% of them had a good impression of Christianity. Worse, only 3% have favorable impression of “evanglicals,” with 49% saying they have a bad impression!
Is that what Jesus Christ wants us to do? Look at the percentage of the hypocritical category, 85% of outsiders use to describe us!!!
We know that there are millions of children suffering, we know that there are millions of children need our help but we just keep silent and do nothing, we go to Church few hours per week and we called ourselves Christians and we busy with our daily activities and just ignoring what God wants us to do.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ wants us to do more. He doesn’t want us to be “Sleeping Christians”. Faith alone does not save us, but faith with action does save us.
Excellent article. Though I do not agree with the Barna chart (for God is not “accepting of other people’s faiths” – See Exodus 20, John 14:6, John 3:16-18, et al) Christians do need to exemplify Christ. As He is so are we in this world. This is the standard. God Bless!
I don’t agree some phrases in the Barna Chart describe Christians e.g. old-fashioned, boring and not accepting other faith as well.
But I myself do agree with antihomosexual, judgemental, too involved in politics and others. For example we as Christians should against homosexual, I don’t accept homosexual as well but we don’t hate them because we have to spread gospel to them, bring them before Jesus Christ and change them. But some of Christians hate homosexual, don’t even give them chances to change.
Jesus came to the world for sinners but not for perfect human. We should follow His way.
Not sure that this is true:), but thanks for a post.
Have a nice day
Tania
Hi, this is very true. Try search on google about Gandhi.
Amazing! Not clear for me, how offen you updating your honor2god.org.
GlenStef
I updated my blog daily!
Not sure that this is true
but thanks for a post.
This is so true!
Hi there,
Super post, Need to mark it on Digg
Thank you very much!
hello, I am not a christian, I am a buddhist, and I found this article when looking up the source of that Ghandi quote, and I must say I am shocked and appalled, I know that the American religious authority goes to great lengths to try and paint itself as liberal and modern, while endorsing every right wing conservative on the face of the planet, and every bigoted hate law against abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, based around this archaic world view, but i had never seen the fullest extent of their delusions as displayed here! you cannot just say that things are the way that they are not, and then tot out a ream of doctored statistics in order to support that claim. Why draw attention to Ghandis reasonable comment if you are just going to sit there and deny it, it makes no sense.
This chart is completely falsified, it is quite simply not true, the investigating body is a christian biased pseudo science website that tries to prove that pushy fundamentalist parents cause their kids to be better people than liberal parents who let kids decide spirituality for themselves (that is seriously the most recent poll, go to their website) the figures here are not only completely biased, but are just plain ridiculous in themselves, i doubt that 80% of christians are homophobic, even in the worst hotbeds of homophobia it is not that high, and there is absolutely no way that 91% of non church goers are homophobic, perhaps in the 20s that might have been the case, but in this day and age both stats are completely bogus.
Hi yaysatan, thanks for you comment!
Even though the chart is completely falsified, but it match my personal experience in real world.
Especially judgmental and hypocrite. I do have a lot of Christians around me like to judge and hypocrite.
I have confident for the chart because God says there is no perfect human in this world. Not even Christians, that’s why we need Jesus Christ.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this recently, and I guess it’s one of those things that a lot of people ought to be commenting on. People can’t plan to make progress if we just keep our heads buried in the dark.
Thanks for your comment, Roselia Trace!