Gandhi and CSI

Mahatma Gandhi once was asked his opinion of Christianity. "I like your Christ," Gandhi replied, "but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Gandhi, of course, lived under decades of British colonial imperialism, hardly the most Christ-like of undertakings.  But Gandhi had experience of the world--and Christians--far wider than colonial India, and the fact was that too often the lives of those who professed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior didn't look much like the life Jesus taught and modeled.

The same can be said, of course, of adherents to other religions, people whose lives bear little resemblance to the teachings they profess. But whether or not what Gandhi said of Christians is true of non-Christians really isn't the point. The point is that what Gandhi said of Christians is true. We do tend to talk the proverbial talk better than we walk the walk. And we who do profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior have some responsibility, I think, to reflect on that.

So, here's the log in question: does my life reflect my faith?


I used to watch the TV show CSI. Every crime scene, they're fond of saying, tells a story...the point being that the suspect tells a story, too, but does the story the evidence tells support the one the suspect tells? And more often than not, it doesn't. People say one thing while the evidence of their actions says something else.

Does the evidence support your story? Does my life reflect my faith?

It's a question that Jesus, one way or another, posed continuously. He posed it overtly often enough but even when he wasn't in-your-face with it, the question was beneath, within, behind virtually everything he taught. And there's every reason it should be. Central to the history of God's relationship with humanity was two things. First, I will be your God and you will be my people, God said, which means I set you apart, which means you will not live like others. You will live holy lives, and through the way you live you will bear witness to me. Second (and this follows from the first), as my holy witnesses, you will be sent out. I, God, will send you out to bring the good news of salvation to the world.

Together, these two things provide the warp and woof of the Scriptural witness: people set apart to live particular lives in service to a particular mission, and one--the witness, the mission--in many ways dependent upon the other, a particular way of life. Will the evidence of your life, in other words, support the story you tell?

Common to both these things--being set apart for a particular life and being sent out with a particular message--is faith. Neither can be achieved apart from faith because neither, ultimately, is a product solely of human effort. Living the life we're called to live and being sent out on a mission we often know not where, requires faith. It requires faith in a God who will lead us and sustain us, who will meet our every need, who will not call us to do work God won't supply the resources to accomplish, who has a plan bigger than anything we mortals can possibly conceive. And, historically, if God's people have not lived the life to which they're called, not provided the witness they were called to provide...if the evidence, that is, didn't support their story...it was almost always due to a problem of faith: too little faith in God...too much faith in the world and themselves.

So it is that Moses warned the Israelites: as you find yourself increasingly surrounded by material, worldy wealth, remember that you're not responsible for it (e.g. Deuteronomy 6:10-12). It's all a gift from God. The God who delivered you is the God who sustains you. And so it is that Jesus spends more time talking about material, worldly wealth than any other subject save the Kingdom itself. The reason: Moses and Jesus both knew that nothing better reveals the disconnect between what we profess and how we live than worldly wealth. Money and material comforts, not the Kingdom and the Gospel, come to define our lives and our faith. We profess faith in a God who will lead and sustain us, meet our every need, not call us to do work for which resources won't be supplied, with a plan bigger than we can possibly conceive...yet is that how we live? It is our story, after all, part and parcel of the Christian witness. But, looking at our lives, what does the evidence say?

The future of the church, whether we like it or not, is a mission field of millions of people, many of them our next-door neighbors, who look at Christianity, which is to say, look at what we Christians profess and at how we live, and are tempted to respond precisely the way Mahatma Gandhi did: I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians.

What story, indeed, does the evidence of our lives tell?