What Would Gandhi Do?

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." -Gandhi

Nietzsche once said, "If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares into you." I once thought that faith would be a way for me to finally turn away from the abyss and for the abyss to finally turn away from me. Yet Gandhi's experiences with Christians remind me that what's wrong with a life of faith isn't the act of faith, but having to deal with the people of faith. We are the weakest link in the chain.

Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Gandhi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Gandhi he asked him, “Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?”

Gandhi 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 Gandhi’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 Gandhi in a belligerent tone of voice.

Gandhi 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, Gandhi 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.

How we treat those others tells people MORE about what we believe, and what following Jesus means to us, than all the fine sermons we deliver.

Found at John Mark Ministries
(original source unknown)

In visiting a number of blog posts and their accompanying comments over the past several months and particularly in recent weeks, I see an unswerving dedication of the believers making said blogs and comments to following the example and traditions of the Christians who threw Gandhi out of church in South Africa. If someone who doesn't fit the mold or says something that doesn't fit the prevailing theology of the group, they are insulted, belittled, and cast out.

I had a somewhat similar (though not as intense) experience in a church I used to attend once I started studying the Old Testament in a new way and started trying to grasp what the Torah must look like from a more Hebraic point of view. I no longer fit the mold and could not be accepted in the group while I asked questions the group wasn't prepared to answer. I did that just a few days ago and drew a lot of comments and conversation.

Don't get me wrong, the conversation is very worthwhile and I think there is much to be learned from such a dialog, but along with the interaction, some people found it necessary to get hot under the collar about the topic.

Why?

Are you so sure that your opinion is the only opinion and that it is the absolutely right opinion? Can you learn from no one else outside of you?

I ask these questions of myself all the time and this blog is the continually developing result of my attempt to answer those questions. Hopefully, my struggles, which are primarily with me, won't eventually degrade into developing and expressing a disdain for others. One of the things I am sure of is that putting people down because they disagree with me isn't the right thing to do:

There are other ways in which we are forbidden to injure another with words. Thus, we are commanded not to slander, gossip, or talebear, as the Torah states, "Do not go around as a gossiper among your people" (Leviticus 19:16). Concerning a slanderer, the Psalmist entreated, "May God cut off all slandering lips, every tongue that speaks distortions" (Psalms 12:4), thereby warning us that this is among the most serious of sins.

It is likewise forbidden to cause pain, anguish or suffering, or tease another, or embarrass him in any way, as the Torah states, "Do not vex your fellow man, but rather fear your God" (Leviticus 25:17).

It is forbidden to cause dissent and argument, as the Torah states, "Do not be like Korach and his party" (Numbers 17:5) -- who wrought dissent in Israel.

From Respecting God in Speech
Aish.com

The Master gave us a new commandment to "love one another" (John 13:34), which I've mentioned before, and I've also said that we don't seem to do a very good job at obeying this commandment. We also know this:

But the word love in Torah is primarily an activist commandment: Love your neighbor and the stranger; love God. Even to love God (says Talmud Yoma 26a) means we should behave divinely toward others, “making God beloved, through us.” And Maimonides brought an almost ecological consciousness to loving the One in the Mishneh Torah: “When we study God’s many wondrous works and creations, and thus comprehend God’s infinite wisdom, immediately we love, and praise.” The prophets warn us to pair every prayer with acts of love. As 20th-century Jewish philosopher Martin Buber taught: “Love of the Creator and love of that which God has created, are finally one and the same.”

Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb
Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation
Bethesda, MD
Found at Moment Magazine

I question my faith a lot and sometimes I wonder, given all of the problems we seem to have with each other, if a life of faith is worth it. Wouldn't I be happier if I just dropped a life that no one seems interested in actually living, and simply devoted myself to things like art, philosophy, literature, and music? Many people find great rewards in those pursuits and they don't hassle each other about it.

However, there's nothing wrong with God, Christ, and faith. As Gandhi's famous experience points out, there's something wrong with us. We are not being a light to the world (Matthew 5:14) and we are salt that has lost its taste (Matthew 5:13). What good are we if we don't actually live out the teachings of the one we are supposed to revere?

Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep what I command" (John 14:15), but we don't keep his command to love one another, at least as far as what I can see.

Is there no humility and a desire to reconcile among the disciples of the Jewish Messiah? Is our faith and love that small?

The well-known Torah scholar Hillel (ca. 60 B.C.E.-C.E. ca. 10) famously summed up all of Torah by saying, That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the commentary; go and study. (Tractate Shabbat 31a). Yeshua taught, Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39), very much mirroring Hillel, but our actions in the blogosphere prove we don't give much consideration to either Yeshua or Hillel.

I like the text found under the main title at Lev Echad:

Jewish unity is possible - really! It begins with acting decently toward one another, it follows with tolerating others as they pursue lives of goodness; it culminates with many different Jews, but just one heart.

Why can't we do that?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark...

Knowing the Path and Walking It

For Hillel, study was the essential prerequisite for knowing and fulfilling one's obligations, because virtue is not achieved through good intentions alone. Good intentions need be coupled with ongoing and vigorous intellectual effort...But central as Torah study is to Hillel, what one does not find in his aphorisms are teachings about God and about prayer.

In contrast to Hillel, one looks in vain in the New Testament for statements from Jesus advocating rigorous Bible study. It is not intellectural sophistication that Jesus seems to value most, but simple faith...
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
Hillel: If Not Now, When?

Yes, I'm still reading Rabbi Telushkin's book and I will undoubtedly continue to blog on portions of this text long after I've finished reading it. Here, in the above quotes, we see Telushkin continuing to compare the lives and acts of Hillel and Jesus (Yeshua), this time pointing out a major difference.

In a nutshell, Telushkin characterizes Hillel as a man devoted to the deeply human and compassionate expressions of Judaism but who discovered and deepened those expressions, not through intense prayer, but through intense study.

This isn't to say that Hillel didn't value prayer, but from Telushkin's point of view, Hillel found faith and God primarily through Torah study while Yeshua advocated for a holy life devoted to prayer and good deeds.

Or did he?

What we know of both men is limited to the written record we have of both their lives. In terms of the life of Yeshua, we have a record that is inspired by God, so we have no reason to doubt anything about the Bible, but does it contain everything about Yeshua?

Probably not.

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. -John 21:25

While John is speaking specifically of the post-resurrection activities of the Master, I think it's fair to say that we could apply this to Yeshua's life in general. We only know a certain amount, just like the knowledge of the life of Hillel is limited.

I offer the following as evidence that Yeshua did expect his followers to have a deep understanding of the scriptures, which would, of course, require a great deal of study:

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. -Luke 24:25-27

He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. -Luke 24:44-47

The evidence, even during the earthly lifetime of Yeshua, that the Messiah had to die, be buried, and be resurrected was always in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. While we don't find his teachings pointing directly to the requirement to vigorously study Torah, these quotes from Yeshua indicate that Torah study was a necessity. He chided his disciples for failing to study sufficiently to be able to understand the events that were happening all around them concerning the Messiah.

Now lets's turn back to Hillel. The most famous quote attributed to Hillel, from which Rabbi Teluskin takes the title of his book is:

Say not, 'When I have free time I shall study'; for you may perhaps never have any free time. -Avot 2:4

When comparing this to Jesus though, Telushkin says:

There are no such statements (from Hillel) such as "Do not say, 'When I have free time, I will pray,' lest you never have free time," or even "One who does not believe in God cannot be fully a righteous person."

This is just a guess on my part, but perhaps both teachers were operating under certain assumptions, or at least assessed the needs of their students in different ways. Hillel may have drawn students for whom prayer and devotion to God was a given and therefore, his students didn't require a strong urging in this area. From Yeshua's point of view however, given the fact that most of his disciples were very poor, the opportunity to study at a Yeshiva would have been rare to non-existent. Peter and his companions were fishermen by trade. They had to earn a living. Torah study is very time consuming and usually such students came from wealthy families who would support them. In the case of Yeshua's students, perhaps the nature of their lives combined with limited access to a Yeshiva resulted in his emphasizing prayer over study.

However, this should be a condition that Hillel would have understood because he himself was a poor person, a day laborer who had emigrated from Babylonia to Jerusalem. It was only the kindness of his own teachers that enabled him to begin dedicated Torah study and ultimately go from being a poor common laborer to the foremost scholar and teacher of his day.

I don't come with the answers to these questions and seeming contradictions, but I do want to introduce a "wobble" in this apparent differences between the approach of Hillel and that of Yeshua. While each teacher seemed to emphasize a different path to righteousness, I don't believe that they neglected the values of the other.

The life of Hillel is a testament to compassion, mercy, and graciousness, especially to the poor and the disaffected. How like the teachings of Yeshua his actions were. At the same time, Yeshua had an expectation that his disciples would know the Law and the Prophets sufficently to be able to understand that, when Yeshua died, it was because the Messiah was supposed to die. Even today, you have to study and look for the specific portions of the scriptures that point this out. They aren't always obvious (they seem that way, because in the church, they are highlighted quite a bit...to an Orthodox Jew who studies the same scriptures though, not so much).

Both Hillel and Yeshua came from poor and working class families. Prior to his early 30s, Yeshua no doubt worked quietly in carpentry while, as we've said, prior to entering into formal studies, Hillel was a day laborer. They knew what it was like to do without and they also both had a vision that extended far beyond their stations in life.

We know that Yeshua's purpose and goal was sent from Heaven and from the Throne of God but in more humble ways, that can be said of all of us. Certainly this is also true of Hillel. We know that both of these men were (and are...God is not a God of the dead but of the living, and Yeshua is our High Priest in the Heavenly Court) different in many ways but perhaps, where it truly counted, they were also very much alike.

They both knew what their students needed and they knew how to guide them down the path of righteousness.

Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
Morpheus
The Matrix (1999)

Study after all, is no good unless you put it into action. Prayer, as the brother of the Master points out, is more effective when you act in order to be the answer to prayer (James 2:14-26).

Near Collision

Is there a Jewish consensus on how Jews are to regard Jesus? Perhaps not, but no Jewish scholars with whom I am familiar believe that Jesus intended to start a new religion.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
Hillel: If Not Now, When?

Comparisons between Hillel and Jesus (Yeshua) are pretty common. After all, noted Jewish author Rabbi Joseph Telushkin even devoted a chapter to this "couple" in his aforementioned book (and it's not the first time). In fact, one of the reasons I find this book so fascinating is I can see some parallels between my own faith and Telushkin's characterization of Hillel.

However, let's not get too excited. The similarities may not be all that great, especially as you extend the teachings of Yeshua into the mission of Paul. Telushkin writes:

It was perhaps in response to Jesus' emphasis on faith and love, and Paul's decision several decades later to drop the requirement to observe Torah laws, that many Jews came to focus Jewish religiosity on laws, especially ritual laws that most differentiated Jews from Gentiles.

While Messianic Jews and Gentiles in the Hebrew Roots movement may not consider this to be a valid statement in relation to their (our) understanding of Paul and the early Messianic faith community, it is certainly the predominant (non-Messianic) Jewish perspective. In fact, all of the comments I've read in this book so far (I haven't finished reading it yet) tend to be at least slightly critical and uncomplimentary of Christianity, and Telushkin says that Yeshua and Hillel were more unalike than they were alike.

However, Telushkin did bring this comparison up for a reason and not solely to discredit Christianity's belief in Yeshua as the Messiah:

But comparisons between Hillel's and Jesus' teachings on a number of issues can be fruitful. For one thing, it is valuable for Christian scholars to bring Hillel into a consideration of Jesus because of his likely influence on that figure at the center of their religion. Jesus was raised as a Jew and grew up among Jews, and Hillel was the most significant religious figure in the Jewish community during Jesus' youth. That Jesus would have been familiar with Hillel - and with some of his more famous teachings - can be assumed.

The primary value of a Christian's study of Hillel from Telushkin's viewpoint then, would be to gain a better understanding of the Jewish context and Jewishness of Jesus. Rabbi Telushkin makes another point that speaks (though of course, without intending to) to the current "tension" between Jews and Gentiles in the modern Messianic community. In comparing the disputes between Hillel and Shammai, another classic teacher in Judaism and a contemporary of Hillel, Telushkin says:

Indeed, most of the disputes between Shammai and him (Hillel) and among their disciples were on matters of ritual law. He simply deemed Judaism's ethical demands to be foremost in significance, and it is one of the paradoxes of history that the very power of Hillel's moral teaching, having likely affected Jesus, his disciples, and the religion founded in his name, might have been responsible for provoking an anxiety about those very teachings in Jews who felt threatened by the rise and growing popularity of Christianity - a feeling that intensified after Christianity had done away with the legal structure of the Torah and started to hold Jews accountable for their savior's death.

There's much more in this short chapter I could draw from but I want to focus here on what Rabbi Telushkin is saying. Let's isolate part of the quote from above:

..one of the paradoxes of history that the very power of Hillel's moral teaching, having likely affected Jesus, his disciples, and the religion founded in his name, might have been responsible for provoking an anxiety about those very teachings in Jews who felt threatened by the rise and growing popularity of Christianity..

This isn't really what's happening between Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic movement today, but it's something similar. There's dynamic tension involved in Gentile Messianics taking on Jewish practices, including praying the Shema, wearing tzitzit, keeping "kosher style" (though in most cases, not Rabbinically kosher), and saying that they are as much "Israel" as the Jewish people. One of the criticisms I hear repeatedly from Messianic Jews is that these Gentiles are threatening the identity of Jews in the movement by taking on board Jewish behaviors and claiming them as their (our) own.

It seems this sort of collision has happened before, at least in part. Hillel, the predominant teacher in the Judaism of his day, was considered "Gentile friendly", at least quite a bit more than his main opponent Shammai. The story of the three converts illustrates how some pretty rude sounding would-be Gentile converts to Judaism approached Shammai with what most of us would consider unreasonable demands to be converted. Shammai predictably, turned them away, running two of the Gentiles off with a measuring rod and insulting the third. By contrast, Hillel shows amazing patience in accepting and actually converting all three Gentiles, seemingly on the Gentiles' terms, but in fact, ultimately on Hillel's.

Rabbi Telushkin points out that in Roman occupied Israel and especially after the destruction of the Second Temple, the apparent parallels between the teachings of Hillel and Jesus, as illustrated in the actions of a growing number of Gentile Christians, may have pointed Judaism towards expressing a religious life by emphasizing ritual acts of Torah. This was done in order to preserve the Jews as a people and as a distinct faith apart from Christianity. Anything Gentile Christians said or did that was similar to what Jews said or did would be considered a threat to Jewish identity and distinctiveness.

As Christianity and Judaism continued to diverge and finally completely separate, that particular threat died down (though throughout history, Gentiles have been threatening Jews in many other ways), but here we are, 20 centuries later, and we've re-entered the same conflict again. To some degree, a very small degree, Telushkin comments on this, too:

But just as many New Testament scholars have been restoring the Jewish context of Jesus, so it seems appropriate for Jews to acknowledge not only that aspects of Jewish culture made their way powerfully into the teachings of Jesus, but that the openness Christianity displays to Gentiles was already comfortably embraced by Hillel long before Jesus had preached his first sermon.

Rabbi Telushkin isn't really talking about the Messianic movement nor is he likely to, but he does state that, at this time in history, Christianity (and from a traditional Jewish point of view, everyone in the Messianic movement is a Christian) is acknowledging "the Jewishness of Jesus". He also possibly suggests that Judaism can see the Jewish teachings of Hillel reflected in the words of Jesus.

To the Jews and Gentiles who have faith in Yeshua as our common Messiah and who share devotion to the One God of Israel, can we find a meeting place between our two viewpoints and traditions? I believe so. But we have to learn to understand each other.