It\u2019s amazing how many celebrities wreck themselves trying to ride a motorcycle. The long list includes Bob Dylan, Ben Roethlisberger, Gary Busey, Liam Neeson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, T.E. Lawrence, Keanu Reeves, Duane Allman, and French actor Gerard Depardieu, who\u2019s been in over a dozen crashes, one of them breaking a leg in five places. But he keeps riding, saying he\u2019ll never be able to give up the \u201cfeeling of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I see professing Christians, indeed professing preachers, go goofy over Gandhi, I think of the amateur motorcycle enthusiasts enjoying the frisson of their first rides. Despite generous biblical warning, they jump on the Gandhi machine and roar down the road toward pluralism. I have no doubt it makes them feel good and the waves and cheers from the sidewalks can be intoxicating. But the cost is dreadful.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to Rob Bell, author of the hot-seller, \u201cLove Wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
He begins his book with an anecdote and some \u201cpenetrating\u201d questions. His church held a \u201cpeacemaking\u201d art show, and one of the pieces featured a quote from Gandhi. When someone attached a piece of paper saying, \u201cReality check: He\u2019s in hell,\u201d Bell headed to the Harley dealership:<\/p>\n
\u201cReally? Gandhi\u2019s in hell? He is? We have confirmation of this? Somebody knows this? Without a doubt? And that somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know?\u201d (page 7)<\/p>\n
First, it\u2019s important to note what he doesn\u2019t say. He might have attempted a conciliatory defense, something like this: \u201cGranted that Gandhi needed to accept Jesus as his Savior and that, without Christ, he did, indeed, face hell, we can still appreciate some of his words. And though this is a Church-sponsored show, it doesn\u2019t hurt to draw from outside sources for wisdom. Indeed, all truth is God\u2019s truth. Besides, the Mahatma might have privately turned to the Lord for salvation in the days or moments before his death. We\u2019ll never know this side of the grave. We can only pray that he had a heart change which he didn\u2019t have time to express.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Bell has no taste for this. He\u2019s saying something else — that such a great, sensitive guy as Gandhi may well have gotten into heaven on some sort of great-sensitive-guy track.<\/p>\n
Actually, he doesn\u2019t quite have the oomph to say this, so he goes the haughty-question route, which protects the \u201cinquirer\u201d from heresy charges, even elevating him above the merely orthodox to the higher plane of disinterested, non-parochial reflection. This approach is akin to that taken by those who want to slam something but they prefer to test the waters before they commit, as in \u201cWhat did you think of today\u2019s chapel speaker?\u201d A bit less than manly, I would say.<\/p>\n
I suggest that Bell catch up on his reading. He might start with Richard Grenier\u2019s 1983 book, \u201cThe Gandhi Nobody Knows,\u201d a reaction to adulation generated by Richard Attenborough\u2019s worshipful and Oscar-winning film, \u201cGandhi.\u201d Or Andrew Roberts\u2019 \u201cAmong the Hagiographers\u201d in The Wall Street Journal. Roberts\u2019 review of the new Gandhi bio, \u201cGreat Soul\u201d by Joseph Lelyveld, picks up on the book\u2019s evidences that Gandhi was in no more position to stand in the judgment on his own merits than anyone else.<\/p>\n
Check out these sources and you\u2019ll find that Gandhi was callous toward his wife and kids. He was contemptuous of God\u2019s good gift of sexual intimacy within marriage while, at the same time, taking grotesque liberties in intimacy. Though he softened his stance toward \u201cuntouchables,\u201d renaming them \u201cchildren of God,\u201d he never rejected the Hindu classification system. He urged the English to surrender to Hitler, while he, himself, refused to surrender to Christ. And you can read the rest.<\/p>\n
Of course, Gandhi was fortunate that he took on the British. His efforts would not have gone down so well had the colonialists been Muslim, Shinto or Stalinist. And he\u2019s been very fortunate to enjoy the adulation of those inclined to declare him spiritually acceptable if not transcendent. But it\u2019s time for a reality check. As Jesus said, in John 14:6, \u201cI am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.\u201d That\u2019s true for Gandhi as well as for you and me.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Mark Coppenger is professor of Christian Apologetics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and director of the seminary\u2019s Nashville extension. This column first appeared at the blog of BibleMesh.com, a Christian website with the goal of helping \u201cpeople learn the comprehensive story of Scripture\u201d and applying \u201cit to all aspects of life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s amazing how many celebrities wreck themselves trying to ride a motorcycle. The long list includes Bob Dylan, Ben Roethlisberger, Gary Busey, Liam Neeson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, T.E. Lawrence, Keanu Reeves, Duane Allman, and French actor Gerard Depardieu, who\u2019s been in over a dozen crashes, one of them breaking a leg in five places. But he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178,105,896,724,980,893],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}