And Now For Something Completely Different

Toady I need to take a diversion around the hard things of life and faith in this post. Forgive me if anything in this offering offends delicate sensibilities but since a merry heart (and a good joke) worketh good like a medicine I'll chance it.
(I don't know about you but I need a little medication everyday.)


If you read my post about Mahatma Gandhi you may have thought I treated him with kid gloves while I have taken some hard cracks at North American Christianity. Well to prove that I am an equal opportunity 'cracker'. Let's discuss Gandhi's eccentricities.

Did you know that Gandhi was convinced that works were the way to heaven. I hope and trust that this misunderstanding was remedied to both party's satisfaction when Gandhi finally met the One he so much admired in life.
Gandhi was an ascetic. He denied himself almost everything except what was minimally needed to keep himself alive. He even gave up marital relations with his wife and to prove and improve his will power he would sleep with beautiful, naked, young women. As far as I know he did not succumb to the lust of the flesh in these tests but I do think his level of self denial and his ways of proving it were a little extreme.

Gandhi fasted often. When he did eat it was very little and would consist mostly of herbs and curry. He also had the habit of walking for miles in barefeet or sometimes rough sandals. This simple ascetic life caused him to have some gastric and foot problems.
In fact Mary Poppins was once heard to exclaim, 'that Gandhi fellow certainly is............ a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis'.


BROTHERLY LOVE
Here is a Sunday school lesson that Gandhi would endorse and if we could have lived this lesson a lttle more fully he might have been a Christian saint. Gandhi is reported to have said he would have been a Chrisitian if it were not for the lives and attitudes of Christians that he encountered.

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her 5 and 6 year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother," she asked "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill."