#37 with John Dear on Gandhi, and why he was one of the greatest Christians who ever lived...
On this week’s episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I share the life and lessons of Mahatma Gandhi, India’s great independence leader and the world’s foremost teacher of active nonviolence on a national, global scale.
I’ve been a student of Gandhi for 45 years, and studied his collected works for my own anthology, Mohandas Gandhi: Essential Writings (Orbis, 2002).
I consider Gandhi one of the greatest followers of the nonviolent Jesus in the last two centuries, whose teachings are well worth studying and pursuing today.
Listen why I propose that Gandhi was not born Gandhi, but had to become Gandhi.
That life long journey of transformation takes single-minded, concentrated effort to allow God to disarm us, change us and fashion us into people of universal love and Gospel nonviolence.
In this episode, I outline the chronology of his life, and then discuss various basic lessons. I recall at one point his statement during the 1922 trial, when he said, “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.” I share how Rev. Ignacio Ellacuria, president of the Jesuit University in El Salvador who was later assassinated with five other Jesuits in 1989, told me something similar when I first met him in 1985. “If you want to be for the reign of God, we have learned in El Salvador, you have to also be against the anti-reign of evil.”
I suggest a new understanding of morality and ethics: In a world of institutionalized, systemic evil, it’s not enough to be a good person or to try to do ‘the good.’ We also have to stand up publicly against evil and resist it. We can’t just be for peace; we also have to be against each and every specific war.
“Nonviolence means avoiding injury to anything on earth in thought, word or deed,” Gandhi wrote early on in South Africa. Over the years, as he gained more experience, he concluded that “Devotion to nonviolence is the highest expression of humanity’s conscious state…Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world… One person who can express nonviolence in life exercises a force superior to all the forces of brutality.
My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more infectious it becomes till it overwhelms your surroundings and by and by might oversweep the world.”
We too have to become our ideal selves before God, change ourselves and strive to become the peacemakers we were created to be, to become the people of nonviolence stuck in a culture of violence.
Listen in and see what you think about Gandhi’s steadfast, persistent insistence on truth, nonviolence and peace.
Note: Share this podcast with others to celebrate International Peace Day on Sunday, September 21st.