We are spiritual beings having a human experience”-Coach Ken Carter
In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men (humans) are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be… This is the inter-related structure of reality. ——Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
What an honor to have joined Mr. Tushar Gandhi (the great-grandson of M. K. Gandhi), Dr. Trehan, Dr. Singh, and those from FIT (Friends of India-Texas) to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday and talk about the connection between Gandhi's practice of nonviolent resistance and Dr. Martin Luther King’s, including others who practiced non-violence in the United States of America's Civil Rights Movement.
The connection between these great people is a spiritual one illustrated in the quote above by Coach Ken Carter., “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Gandhi and King, who changed terra firma for good recognized this truth. And, through the practice of nonviolence, they transformed their personal experience as human beings, by first transforming their own hearts and then the hearts of others. They became apostles (Dr. Trehan’s moniker) of peace and, in the process converted many, including their oppressors from a posture of hate to one of peace and radical love.
Theirs was not mere tolerance, but a recognition of the divine image in every human being. Their examples are just as potent and instructive today, in facing a global wave of hatred, and factions meant to serve the interest of those who embrace exclusion, and "power over" versus "power shared." It is what I call an "anti-spirit”— anti-peace, anti-human, anti-love, and anti-good. Hate can only be overcome by a radical love that confronts evil and hatred directly, even at a cost---suffering.
We confront the “anti-spirit”— the tendency to embrace the anti-gospel of "other" first in our own hearts (Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me) and then in the hearts of those who are deluded by the “anti-spirit” afoot all over the world. To overcome evil we must be divinely infused with love that redeems the soul and we must become practitioners of good, justice, mercy, and grace to overcome evil.
The sacrificial love shown by the "high souled” Gandhiji and Dr. King and the other leaders of the non-violent movements, serves as an example of love that lays down its life for others.
With this love in the face of hate “We shall overcome.” Divine Agape, God’s unconditional, love will usher in a new heaven and new earth. And, the wolf will graze with the lamb, and tears are wiped away and death, mourning, and pain will be no more. Let it be so! Divine, self-sacrificial, radical, transformational love flips the script, changes the global narrative and alters our human experience. Let it be so!
My thanks to Mr. Gandhi, Dr. Trehan, and Dr. Singh for fostering a relationship with me. I now lift up to God, prayers for the peace of India and the Indian diaspora. In the name of Jesus, through and in whom I have come to know God. Amen. pjen
God-breathed relationships are the beginning and the completion of restoring the earth to good.—- Pastor jen