“A Way Out of Hell”
Texts: Exodus 21:33-36; Matthew 5:23-24
Speaker: Joel Miller
There’s a scene from the movie Gandhi that’s stuck with me since I first saw it. Mohandas Gandhi was an attorney from India during British colonial rule. He found a basis for nonviolent philosophy in his Hindu sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita. He was also deeply influenced by the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, which he thought might be worth trying out on these British Christians occupying his country. He became a leader of the Indian National Congress, even as he traded in his comfortable lifestyle and Western attire for homespun cloth and simple food produced in a self-sufficient community. He developed a vision of a free India that honored religious pluralism and cultural diversity. Through nonviolent public campaigns and numerous imprisonments, Gandhi led India to independence from Britain in 1947. But violence broke out between Indian Muslim nationalists, and Hindu Indians. As he had done several times before, Gandhi went...