"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."-Gandhi
God is love. That is one of His defining attributes, love. He is Almighty and does in fact punish those who choose to sin against Him, but rather than wipe us from existence with one word, He chooses to love us and sent His son to die for our sins. God is love.
I feel like a lot of Christians today have forgotten how to love people like they should. They look down their noses at people and judge them for what they've done or are currently doing and rather than love them, help them, and say that God has forgiven them for their sins, they condemn them and hold them at arms length, choosing to just say, "I'll pray for you" rather than get dirty with loving the unclean. Christ dealt with this in His time too, and he shamed the people by telling a parable of despicable(to the leaders) half-breed exercising more love and kindness to his fellow man than the so called religious leaders of the time. The parable of the Good Samaritan shows that Christ valued love and kindness over propriety and head-knowledge of the spiritual laws. This isn't an excuse to not study the Bible or seek further knowledge, but you can't get caught up in the words without the actions.
James calls this faith without works, and it is a dead faith (James 2: 26) with no use. Too many Christians are exercising their so-called faith, claiming to be true followers of Christ, but in reality they have a dead faith that is devoid of love or any kind of action, an empty shell of faith that displeases God. Christ calls His followers to love our neighbors and our enemies(Matt. 5:43-44), making it so important as to say that this is primarily how we are identified with Christ (John 13:35: By this all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.) This is not an optional, sometimes, or only when the person loves me first, choice. We are commanded to love one another, and love others(John 15:9-13).
Gandhi shouldn't have had any problem seeing Christ in whatever Christians he encountered because we have no choice but to strive to be as Christ was, full of love and compassion for everyone. Jesus was never identified as judgmental or cold or harsh or patronizing, so why are Christians being identified like this? We aren't perfect, but we should be constantly striving to love everyone, no matter where they came from. We can't pick and choose our enemies or neighbors, so we have to learn to love whoever God puts in front of us. Only then can we begin to heal the world.
