Dave Andrews

The best way I know of developing and practicing a radical spirituality of compassion in today’s world is by following the way of Christ

Now having said that, let me say very clearly, that for me, Christ is not synonymous with Christianity. They are not one and the same. In fact the way advocated by Christ is in many cases a total contradiction of the way that is advocated by Christianity.

In many cases, Christianity has simply co-opted Christ. It has taken his love, and turned it into a religion. It bears his name, but betrays his legacy of relentless tenderness. Christianity may stand for a Christ-ian ideology.

But Christ himself stands with us against all ideology —particularly any Christ-ian ideology—that people might try to impose on us. He calls us not to a Christ-ian ideology, but to a Christ-like sensibility.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great Hindu sage, suggested that if Christ could only be unchained from the shackles of Christianity, he could become ‘The Way’, not just for Christians, but for the whole world:

‘The gentle figure of Christ—so patient, so kind, so loving, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when struck, but to turn the other cheek—was a beautiful example, I thought, of the perfect person.’8 Christ was ‘an embodiment of sacrifice’, and ‘a factor in the composition of my underlying faith in non-violence, which rules all my actions.’

Actually, Gandhi said, ‘I refuse to believe that there exists a person who has not made use of his example, even though he or she may have done so without realising it’. He went on to say that ‘the lives of all have, in some greater or lesser degree, been changed by his presence. And because Jesus has the significance, and transcendency to which I have alluded,

I believe he belongs not to Christianity, but to the entire world; to all people, it matters little what faith they profess. Leave Christians alone for the moment’, he concluded, ‘I shall say to the Hindus that your lives will be incomplete unless you reverently study … Jesus. Jesus did not preach a new religion, but a new life’: ‘a whole life’ regulated by ‘the eternal law of love.’

I believe, like Gandhi, that Christ is the archetype of compassion, the original model of radical nonviolent sacrificial love, that humanity desperately needs to turn to if we are to find a way to save ourselves from the cycles of violence that will otherwise destroy us.

A recent survey in Psychology Today showed that Gandhi and I are not alone in that belief. Apparently, even more than 2000 years after he lived and died in obscurity in Palestine, it is to Jesus of Nazareth that most of us who know anything about him still feel we need to turn, if we are ever really going to learn anything about radical, nonviolent, sacrificial love.

As the famous analytical psychiatrist, Carl Jung, once said: One of the most shining examples that history has preserved for us is the life of Christ. Obeying the inner call of his vocation, Jesus voluntarily exposed himself to the assaults of imperial madness that filled everyone, conqueror, and conquered alike. In this way he recognised the nature of the psyche which had plunged the whole world into misery. Far from allowing himself to be suppressed by this psychic onslaught, he consciously assimilated it. Thus was a world-conquering Roman Empire transformed into the universal Kingdom of God. His religion of love was the exact psychological counterpoint to the politics of power. Jesus pointed humanity [to] the truth that where force rules there is no love, and where love reigns force does not count.

I call this radical spirituality of compassion—‘where love reigns’ and ‘force does not count’—not Christianity, but Christi-Anarchy.

Christi-Anarchy is not a Christian ideology, or an anarchist ideology, or a Christian-anarchist ideology. Christi-Anarchy is not an ideology at all. If anything, Christi-Anarchy is anti-ideology. For Christi-Anarchy is nothing more or less than a Christ-like sensibility.

Christi-Anarchy derives its name from Christi: ‘Christ’, and anarchy: ‘against the powers’; as Christ himself was against ‘the powers’. Any Christ-like sensibility will always struggle against the powers that conspire against ordinary people realising their potential. It is a Christlike life: a lifestyle that is characterised by the radical, nonviolent, sacrificial compassion of Jesus the Christ. A way of life distinguished by commitment to love and to justice, working from the bottom up to empower people, particularly the marginalised and disadvantaged; so as to enable them to realise their potential, as men and women made in the image of God, through self-directed, other-orientated intentional community groups and organisations.

Excerpt from Not Religion But Love http://www.daveandrews.com.au/nrbl.html