Mithrae wrote: And those burning witches and torturing heretics were regular, normal Christians.
Completely agree. I do not discount Christians from being able to commit evil. They can even use the Bible to justify their actions. So, what is the correct way to interpret the Bible? This is quite complicated, but I’ll just suffice it to say that Christians should follow the model of Jesus as he walked on earth. He calls Christians to deny themselves, carry the cross, and follow him.
Some people are smarter than others.
Yes, of course. But, if it’s used to justify they are morally superior to another, then I would disagree with them.
You’re not really going to try arguing that Hitler’s moral framework held the same merit as Gandhi’s, are you?
Well, who’s to say anyone’s moral framework is better than anyone else’s? On what objective basis can we say one’s moral framework is the one everyone should be following?
As to Gandhi’s moral framework, I’m not sure his was entirely innocent.
Gandhi frequently slept and bathed with his young female followers. When others criticized this practice as being unseemly, Gandhi argued that it was a way for him to increase his spiritual power. And as Gandhi said of his practice of bathing with Sushila Nayar, the younger sister of his secretary, “While she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut. I do not know whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on.” Obviously, it wasn’t an explanation that satisfied his critics. But the opportunity to bathe or sleep with Gandhi was seen as a great honor among his followers.
Gandhi sometimes asked the women he slept with to perform strip-teases or make sexually explicit conversation. As Gandhi explained it, this was the ultimate test of his vow of chastity.
https://historycollection.co/sources-cl … ndniece/2/
As he grew older (and following Kasturba’s death) he was to have more women around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom according to his segregated ashram rules were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands. Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging in his “experiments” which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an exercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sexual activity.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente … 37411.html
His behaviour in the winter of 1946-47 shocked many of his followers. At least two of his helpers, his stenographer and his Bengali translator, quit his service in protest when they discovered that he was sleeping with 19-year-old Manu. The Indian press stayed silent. Unusually, Gandhi kept his “experiment” with Manu reasonably private behaviour that he later regretted because it violated the principle that the seeker after truth must keep nothing hidden.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1004366#p1004366