GANDHI: HIS LIFE AND MESSAGE FOR THE WORLD
Louis Fischer (1954)
As Independent India turns seventy-five, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, turns 183. Louis Fisher’s biography provides us with a comprehensive, inspiring view of perhaps the greatest national leader of the modern world through the eyes of a westerner who knew him closely. Gandhi was the rarest of the rare—a combination of a mystic and a man of action. Fischer traces the evolution of the shy, average son of a Guajarati merchant caste (Baniya) orthodox Hindu government official and a saintly illiterate mother into the icon of nonviolence and a warrior of freedom and human dignity. Married at thirteen, educated in London, unsuccessful as a lawyer in India, he went to South Africa to plead for the rights of Indian immigrants there in the 1890s, where his direct experience of racism changed his destiny. He tried to ‘experiment with truth,’ drawing inspiration from Hindu scriptures, the Gospels and the writings of Tolstoy and Thoreau. He fought racial discrimination on two levels: exalting the dignity of the victim, while appealing to the sense of fairness in the oppressor. Some of his own followers treated him violently. He experimented with education, nature cure and every area of life. At age thirty, he adopted celibacy within marriage. He earned the respect of the very political enemies whom he had fought, such as Jan Christian Smuts, prime minister of South Africa. In India he had to contend with a lot more than British oppression, such as the evils of caste and religious divisions. He taught by example the art of civil disobedience. Though he was himself a victim of violence, he held fast to the ideal of nonviolence, spirit of poverty and detachment, forgiveness and trust. Seeking God in every experience, he wrote of his prison in Yeravada as “mandir.” Fasting was the essential part of Satyagraha that produced results that amazed the world—a political weapon that had never been tried before. His Epic Fast was conducted in Yeravada prison for the abolition of untouchability. He led by example, including untouchables in his ashram and adopting an untouchable girl. His self-sacrifice, love of God, humility, humour and his astuteness as a negotiator, worked to create a united India while still remaining friends with the British. The division of India hurt him deeply. He shunned any government office which he could have commanded in liberated India. “His legacy is courage; his lesson is truth, his weapon love. His life is his monument, he now belongs to mankind,” concludes Fischer.
Praying Through the Deeper Issues of Marriage: Protecting Your Relationship So It Will Last a Lifetime
Stormie Omartian (2007)
One of the bestselling books on prayer and marriage, Omartian’s book can be a great help for not only those living in marriage, but also for marriage counselors and pastors. Omartian lists fifteen serious threats to today’s marriages and provides advice to a husband or a wife caught in a troubled marriage on how to finds solutions. The tensions and troubles in marriage can be healed and relationships can be restored through God’s intervention. The fourteen detailed chapters present a broad spectrum of issues—communication breakdown, anger, rudeness and abuse, lack of forgiveness, outside influences, hard heartedness, depression and negative emotions, child rearing, financial troubles, misplaced priorities, sexual frustration, pornography and infidelity, depression and addictions. She says that “every married person will have to make a decision at some point in their lives on each one of these fourteen areas as to whether they will allow them (problems) to become issues in their marriage or not.” Omartian provides these insights almost directly from her own personal struggles, stating with her childhood experiences with a paranoid mother and her own married life that would not have survived thirty-four years, had she not turned to God. She identifies the fourteen most common problems that lead to break down of marriages from countless phone calls, emails and contacts through her website where thousands of couples reported on the problems they faced. She discovers her answers in the Bible and personal prayer. Her own marriage was affected by her extreme sensitivity to her husband’s outburst of anger. She had been brought up by a mother who had nursed anger and frustration about her mother’s early death and her belief that her father preferred the other two siblings over her. In other words, she had carried within her the hurts of her own mother’s possessiveness, habitual anger and cruelty towards her. Her mother’s insanity made her grow up with fear, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, loneliness and a deep sadness. Everyone can change. It is a question of awareness, determination, sense of the need to change, knowing how to and desire to change. Marriage creates the perfect opportunity to change. Above all, only God can work lasting changes in us.
Prof Gigy Joseph
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