Thanks, MLK
Each year, in the month of January, we celebrate the life of the American Baptist minister and Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a man who stood against oppression in a nonviolent way. He found ways to combat hatred with love. He responded to fear with true. We need his message now more than ever.
What good is hate? What does revenge accomplish? Doesn’t hating our enemies really just hurt us? Unfortunately, racism still exists. Hate is still here. How can we, as Christians, provide acts of love instead of hate?
Now, I realize that I am a white male. I was born long after slavery ended. I did not live through the Civil Rights Movement. I did not grow up in a generation that was plagued with the venom of slavery like those who have lived before me. I have never been personally discriminated against. I do not know what it is like to deal with the harsh effects of racism. That being said, I have been witness to acts of racism. I have grown up hearing racist comments. I have heard stories of the effects of racism. Recently, I found myself in the midst of a surreal situation involving bigotry and hatred.
I was out walking my dog one afternoon when I was stopped by an elderly woman driving her car. She rolled down her window, and I expected her to make a polite comment about my dog. This has happened before and is not unusual. The people in my neighborhood are pretty friendly. I was shocked at what happened next.
She looked at me with a concerned look and asked, “Is that a colored person who lives in that house around the corner?” Not sure of where this was going, I responded by saying, “Uh, I don’t know?” She then said, “Well, I saw him walk right out of that house! Then he went down to the mailbox! Then he got the mail right out of the mailbox! Then he went back inside the house! I just don’t know what we are going to do now that colored people live in our neighborhood!”
She drove away before I even realized what happened. I was shocked. For some reason, this woman, who was probably in her 70’s, believed that a black person did not belong in her neighborhood. What made it worse was that for some reason she thought that she could confide in me because I’m white. I remember telling this story to some of my friends and asking the question, “What about me makes you think that I’m a white supremacist?” Was this woman under the illusion that all people felt this way? Somehow this idea that white people rule the world and black people don’t belong in our space still exists.
In his sermon Loving Your Enemies, Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “So when Jesus said ‘Love your enemy,’ he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every word of it. Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives.”
Dr. King was able to speak to people about Civil Rights issues using the direct words of Jesus. Matthew 5:44 states, “Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.” These direct words from Jesus’ infamous Sermon on the Mount speak to the reality of what we face each and every day. We have to make the decision, “Do I show love today or not?”
In his sermon, Martin Luther King states, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
Love is the only way forward.
