More Light Than Heat: Martin Luther King and racial intolerance

Monday, January 16, 2017

Martin Luther King and racial intolerance

The following post was published on the new-defunct Examiner.com on this date in 2010. I reproduce it here for posterity, for whatever it's worth.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Wikimedia

Although Friday, January 15, 2010, was actually the 81st anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, the official holiday will be observed throughout the United States Monday. The South Bend Tribune lists a variety of activities which will mark the occasion.

The activities include free admission to South Bend’s Center for History, which will show three films from the 1960’s with racial themes:

10:00 a.m. – To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
12:30 p.m. – A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
3:00 p.m. – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Even as we remember his birth, there is a debate about whether King was a true Christian and believed the Bible. There has been talk for years about his moral lapses. (See The 'Truth' About Martin Luther King.) But who of us is without sin?

One website has an article which purports to show King’s doctrinal position was heretical. It quotes two papers written while King was attending Crozer Theological Seminary. Although the contents of these papers would cause most conservative Christians concern, it must be remembered that these were written when he was a young college student, and do not necessarily reflect his beliefs as he got older.

On the contrary, an article by Charles Gilmer on EveryStudent.com indicates King had a very high regard for the Bible and its teachings. Gilmer points out that the civil rights activist did not teach racial “tolerance,” which is often based on moral relativism, but love.

“At the center of the Christian faith is the affirmation that there is a God in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality. A Being of infinite love and boundless power, God is the creator, sustainer, and conserver of values....In contrast to the ethical relativism of [totalitarianism], Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable.”
….
“Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” (Strength to Love, p. 51) [Cited by Gilmer.]

That Martin Luther King understood the message of the Gospel is clear in another passage quoted in the article.

"Evil can be cast out, not by man alone nor by a dictatorial God who invades our lives, but when we open the door and invite God through Christ to enter. 'Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.' God is too courteous to break open the door, but when we open it in faith believing, a divine and human confrontation will transform our sin-ruined lives into radiant personalities." (Strength to Love, p. 126)

As we remember Martin Luther King this weekend, remember these words. He was not striving for us to just “tolerate” each other, but to let God’s love transform us so that we would truly love one another.

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...do not let us be fooled.

The idea that the whole human race is, in a sense, one thing - one huge organism, like a tree - must not be confused with the idea that individual differences do not matter or that real people, Tom and Nobby and Kate, are somehow less important than collective things like classes, races, and so forth. Indeed the two ideas are opposites. Things which are parts of a single organism may be very different from one another: things which are not, may be very alike. Six pennies are quite separate and very alike; my nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share its common life.

Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand when you are tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are ‘no business of yours,’ remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.

I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me-which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, note 2 to chapter 28

"The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: 'I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust it will emerge as I write.' Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving." —Henri Nouwen