Reflections on MLK Jr. Day

(Editor’s Note: A little over a year ago, Donald Miller wrote this article about Martin Luther King Jr. We’re rerunning that article this week in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day)

I’ve been watching documentaries about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The surprise running through my head has been the difficulty he encountered as a leader in the civil rights movement. What to me seems obvious, to a country seemed ridiculous: that all people are created equal, and have unalienable rights. At the time, the words of our own constitution, just as the words of Scripture, lay silent in the background, oppressed by desires to believe we were right, to believe we were better, desperate to find a difference in “other people” no matter how ridiculous the logic. The genius of the American system lay in checks and balances, in the idea that man, unchecked, will lean toward evil. Our founding fathers knew this, and knew that freedom would only come when people in power were kept in check. It is that system that Martin Luther King Jr. used to change America. He pushed truth against the prejudice, and when the prejudice bit back, he proved truth was good and right, because it had the moral authority to turn the other cheek and, in time, create peace where there had been violence, and unity where there had been division. I am reminded again, as I watch these documentaries and think about the struggle that took place in this country, how good for the world the methods and messages of Christ are, and how strikingly different this message is from a conquering mentality employed by the church of old, by religious systems all over the world, and by financial interests when salivating from the mouth of some corporations who neglect individual responsibility by hiding inside a monstrous construct.

In changing a social landscape, Jesus did not employ common sense, He employed sacrifice, even to the point of death, both for Him and for His many apostles and members of the early church. The true Christian legacy, then, is distinct from a Constantinian religion. Ours is a legacy of non-violence, which assumes one lose doing the right thing rather than win doing the wrong. We might laugh at the insignificance of one moral victory, but a million moral victories cannot be ignored. King, following Christ, proved this to be true.

There have been points of light, as it were. Jim and Elizabeth Elliot showed us the power of turning the other cheek, and revolutionized an entire tribe, cutting the homicide rate by more than 80%. The question may be, what does non-violent resistance look like in the information age? Perhaps we can turn to Bono, whose ONE campaign boasts a larger enrollment than that of the National Rifle Association. Millions of lives will be saved by a Rock Star who used a microphone and a handful of anthems instead of a gun.

I think we change the hearts and minds of America’s citizens the same way Christ has changed our hearts; with a persistent commitment to what is good and right and true, and without lifting a finger against us. Can you imagine, early in your Christian maturity, Jesus showing as little patience with you as the religous right shows against their supposed foes? I, for one, would have never made it. Save His patience, I am lost.

King was not popular, even amongst his own people. Many wanted to fight. They wanted to lift a fist out of pride and a desire for vengeance. But somebody who knows the truth knows also you cannot build God’s kingdom with Satan’s methodology.

So, for the church, in the face of the crisis in Africa, in the face of our disastrous union with western economic imperialism, and in the face of apathy about the revolutionary message of the gospel of Jesus, I am reminded that when making progressive changes, we do so in kindness, in love, and with relentless forgiveness, not because we are right, but because there is a right. And in Martin Luther King we see our methodology matters as much as our message, because the two cannot be separated.

A year the Burnside Writers Collective Magazine, an online magazine that changes every week. In the pages you will find plenty about culture, plenty about entertainment, but also a stream of thought about what is going on in the world, and what we can do about it. Thank you for visiting. Tell your friends.

All the best to you as you follow Christ in peaceful resistance, against the powers of the world, and against those same powers when they show up in our own hearts.