Decided this morning to journal my thoughts about this great man. I’m posting them here for your reading pleasure:

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MLK Day

MLK spoke out against injustice. He was a child of liberation theology and the great liberal theologians like Harnack, Schliermacher, and Rauschenbush. These men wanted to make the Kingdom of God more than the hereafter…they demanded justice now. MLK refused to accept the racial status quo in the south and challenged it publicly. Heavily influenced by Gandhi’s holistic and moral methods of non-violent resistance, MLK launched a movement within the civil rights movement that brought wholesale change in places where lynching and abuse of black-skinned people were a fact of life. It is right that America remembers his life.

Interesting that we do not remember Malcolm X in the same way. In many ways, Malcolm was more conservative politically than MLK. As time wore on, Martin became more interconnected with communist / socialist thought. He believed that socialism was a way to bring economic justice, which was wrong-headed. Malcolm asserted Black Nationalism…a belief that the Black Community needed to remove itself from White America and become wholly self-sufficient. He advocated arming black families with rifles and pistols – even forming black militias to protect black citizens from the Klan and other murderers. I align myself more politically with Malcolm, even though I am more spiritually and theologically aligned with MLK.

Those who came after these two great men however, have ransacked the movement. Jesse Jackson, a racist and con artist, has made himself and his family rich at the expense of America’s moral fabric. Al Sharpton is a charlatan par excellence. Both are anti-Semites and hate Whites. They are shakedown artists who are so shady that they defy description. Their corruption has robbed the movement of its moral center and reduced the great civil rights cause to a means to achieve financial freedom on the backs of the innocent.

These men are the champions of the New Racism. Terms like, “White privilege,” and, “institutional racism,” are their legacy. These are the attempts to reduce people whose skin is lighter colored then theirs to a morally inferior class. It’s no different than KKK or Jim Crow laws. It even exposes their racism, because they use their power in the media and Washington, DC to do harm to others simply because they come from different races…which dispels their notion that racism can only exist where a lack of power is present.

America needs what MLK called, “A Revolution of Values.” This means we must do more to embrace the spiritual nature of the American ideal. It’s simply to embody the great interpersonal and moral development embodied in the Golden Rule: Do unto others as we would want done to ourselves. On a personal level, we must rid our hearts of malice and hatred towards others and join hands with our fellow citizens to make our nation a better place to live. It begins with greater self-responsibility for the great privilege of being an American…our nation calls on us to make our communities great. On a social level, we must be a place of great compassion. This means embracing our neighbors and family members and helping them. Altruism never really comes in government programs. It’s best when we reach out our hands as individuals and families and associations.

MLK was a Christian pastor. He imperfectly embraced the Christian faith and its moral code. Sure, he was not a saint…his dalliances are well known, as are his many acts of plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation. But he believed in Jesus Christ, taught the Gospel, and believed in the Church as a place where the teachings of Jesus could be proclaimed and lived in community. All of these things are part of his legacy and call us to an active participation in his vision of the Kingdom of God as a visible reality NOW.

MLK is gone from us in the body. But his legacy is available for any to review and learn. As an American, I see in him a vision of our nation that hearkens to our Founders. As a Christ-follower, I see in him a way to make our Lord’s teaching of the Kingdom of God something that is both a coming hope AND a present trophy of the legacy found in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.