On the recent Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I didn’t post anything.
Before explaining why, I need to provide some personal context. See, a terrific benefit of working for a financial institution is bankers holidays. For a few years now, I’ve been able to use MLK day to be fully reflective. Instead of using the off day to wrap up house projects, I nestle in to read and watch documentaries concerning Dr. King’s life and the movement he led.
It’s impossible to watch videos of the Civil Rights Movement and not be impacted. Those who were so bold as to fix a broken America hold my endless admiration. While their tact was non-violence, they were subjected to brutality. So many risked everything to ensure that our nation repented from the errors of our ways.
On MLK day, I lament. And as an ordained minister (like Dr. King himself), I long to put into words my emotions and share with others.
But I didn’t post anything.
I actually wrote almost a page of notes from my processing but just couldn’t bring myself to do anything with it. I just wasn’t convinced that it would make a difference.
The advent of social media has led to MLK Day receiving more attention that it ever had been previously. But while I’m thankful that the web has expanded a critical conversation, it seems to me that a toxicity that surrounds it. The number of MLK gatekeepers is increasing and they’re not happy.
Some suggest that unless you accept certain tenets that you are misrepresenting what we should remember. They have a point. While Dr. King’s struggle for racial equality is what takes center stage, he was also passionate concerning issues of poverty, workers rights, and war. Opinions about the man today are far more gracious than they were when he died, namely, because we’ve overlooked some of his more challenging preaching. Before he was killed, the majority of Americans despised that for which he stood. Today, he’s a hero.
Yet these efforts to retain the totality of Dr. King’s message are themselves divisive. While he was dedicated to an equality that some Americans have yet to accept, he constantly created paths for skeptics to get there. The content of his message was confrontational but it was always presented in a context of graciousness.
Dr. King wasn’t the first (nor the last) to present these teachings. But It’s his posture of communication that makes him one of my heroes.
When you lead with love, it makes all the difference.
I wish we all could do a little better in emulating Martin Luther King Jr. in this way. Press for change, but love those you would wish to heed the message.
As a preacher, I enjoy reading Dr. King's sermons. In the fall of 1954, after answering the call to pastor the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, he used his very first sermon to preach on the love of God. His central texts were taken from the New Testaments, specifically the words of the apostle John. It’s this Scripture that was my greatest take away from this past Monday.
"We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen."
Words of Love