Again this is from Trumpet of Conscience. Martin Luther King will get a bit of rest after this, but only because he wasn't the only one with the same message. Beware of seekers who try to work out the mysteries of this world and whatever comes next in public. :-)
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The full text of this chapter was delivered by Dr. King as a
Christmas sermon in Ebenezer Baptist Church
at Atlanta , Georgia
…I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve
seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’
councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and
every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear.
Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say:
“We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure
suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you
will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your
unjust laws and abide to the unjust system, because noncooperation with evil is
as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail
and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as
difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of
violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some
wayside road and leave us half dead as you beat us, and we will still love you.
Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that are not
fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration and we’ll still love you. But be
assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will
win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal
to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process and our
victory will be a double victory.”
If there is to be peace on earth and goodwill toward men, we
must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that
all reality hinges on moral foundations. Something must remind us of this as we
once again standing the Christmas season and think of the Easter season
simultaneously, for the two somehow go together; Christ came to show us the
way. Men love darkness rather than the light and they crucified Him, and there
on Good Friday on the Cross it was still dark, but then Easter came, and Easter
is an eternal reminder of the fact that the truth-crushed earth will rise
again. Easter justifies Carlyle in saying, “No lie can live for ever.” And so
this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace on earth and goodwill
toward men” let us know that in the process we have cosmic companionship.
In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington . D.C., and
talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I
tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to
you today that not long after talking about the dream I started seeing it turn
into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a
nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four
beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham , Alabama Vietnam
escalating, and as I saw so-called military advisers, 16,000 strong, turn into
fighting soldiers until today over 500,000 American boys are fighting on Asian
soil. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but
in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you
know you can’t give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality
that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps
you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.
I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see
that they are made to live together as brothers. I still have a dream this
morning that one day every Negro in this country, every colored person in the
world, will be judged on the basis of the content of his character rather than
the color of his skin, and every man will respect the dignity and worth of human
personality. I still have a dream today that one day the idle industries of
Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be fill, and brotherhood
will be more than a few words at the end of a prayer, but rather the first order
of business on every legislative agenda. I still have a dream today that one
day justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream,
I still have a dream today that in all of our state houses and city halls men
will be elected to go there who will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly
with their God. I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an
end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither
will they study war any more. I still have a dream today that one day the lamb
and the lion will lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine
and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still have a dream today that one day
every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low, the
rough places will be made smooth and the crooked places straight, and the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. I still
have dream that with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of
despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this
faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth and
goodwill toward men. It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing
together, and the sons of God will shout for joy.
I have a copy of the
Anglican prayer book for New
Zealand . Dr. King is included in their
calendar of saints and good men and women worthy special commemoration. He is
listed as a prophet. I believe he was just finding that prophetic voice and
enlarging his ministry to include not only poor and disenfranchised of this
country but the world when voice of the man was silenced in Memphis in 1968. His physical voice was
silence but his words live on. Even if they aren’t included in the “official”
mythology of this country.
Again, look at the history of the last fifty years. Not just
Vietnam
but all the rest. The deadly chickens that came home to roost in Iran in the late
seventies. The malignant offspring of our intervention in the fifties. Our
support for the torturers and oligarchs of Latin America
from the seventies to the nineties. And oh how I would love to spend just five or ten minutes with Mitt Romney. I'd ask him how he could reconcile his Christian faith with the investments he took from Salvadoran oligarchs that helped them move assets out of the country so that they could live in comfort in the US and watch their country burn from the safety of this country. That might make an interesting conversation.
The support of dictators around the world who only had to murmur communism and subversion to get our attention and support. Saddam Hussein bay have been a murderous SOB but he played us and the Soviets like a bad violin for decades. We supported programs in the third world that forced their people off the land and tied up the land for export crops instead of food for the starving citizens who lived there.
The support of dictators around the world who only had to murmur communism and subversion to get our attention and support. Saddam Hussein bay have been a murderous SOB but he played us and the Soviets like a bad violin for decades. We supported programs in the third world that forced their people off the land and tied up the land for export crops instead of food for the starving citizens who lived there.
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