31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, [6] you did it to me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

My Life Goal: To hear Jesus say “Well done good and faithful servant.”

The Biologos crowd would clearly refute this as do the majority of theistic evolutionists. I think this is unhelpful for the debate between those who hold that the Christian scripture to be true and try to reconcile what science has discovered. Theistic evolutionist believe that there is no dichotomy between Scripture and science. Additionally Genesis 1 does not spell out that creation has not ever used evolutionary processes as part of God’s creative act or process. The Scripture is indeed infallible, it’s readers on the other hand are not.

I think Mohler is right in his thesis of the imperative of common descent from Adam. The federal analogy used by Paul comparing Jesus to the second Adam makes little sense nor does Genesis 2 make any sense if Adam was not a unique creation. The genetic marker difference between human and say chimpanzees is around 4%. The 96 % similarity shows that we are either a. From a common genetic ancestor or b. From a common creator. I take the later to be true. It fits with scripture as well.

It should be noted that the bio narrative of Genesis 2 purposes that humanity is not in functional equality with the rest of creation. It remains in harmony with creation until after the flood narrative of Genesis 9. Man though alone is created uniquely in the image of God. This is the hallmark of the creation narrative. It is also the point of Genesis 1 secondary only to the fact that God is the master Creator. Creation begins with a pre-existent Earth where God was already present.

The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.

Mohler presupposes that the Earth is basically a relatively new creation. He presupposes that it has not gone through cycles of change. I am not saying definitively one way or the other. I know that as very fallible man with only a limited amount of data that i am very hesitant to say I know all of what God has done. What he intended people to understand millennia ago in a prescientific age is not necessarily what he wants us to know now. The creation narrative does not go at all in to the specifics of how creation happened.

The six day creation narritve is at best a framework. It says God spoke but that does not necessarily say how he spoke. A God that speaks worlds in to existence could have been speaking in the languages of what we call evolutionary genetics. All things could have been created exnihilo but that seems to go against the framework of the narrative. Genesis 1 is not a scientific work it is a philosophical work describing a creative process. It is a blueprint. It is a work trying to balance the truth of God’s two great books of Revelation and exploration.

The Bible and Nature are both testaments of God. Nature unlike God’s special revelation has been ravaged by the cursing of humanity fallen and expelled from Eden. It is a fallible creation studied by fallible men. We should study it with this paradigm in mind, thoroughly rejecting Darwinian philosophical naturalism. We should study it to see in it the fingerprints of the Great Designer that is God.

I have found that as people age they grow either more insular or more broad in their charity towards those not in their camp. John MacArthur is in his 7th decade of life and in recent years he has shown a propensity towards the more insular position.

Many of us young 20 to 40 somethings do not readily realize how much the world that MacArthur has lived in has changed. He was born at the beginning of World War II. He has watched strong denominations fall and radical cultural change occur. He has watched his culture in his view degrade from pseudo-Christian to post-Christian. He has watched culture turn from monologue (radio and then tv) to dialog (Internet age) even being part of that change (his frequency on Larry King live on CNN for example). Yet his reaction in recent years is to track towards a insular response to the changing secular and Christian religious culture.

MacArthur views all things through his understanding of the Scripture. He has preached, written commentaries, and even has a bible with his name on it. As a self described “leaky dispensationalist” he sees the Church as the righteous remnant against the world. To borrow the phraseology of H. Richard Niehbur, MacArthur has a Christ against culture view. He sees the world through a lens that sees his view as the righteous and biblical view and most others as perverting the Truth. His book Truth Wars well sums up his argument that the Church is living in a crooked and perverse generation. He believes that the Church do to modernism and its ideological successor postmodernism has been stained in her heart and mind by the culture and false doctrine. MacArthur’s remedy for the Church is repentance from entanglement with the culture. He hopes that the Church will return to the Truth, as MacArthur understands it. It is also key to understand that this Truth is how Grace is worked out. Grace is reduced to leading people to find the Truth that MacArhur has found.

His theology is driven by a presupposition of an escapist eschatological hope that everything will eventually get worse until Christ returns triumphant to remove his saints, judge the Earth, and then restore the righteous remnant. He sees those outside his camp as the enemy or their minds captured by the enemy.

The Acts29 Movement of which Darrin Patrick is vice president of does not as a fundamental principle believe that God has finished working in the world. Its very name is a affirmation in the belief that God is active now in the world. Acts 29 is seen as a continuing journey of what God is doing in redemptive history. It is in a sense a idealistic eschatological hope that God has yet greater things to do. Acts29 pastors as a whole are much more willing to reach out to the culture. Neihbur would define Acts29 as a whole and Darrin Patrick in particular as holding to a Christ Transforming Culture view.

MacArthur is on the extreme right while Patrick is on the left of Neihbur’s ideological spectrum. This alone causes tensions. MacArthur to be consistent with his views must reject then the totality of those who are so outside his camp. The great tragedy is that these camps have much in common especially in essential doctrines. MacArthur though as a Christ Against Culture dispensationalists sees all of his views as essential.

To be fair to MacArthur he is like all of us who are Christian. He is a sinner in need of grace. He is influenced, limited, and a degree defined by his cultural interactions. His conservative culture and fundamentalist Christianity has shaped and is a key to his identity. It has shaped how he views the Scripture and Scripture’s Christ. More than any of this though he is he publicly clings to the one who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He also calls others to join him. I disagree with him on a great deal of Scripture yet I honor him as a elder brother in the faith.

MacArthur like all of us is a sinner much in need of Grace and Truth. Let us give grace to him in his uncalled for comments even though he does not deserve it. Why? Because that is the heart of grace.

There is also a warning in this for us to learn from MacArthur. We who are or would be preachers and pastors especially as we age need to learn how to pick which areas are to borrow from a Southern Baptist judge “are hills on which to die.” If we attack those who would be our allies then eventually our enemy will win battles because we are fighting among ourselves. We must carefully study someone else’s position before we make a judgment call on it. If all our energy is used in fighting amongst ourselves then none will be directed to the enemies camp. A dying world is on the line. The true wolves in sheep’s clothing will come and ravage the flock as they already are. We should work hard to help the Church to worship God in Spirit and Truth. We should also work hard to be like Christlike, for he was filled with Grace and Truth and he willing came in to a world that did not deserve him.

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil.”

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle–have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Published in:
King, Martin Luther Jr.

Yet I can not help but wonder what would have happened if Pope Leo X had been like the Father in Luke 15:11-32. Pope is Italian for father. The Pope is suppose to be the father of the Church on Earth. Catholic theology does not see him as like God the Father but more like St. Joseph a wise and godly surrogate father. Instead he was like a cruel steep parent. He was like a real version of the step mother in Cinderalla, he refused to see the beauty before him that this lowly monk had discovered so personally in his own life.

Pope Leo X was obsessed with the building of St.Peter’s Bascilica. He allowed indulgences to be sold in the name of God to buy grace for sinners and their dead relitives. Luther a trained Augustinian monk oposed this wicked practice for personal geological reasons. Luther had attempted to earn his salvation before his conversion but by God the Father’s grace saw that it was possible onl by God’s unmeritted grace alone and lived through faith alone.

What if Pope Leo X had listened to Luther like a father listens to a son? What if that pope had admitted Luther was right. He would have rightly earned the title pope. Leo X main problem wasn’t indulgences. It was he forgot who he was suppose to be. He was suppose to be a father even to Luther. Luther dedicated his work to the pope before his excommunication. Leo X forgot he was to have a Fathers loving heart. Not just any Father but the one who loved the erring son. Luther and all his followers left the Catholic Church in part because it’s head was not Christ like nor loved as the God and Father of our Lord commands.

We fathers must remember that unlike the father in the story of the prodigal son that it may be us who have sinned and wronged our sons and daughters. We are just as likely to be the prodigal father. Are we building bascilicas or children that will last forever? We must continually draw from the Father who is Love. History may depend on it. Our children and legacy does depend on it.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.

The concept of God as Father once seemed ludicrous. If God was up there he certainly could not also be my father down here. God is remarkably patient as a Father. When I finally embraced him, with little decorum he ran to me when I wandered home as the prodigal younger son. He gently rebuked me when I was the unloving elder son. I joyfully embrace his Fatherhood because as a father I need him to model to me how to love my kids.

“Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Most of us have little problem with God as Savior but God as a real Lord tends to be problematic. No one has a problem with a Sovereign that is merely a figurehead like say Queen Elizabeth. The Father though unlike the Queen of England desires and has the authority to be involved in every aspect of his subjects lives. God as a King offends our modern & post-modern pride. Where there are kings there are servants. None of us likes the idea of servitude. Oscar Wilde lived his life as a atheist in his attempt to flee God and be his own lord. This though is the great allusion of our world. Wilde in De Profundis summarizes well the human condition. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” All humans either knowingly or unknowningly are as Wilde said “other people.” All of us already follow either a life given over to God or one given over to sin. Even our sin is not truly our own, it is at best someone else’s remixed.

We agree with Lucifer via the pen of John Milton: “It is better to reign in hell than be a servant in heaven.” We create artificial “heavens” which are nothing more than well manicured mirages of hell because God is not really in them. God does not desire such horror for us or his creation for he does not desire to leave us to our own poorly constructed mirages. God the Father is only found in his kingdom yet he invites us to come in to it. As his kingdom comes on Earth as it is in Heaven, God is offering a chance for people to enter his kingdom as servants. We can either seek to be rulers in our little kingdoms where we are nothing more than slaves or we can seek to serve in his kingdom where we are declared to be sons and daughters.

Give us this day our daily bread,

Jesus switches from God’s intangible kingdom to food the most tangible of human needs. Some have said this includes anything we desire, want, or need. Jesus though declares to his listeners after the prayer to focus only on their basic needs. He strips from us a justification to pray after treasures instead he urges us to build only for his Kingdom. In this life we are not be anxious about the needs of life for that is how those outside the Kingdom think. Without food every human on the planet will die. It is the primary irreducible need common to all humanity. When Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread, he’s given us a spiritual guide to the temporal. It is not just to strive for simplicity in our prayers but to pray for the essentials of what we really need. How many people in our culture pray for cars, homes, and things that eventually end up in the trash or destroyed by time? How many prayers to God were sincerely uttered for the iPhone or a new car? Here God gives us a chance to be on absolutely equal footing with all humanity. It is meant to humble us.

and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Jesus turns things on us here. Everything already said find its application in the hardest place for us mere mortals. Forgiveness. In the prayer so far we who would become children of God find our deepest of needs from God tied to our fellow human. A group of religious men one day asked Jesus what was the greatest expression of their faith. Jesus answered that first it was to love God with all of our being. The second greatest was tied to this and was in fact similar to the first. It was to love others as we love ourselves. We are told in Scripture “to owe no one anything but to love one another”. The Christian faith is a faith of love for God is love. Jesus tells us we must forgive those that have wronged us and we are to love them. This is the greatest act in which humanity can emulate God. All the vile statements, untruths, and things that were meant to wound us, the things whispered behind our backs that are meant to define us through unrighteous judgments, the words spoken unlovingly to us, and all the human evil that characterizes living in a fallen world is to be forgiven. This is what God has done for us. This part of the prayer is my great struggle. I struggle to forgive those that do evil. Yet I know that if I dare to continually come before God asking him to actively forgive my debts then I must have already actively forgiven those who have sinned against me. Jesus declares that the two are so linked that we can not separate them without risking loosing both. This is the gospel and it is the part I don’t like because it demands that I forgive when all I want is retribution.

There is a story of a Corrie Ten Boom whose family was imprisoned for hiding Jews from the Nazis. Her family was arrested and while in Ravensbruck Concentration camp both her father and her sister die. Long after her liberation she spoke of how her family sacrificed much in the name of God and she hoped for healing to come from such great evil. She believed that this could only be done by practicing divine forgiveness. After one such talk a old Ravensbruck guard surprised her as he stood before and asked her for forgiveness for his sins against her and her family. This man that had contributed to her father and sisters death asked her for forgiveness. Her body was repulsed by the idea yet this is how she responded. “”I forgive you brother! With all my heart!” She forgave because she knew she had been forgiven. She possessed the heart of Jesus. The last words of Jesus on behalf of those who killed him were “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” If we really want to be like Jesus then we must forgive.

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

The prayer begins with a concept of a holy God and his kingdom. It ends with a petition to deliver us from the human condition. It begins with lofty language of a universal fatherhood and ends with the universal despair that can only be overcome by God’s leading. I struggle with this too because I want to be my own deliverer. I want the glory for overcoming my sin but the reality is only God can deliver us from evil. The children of Israel use to sing “My Deliver is coming, my Deliver is coming back.”

The offer of Jesus on the day when he offered the model prayer was for all those who were far off to come to God and be delivered through him. He was God’s Deliverer. This prayer has parts that I struggle with but I trust that my Deliver can sustain me through as my Father’s Kingdom comes even in my own life and struggles and eventually will once and for all end evil in this world. When the Kingdom fully comes evil will be judged by the only Righteous Judge. This is the gospel and it is the story that I struggle with and love.

This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures.

This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire.

Therefore be on guard against your own false ideas and against the chatterers who think they are clever enough to make judgements about faith and good works but who are in reality the biggest fools.

Ask God to work faith in you; otherwise you will remain eternally without faith, no matter what you try to do or fabricate.” – Martin Luther, Preface to Romans.

My spiritual journey with God can best be described as wrestling. I am by nature a skeptic. It is hard for me to believe in a invisible being called God that is a Sovereign Lord. That belief goes against my nature and my culture. The virtue of our society is that we are our own lords and anything goes as long as its “consensual” and “no body gets hurt”. Sovereignty implies submission and the idea of submission goes against my very nature. I love music and it has been a great influence on my spiritual journey particularly in my late teens and early 20s. I really fell in love with the raw honesty of Jennifer Knapp’s music at a time I nearly walked away from the Church. She spoke in her music about struggles with a sovereign God. I’ve struggled too.

She is a incredible talent that has passionately spoken about her struggles with faith. Her music has spoken to me for years. It likely will for years to come. I was surprised in how Jennifer Knapp has responded to her coming out the closet. Some within the Church do not know what to do with her. Especially when you read the lyrics of her music before her hiatus. To these Christians she sounds like “one of us” i.e. conservative Christians but her actions is like “one of them” i.e. non-Christian. Homosexuality is often seen as one of the worse if not the worst of sins in the Church and there are few within conservative Christianity that believe the two can co-exist within the same person. What got to me is her lack of struggle.

Here are her words from Christianity Today.

But if you remove the social problem that homosexuality brings to the church—and the debate as to whether or not it should be called a “struggle,” because there are proponents on both sides—you remove the notion that I am living my life with a great deal of joy. It never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a “struggle.”

Where I and Jennifer part ways is on the idea of struggle.

Here is my confession. I am continually coming out of the closet of being a heterosexual sinner. I have struggled with God and my sexual desires from my earliest of memories throughout my 20s. Jennifer’s response does not bother me in the least in that she admits to homosexual desires. The difference is that she isn’t seeing it as a struggle. We differ greatly in how we have responded in coming out of our different respective closets. She says she isn’t struggling. Her lack of struggle bothers me.

God in the Old Testament proved himself to people in struggle. They proved that they were following him by their struggles. God showed himself to Jacob by struggling with Jacob. Jacob’s entire life was one of struggle. He knew God was real because he struggled with God. In the New Testament we see believers who struggled with their former homosexual praxis. The Scriptures teach that the lives of the saints of God are to be examples for how we struggle with God. I can not find one saint of God who did not struggle and for a majority of believers their internal struggle in both testaments where struggles with sexuality. It is a safe bet that we are going to and should struggle with God in our sexuality.

In my next post I’m going to talk about struggling with sex, the purpose of sex, and what God has to say to sinners like Jennifer Knapp and sinners like me about sex.

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