One glance at the news is enough to make me sick. The tragedies of the past weeks have deeply grieved me. I had given much thought to the hopelessness seen in the two cases of alleged police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. But as I sat in my home less than an hour away from where the Dallas shootings took place, it was as if the world began to spin. I know that our nation has historically dealt with extreme racism. I grew up in Alabama and I am well aware of our history. But that’s the thing – it’s history. It seemed so far behind us, but here we are in 2016 and things are tense. Yes, we have seen great progress, but still we lack perfect unity.
The civil rights movement was an incredible one. I am extremely fond of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s accomplishments, promoting love toward all human beings regardless of race. But I must say that if he were alive today, I believe he would shake his head at the Black Lives Matter movement. Hear me out. Black lives DO matter. There is no question about that. But the core participants of Black Lives Matter have been fueled by hate and are hungry for revenge. There are countless videos of these people chanting awful, malicious phrases like, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!”. I could go into further detail, but that’s not my point here. If you wish for elaboration on that, check out this YouTube video.
When you consider King’s most famous speeches, it is absolutely clear he would not affiliate with such hateful ideologies. One of my favorite quotes by him is, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech he said, “Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
In his most famous speech, “I Have A Dream,” he said, “I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers... Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred." So you see it was MLK’s dream, and it should be ours, too that we be united together as one race. And that it would not be driven by bitterness or hatred, but by love. And friends, this kind of love simply is not possible without the help of our Maker.
1 John 4: 7 – 12: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
