nice reminder about King’s full message
From Greg Boyd:
at the heart of everything King stood for was an unqualified conviction that violence can never achieve a good end that endures.
Taking his cue from Jesus and Ghandi, King insisted, over and over again, that lasting justice and peace can only come about when we resolve to love our enemies rather than retaliate against them. In fact, in some of the speeches King gave before demonstrations, he told this audience he didn’t want anyone participating who harbored hatred in their heart toward their oppressors and who were not willing to commit to non-violence, regardless of what may be done to them. In his speeches and writings (e.g. Stride Toward Freedom) he proclaimed that true freedom can only come when the oppressed care as much about freeing their oppressor as they care about freeing themselves from oppression. The only way forward, King rightly saw, was through self-sacrificial love, even toward – especially toward – our enemies.
The heart of King’s dream wasn’t about racial equality. It was about racial equality only because it was first and foremost about a society in which love prevails and that recognizes the insanity of hatred, oppression and violence. And while America has certainly made important strides toward racial equality – as evidenced by Obama’s presidency – it seems to me that we have not progressed one iota toward the ideal of non-violence. If anything, it seems we’ve gone backwards in recent years on this ideal.
