Journal of James's Journey with Jesus

MISSING: The Martin Luthers of Our Generation

I have realised that it is not easy to be a revolutionary, lobbyist and advocate in a world that prefers order to justice. A world in which the needs and wants of the majority are satisfied and those of the minority marginalised.

It is so easy to overlook the suffering of others when we ourselves are prospering in comfort. It is even easier to say that since almost everyone is happy, there is little or no problem with the world we live in.

Don't get me wrong; I am not excluding myself from the guilt or criticising the good intentions and actions of others. There are plenty of well-meaning sympathisers out there in the world who are doing their bit to change their world for the better.

But few are those who have found the courage and persistence to fight for the rights of others at their own expense. I am talking about the seers of our world; those who have such a acute sense of empathy, compassion and justice. I penned this article to honour these extraordinary heroes.

Among the many revolutionaries in this world, the ones I admire the most are Gandhi and the two Martin Luthers. Below is a summary of Ghandi's biography from Wikipedia.

Gandhi was born in India but studied in London to become a barrister. He witnessed the evils of segregation when he was visiting South Africa. He was thrown off a train after his refusal to move to a third-class train carriage, even though he had bought first-class tickets.

While travelling on a horse-driven carriage, he was beaten by the driver for refusing to travel on the foot board to make room for a European passenger. He was barred from several hotels. In another incident, the magistrate of a court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do.

He tried to assist Indians in South Africa, who were denied the rights to vote, but failed in his attempt. When a new Act compelled registration of the colony's Indian population, he held a mass protest meeting calling on his fellow Indians to defy the new law and suffer the punishments for doing so, rather than resist through violent means.

This plan was adopted, leading to a seven-year struggle in which thousands of Indians were jailed (including Gandhi), flogged, or even shot, for striking, refusing to register, burning their registration cards, or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance.

While the government was successful in repressing the Indian protesters, the public outcry stemming from the harsh methods employed by the South African government in the face of peaceful Indian protesters finally forced the authorities to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi.

These events were a turning point in his life, awakening him to social injustice and influencing his subsequent social activism. It was through witnessing firsthand the racism, prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa that Gandhi started to question his people's status within the British Empire, and his own place in society.

He went back to India and liberated his country from British colonial rule through non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance. Mass protest marches, hunger strikes and refusal to consume British products such as textiles were ways he adopted to oppose the mighty British Empire.

You know what I admire the most about Ghandi? He was closer to Jesus's heart than many Christians will ever be. He was a Hindu believer but he had come across the Christian faith while studying in London. Though he knew little about God or Christianity, he had read about 'turning the other cheek'.

He had such a balanced sense of truth and justice. He saw things in three colours; black, white and gray. On one hand, he believed in going against norms that were abnormal to moral sense. It is not easy to have a balanced view amidst all the peer and societal pressures in those days when the Indians had resigned to their fate and the British stood tall as their oppressors.

On the other hand, he believed in opposing his enemies like a gentleman. He never thought of using hatred to incite riots or armed attacks but believed that his martyrdom would shame the bully and open up their eyes. Armed with only a firm but gentle pursuit of truth and justice, he harboured no hatred for the British. He abhorred only their shallow minds and coloured perspectives.

He had simple faith and practised it, to astonishing results. Gandhi understood the gist of what Jesus was saying. While the British Christians were sitting in their pews with wide-eyed attention to the pastor's sermon and singing soulful hymns about multitudes of all races entering heaven, their treatment of other races were unequal and unjust.

Ghandi said to the British, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians."

Ghandi was a voice for the voiceless and a defender of the weak, a hallmark of what Christians should be. Knowing the truth and not practising all of it makes you worse than a tyrant oppressor who did not know the truth. Your guilt is greater, your sin is less forgivable and you have absolutely no excuse.

Ghandi said of the British, "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"

The first Martin Luther spoke against legalism. The latter, Martin Luther King, spoke against racism and segregation. Both were Protestants in their own right, believing that non-conformity to unreasonable stands on issues was more important and preferred to unity in a common prejudice, injustice or error. It is better to be divided with eyes wide open than to be united with your eyes blinded.

They disarmed the devil's greatest lie; that unity was more important than equality, justice and truth. Revolutionaries like them were often deemed the devil's apprentice, a worker of strife and a foolish faction making a fuss.

The second greatest lie is that we should wait and pray for God to act on our behalf. While I believe that prayer is necessary and powerful for personal decisions, I do not advise praying when matters concerning others cannot be allowed to tarry any further. Any time is the right time to speak out against injustice and inequality.

It seems to me we have made an excuse for our timidness by saying that the time has not yet come, that God has not chosen us to fight for this cause or that God Himself will fight for us.

Hello, we're called God's ambassadors for something? We are His workers of justice and we cannot afford to be passive. Don't expect Him to do our work for us. His Words are clearly stated in the Book we profess to have hidden in our heart.

Have you ever pondered if perhaps you're the one He wants to use to bring about a significant change? His greatest test for us might be this; how do you respond to injustice?

The excerpt below of Martin Luther King's Speech was taken from http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

This is an amazing and inspiring speech that serves as a tutor to our Christian walk. Learn from one of Christianity's greatest revolutionaries ever.

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.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.... 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." 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.

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? 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. 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.

Where a spirit of justice lies, there will come forth revolutionaries with a message the whole world is yearning to hear. Where a spirit of truth resides, there follows a great inner peace to speak out what no pressure can subdue.

I'll end off this article with an encouraging statment from Ghandi.

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."