Page will shortly redirect to
http://lindy1950.tripod.com/biblical/prophetic.html

James Webb says : "The equanimity of Martin Luther King, Jr.
was nothing short of Lincolnesque in its breadth of vision"


Love That Confronts Evil

Martin Luther King, Jr.	AGAPE

Agape is disinterested love. It is a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor (I Cor. 10:24), Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. Get that. For Their Sakes. It is an entirely "neighbor-regarding concern for others," which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets. Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. If one loves an individual merely on account of his friendliness, he loves him for the sake of the benefits to be gained from the friendship, rather than for the friend's own sake. Consequently, the best way to assure oneself that Love is disinterested is to have love for the enemy-neighbor from whom you expect no good in return, but only hostility and persecution.

 

Another basic point about agape is that it springs from the need of the other person -- his need for belonging to the best in the human family. The Samaritan who helped the Jew on the Jericho Road was "good" because he responded to the human need that he was presented with. God's love is eternal and fails not because man needs his love. St. Paul assures us that the loving act of redemption was done "while we were yet sinners" -- that is, at the point of our greatest need for love. [Since the oppressor's personality is greatly distorted by his own crimes and injustice, and his soul is greatly scarred, he needs the confrontation, in love, of the boldness and humility -- agape -- of Christ.]

Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistence on community even when one seeks to break it. Agape is a willingness to sacrifice in the interest of mutuality. Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community. It doesn't stop at the first mile, but it goes the second mile to restore community. It is a willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to restore community. The cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go in order to restore broken community. The resurrection is a symbol of God's triumph over the forces that seem to block community. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. He who works against community is working against the whole of creation. therefore, if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate, I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love. If I meet hate with hate, I become depersonalized, because creation is so designed that my personality can only be fulfilled in the context of community.

Booker T. Washington was right: "Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him." When he pulls you that low he brings you to the point of working against community; he drags you to the point of defying creation, and thereby becoming depersonalized.

In the final analysis, agape means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. For example, white men often deny federal aid to education in order to avoid giving the Negro his rights; but because all men are brothers they cannot deny Negro children without harming their own. They end, all efforts to the contrary, by hurting themselves. Why is this? Because all men are brothers. All life is interrelated. If you harm me, you harm yourself.

Love, agape, is the only cement that can hold this broken community together. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.

Nonviolent resistance is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has a deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence who find it difficult to believe in a personal God. But even those persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or [as Christians believe] a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.

Martin Luther King, Jr. "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence"

The moral voice - conscience of a democracy
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
God is love : so ought we to love one another
The Moses Enigma -- son of Africa child of God
Poor in posessions, but rich in treasures of Heart
James Weldon Johnson's Lift every voice and sing
Desmond Tutu: no future without forgiveness and healing
The conservative (traditional) side to Dr. Martin Luther King
The Obamas: the untold story of an Africa family (27 generations)
Edward Blyden: Africa's unique role in history to be healing and spiritual
The triumph of Africa: the spiritual heritage of this most ancient continent
America's love affair with God: the gospel biblical influence on our social idealism

Of all systems Democracy most of all needs `brotherly love`
An interesting commentary is found in Bergson's discussion of Democracy.

The founding principles of Democracy are liberty, equality, fraternity. Those are the ideals, the values, at the root of the democratic form of government and toward which that form of government strives. The famous Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

Yet the ideal of liberty tends to be a conservative and individualist value, and at war with the socialist or leftist ideal of equality. Bergson says the hope, the salvation of Democracy is in the inclusion, often the intrusion, of the third term, which reconciles the two hostile sisters [Liberté, égalité] and reminds them they are sisters. Democracy works by exalting above all else the ideal of fraternity, brotherhood, love.

Bergson continues, declaring that this third part, fraternity, dispels the oft-noted contradiction between the two others, and that its ability to do so makes it paramount, the essential thing. Bergson's conclusion is that in making love / fraternity / brotherhood so indispensable, it makes it possible to say that democracy is evangelical in essence (its motive power is the ideal of love, this gospel ideal of agape.)

open rebuke is better than secret love
(or, if you love someone, let them know)







The New Martyrs

Bob Shepherd (facebook)