Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Were he still alive he’d be 95, and we’d be singing “Happy Birthday.”
But he’d not be happy. He’d not be happy with a lot of things. He’d especially not be happy with evangelical “Christians” who glibly cite Bible verses to justify Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians.
King cited the Bible too. Often. But not those kinds of verses. King was not an evangelical.
Evangelicals idolize the Bible. They say it’s THE WORD OF GOD.
It’s not.
It’s human. Flawed and fallible. A bony fish.
There’s this:
Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Welcome the outcast. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Love your enemy. Now abideth faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love. Study war no more.
And this:
Wives submit to your husbands. Slaves obey your masters. Homosexuality is an abomination. Kill the Amalekites.
Three thousand years ago Israel’s first king was ordered to kill the Amalekites because they had attacked the Israelites on their way to conquering and occupying Canaan (aka Palestine).
Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over Israel. Thus says the Lord: I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack the land of Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have. Do not spare them. Kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (I Samuel 15.1–3)
(That’s called “collective punishment.”)
Saul attacked but spared a few. He left some survivors. God was pissed.
I’m sorry I ever anointed Saul king!
In a press conference last October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his people were united in their fight against an enemy of incomparable cruelty. “Israel is committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world. Our Holy Bible says: You must remember what Amalek has done to you. And we do remember.”
That’s weird. Still, evangelicals applauded.
King would not have.
He would applaud this.
You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.
And this.
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
And this.
Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Happy birthday, Martin.
I always look forward to The Devil’s Gift. Today’s Gift is inspired and so timely. Although I am far from being a biblical scholar, I have discovered that the wisdom of the New Testament is also to be found in the Hebrew Bible.
An after thought to my comment of a minute ago… One needs to look for it with an open heart.
Carol
I remember a pastor of mine (wink wink) justifying the fight against ISIS. Would offer the below article from a former colleague of mine, now a leading expert on urban warfare, to help shed some light on the horrific acts that took place in Israel – equally destructive and inhumane to that of ISIS.
Peace does not happen on its own and evil does not simply rid itself of this world. Justice cannot be served while the righteous idly stand by.
https://time.com/6554560/lesson-on-human-suffering-kibbutz-kfar-aza/
Thank you.
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this time of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.” MLK
I would add that King didn’t just speak, he took to the street, organized workers to amass voters. We have an election coming that threatens to foreclose on our debt to democracy, so words are not enough. We can phonebank in battleground states. We wont be famous or admired as individuals, but we as a whole will be.
Well said! Tomorrow Martin’s “I Have a Dream” speech will be played on the media, but will we also hear his Riverside Church speech against the Vietnam war? Our society has somehow sanitized him into a safe, distant in-the-past icon. Yet his life and character manifested great courage in the face of constant danger and resistance. My late sister, an elementary school teacher in Atlanta, taught Martin’s children; she knew him personally, even marching with him. She told me, “He was the bravest person I ever knew.”
As you rightly commented, Scripture contains numerous gems of wisdom as well as bigoted passages of vengeance and hatred. As Biblical scholar Marcus Borg observed, “The Bible is a human product, not a divine product.” But here is one helpful nugget: “Without a vision, the people perish.” Martin was a prophetic visionary whose spirit lives on. He challenged us in his final book by its very title: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? May we choose the right path.
Just a note of appreciation for your salient insight, always ✨
And what kind of a world have we created anyway when there is an actual academic discipline called “urban warfare”?
It’s a subset of the profession of arms, a vocation comprised of experts certified in the ethical application of land combat power, serving under civilian authority, and entrusted to protect the constitution. As professionals, people like John Spencer have been entrusted to serve and adhere to the highest of ethical standards, which in turn makes it an academic discipline. Would encourage reading the article and researching a little more about him before passing judgement.
Armed conflict is rooted in the domains in which humans live, most notably urban environments, therefore to protect, defend, deter, and eliminate threats to the peaceful way of being requires experts committed to this profession.
May grace, love, and peace abound always, but we would be naive to think a picture perfect world can be achieved without experts who commit their lives to causing violence on behalf of others.
To be sure, I read the article, first. I don’t need the terminology explained. And my question stands.
Thanks so much for reminding us who Dr. King was, what he did and what he gave his life to and for. Today we carry on the Poor Peoples Campaign everyday working for and fighting for “the least of these”. Join us March 2 at the state Capitol.
I so appreciate your sharing of your wisdom, giving thought pondering … Thank you for continuing to help me grow.
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
I make a point most years to review the “Birmingham” letter. As a congressional speechwriter, I would lift a quote or two to mark the birthday. This year, there were two notions that spoke to me.
“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.”
Being charged with being too great in a religious hurry, Dr. King wrote, “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 the people of good will.”
Finally, I thought of a song for spaceship Earth. Furry Lewis’s 1928 I Will Turn Your Money Green, with the lyric: “I been down so long, it seem like up to me.”
“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” — MLK, Jr. Tragically, this hatred is Bibi Netanyahu’s misguided motivation in Israel’s war with Hamas, and it will be his political end very shortly (undergirded by the indictments against him and failed attempt to undermine the authority of the Israeli Supreme Court in an attempt to maneuver his way out of legal accountability). There are facts to consider: Hamas is an existential threat to the state of Israel and Jews the world over. Hamas has embedded itself within the Palestinian community in Gaza, knowing their citizens would be killed in an Israeli counter-attack. Maybe (self-serving) Indifference is a fraternal twin to Hatred. Whatever transcendent Truths override, let us heed MLK’s warning, “Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Please put your loving, healing, peaceful vibes out there for all, and find safe, neutral ways to release the negative. The planet needs our healing energy and not our negative or angry judgment. Positive action? Yes. Negative energy vibes? No. To quote another famous guy… “Be the change…” 💜 Thank you, Randy and Friends. You ALL enlighten and inspire, always!
Thank you. Vengeance is the rule of law all over the world. What gets me is the short memory that the nation of Israel seems to have regarding the movement to wipe all Jews from the face of the planet just 80 years ago. I vowed as a child to never repeat the wrongs that were dealt to me; it hurts to see people insisting on tit for tat because those chain links form a circle that never ends. Bernard and I just watched a film “The Pianist” directed by Roman Polanski, 2002, about Nazis killing Jews in Warsaw. Watching the film put in perspective the flood of European Jews who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to the new nation of Israel in 1947. They seem to have no understanding or ties to any Arab neighbors.
On the contrary, I think Israelis have long memories about the Holocaust, and that among them is this one: Among those in the Jewish ghettos of WWII Germany were many devout Orthodox Jews. They did not take up arms against the Nazis because they believed that a loving G-d would save them. All of those people died in the Holocaust. Now, the Israelis face a new enemy, Hamas, which has as its primary goal the elimination of Israel and all of its inhabitants. I submit that the military reaction is because the remember.
It’s hard to add much to what has already been said. However, “urban warfare” is as old as organized societies and warfare itself. It is horribly unjust in the toll that it exacts on innocents, who are sadly caught in the crossfire. It would seem humans might eventually grow weary and morally sickened by a constant state of warfare. Sadly, that reality doesn’t appear to have gained much traction over millennia of organized and systematic destruction. Let’s add another companion term to “urbane warfare”, “asymmetric warfare”. In other words, no defined front lines or even strategic objectives, other than attrition and wearing an enemy, generally a more powerful one, down to the bone physically while mentally erroding any lingering sense of purpose or conviction.
Much justifiable criticism has been internationally leveled at Israel for its conduct of this latest installment of yet another in an endless series of Middle East wars. I’m not hearing quite as much from the chorus when it comes to criticizing Hamas for willfully using innocents as shields. Nonetheless, we humans, as Bob Seger once succinctly observed, simply “Turn the page.”
History is violent and humans are the worst/best of all of God’s creation. Here is another excerpt from my good friend John Spencer that the MSM is not reporting on.
https://sofmag.com/hamas-terror-video-john-spencer/
A wonderful tribute to a courageous man.