Paul's Letter to American Christians
I would like to share with you an imaginary
letter from the pen of the Apostle Paul. The postmark reveals that
it comes from the city of Ephesus. After opening the letter I discovered
that it was written in Greek rather than English. At the top of
the first page was this request: "Please read to your congregation
as soon as possible, and then pass on to the other churches."
For several weeks I have worked assiduously
with the translation. At times it has been difficult, but now I
think I have deciphered its true meaning. May I hasten to say that
if in presenting this letter the contents sound strangely Kingian
instead of Paulinian, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity
rather than Paul's lack of clarity.
It is miraculous, indeed, that the
Apostle Paul should be writing a letter to you and to me nearly
1900 years after his last letter appeared in the New Testament.
How this is possible is something of an enigma wrapped in mystery.
The important thing, however, is that I can imagine the Apostle
Paul writing a letter to American Christians in 1956 A.D. And here
is the letter as it stands before me.
I, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the
will of God, to you who are in America, Grace be unto you, and peace
from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
For many years I have longed to be
able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what
you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances
that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your
dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific
genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains.
You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So
in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New
York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your
skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward.
I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted
in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged
your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being.
All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day
that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your
age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months
to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in
the area of scientific and technological development.
But America, as I look at you from
afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been
commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that
your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet
Thoreau used to talk about "improved means to an unimproved
end." How often this is true. You have allowed the material
means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which
you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality.
You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture.
Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood,
but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make
of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral
advances abreast with your scientific advances.
I am impelled to write you concerning
the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the
midst of an unChristian world. That is what I had to do. That is
what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are
many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to
man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their
great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such
principle as this: "everybody is doing it, so it must be alright."
For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern
sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You
have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking
a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving
their ultimate allegiance to this way.
But American Christians, I must say
to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, "Be not
conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of
your mind." Or, as I said to the Phillipian Christians, "Ye
are a colony of heaven." This means that although you live
in the colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire
of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and
eternity; both in heaven and earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance
is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to
any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance
to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will
it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never
allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions
to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.
I understand that you have an economic
system in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system
you have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation
in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production
that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans,
there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still
contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one
to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among
you are more concerned about making a living than making a life.
You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index
of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile,
rather than the quality of your service to humanity.
The misuse of Capitalism can also lead
to tragic exploitation. This has so often happened in your nation.
They tell me that one tenth of one percent of the population controls
more than forty percent of the wealth. Oh America, how often have
you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.
If you are to be a truly Christian nation you must solve this problem.
You cannot solve the problem by turning to communism, for communism
is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism
that no Christian can accept. You can work within the framework
of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You
can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the
face of the earth. God never intended for one group of people to
live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject
deadening poverty. God intends for all of his children to have the
basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe "enough
and to spare" for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge
the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth.
I would that I could be with you in
person, so that I could say to you face to face what I am forced
to say to you in writing. Oh, how I long to share your fellowship.
Let me rush on to say something about
the church. Americans, I must remind you, as I have said to so many
others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church
is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But
I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They
tell me that in America you have within Protestantism more than
two hundred and fifty six denominations. The tragedy is not so much
that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most
of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute
truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body
of Christ. You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor
a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor a Episcopalian. God
is bigger than all of our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses
for Christ, you must come to see that America.
But I must not stop with a criticism
of Protestantism. I am disturbed about Roman Catholicism. This church
stands before the world with its pomp and power, insisting that
it possesses the only truth. It incorporates an arrogance that becomes
a dangerous spiritual arrogance. It stands with its noble Pope who
somehow rises to the miraculous heights of infallibility when he
speaks ex cathedra. But I am disturbed about a person or
an institution that claims infallibility in this world. I am disturbed
about any church that refuses to cooperate with other churches under
the pretense that it is the only true church. I must emphasize the
fact that God is not a Roman Catholic, and that the boundless sweep
of his revelation cannot be limited to the Vatican. Roman Catholicism
must do a great deal to mend its ways.
There is another thing that disturbs
me to no end about the American church. You have a white church
and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep
into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the
true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you
stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning to sing "All Hail the Power
of Jesus Name" and "Dear Lord and Father of all Mankind,"
you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They
tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world
and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church.
How appalling that is.
I understand that there are Christians
among you who try to justify segregation on the basis of the Bible.
They argue that the Negro is inferior by nature because of Noah's
curse upon the children of Ham. Oh my friends, this is blasphemy.
This is against everything that the Christian religion stands for.
I must say to you as I have said to so many Christians before, that
in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither
bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all
one in Christ Jesus." Moreover, I must reiterate the words
that I uttered on Mars Hill: "God that made the world and all
things therein . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for
to dwell on all the face of the earth."
So Americans I must urge you to get
rid of every aspect of segregation. The broad universalism standing
at the center of the gospel makes both the theory and practice of
segregation morally unjustifiable. Segregation is a blatant denial
of the unity which we all have in Christ. It substitutes an "I-it"
relationship for the "I-thou" relationship. The segregator
relegates the segregated to the status of a thing rather than elevate
him to the status of a person. The underlying philosophy of Christianity
is diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of segregation,
and all the dialectics of the logicians cannot make them lie down
together.
I praise your Supreme Court for rendering
a great decision just two or three years ago. I am happy to know
that so many persons of goodwill have accepted the decision as a
great moral victory. But I understand that there are some brothers
among you who have risen up in open defiance. I hear that their
legislative halls ring loud with such words as "nullification"
and "interposition." They have lost the true meaning of
democracy and Christianity. So I would urge each of you to plead
patiently with your brothers, and tell them that this isn't the
way. With understanding goodwill, you are obligated to seek to change
their attitudes. Let them know that in standing against integration,
they are not only standing against the noble precepts of your democracy,
but also against the eternal edicts of God himself. Yes America,
there is still the need for an Amos to cry out to the nation: "Let
judgement roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream."
May I say just a word to those of you
who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle
with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the
temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure
to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love.
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence.
If you succumb to the temptation of using violence
in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a
long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to
the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
In your struggle for justice, let your
oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate
him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon
you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as
well as yourself. Let him know that the festering sore of segregation
debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. With this attitude
you will be able to keep your struggle on high Christian standards.
Many persons will realize the urgency
of seeking to eradicate the evil of segregation. There will be many
Negroes who will devote their lives to the cause of freedom. There
will be many white persons of goodwill and strong moral sensitivity
who will dare to take a stand for justice. Honesty impels me to
admit that such a stand will require willingness to suffer and sacrifice.
So don't despair if you are condemned and persecuted for righteousness'
sake. Whenever you take a stand for truth and justice, you are liable
to scorn. Often you will be called an impractical idealist or a
dangerous radical. Sometimes it might mean going to jail. If such
is the case you must honorably grace the jail with your presence.
It might even mean physical death. But if physical death is the
price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent
life of psychological death, then nothing could be more Christian.
Don't worry about persecution America; you are going to have that
if you stand up for a great principle. I can say this with some
authority, because my life was a continual round of persecutions.
After my conversion I was rejected by the disciples at Jerusalem.
Later I was tried for heresy at Jerusalem. I was jailed at Philippi,
beaten at Thessalonica, mobbed at Ephesus, and depressed at Athens.
And yet I am still going. I came away from each of these experiences
more persuaded than ever before that "neither death nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to
come . . . shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord." I still believe that standing up for the truth
of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life.
The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve
pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God,
come what may.
I must bring my writing to a close
now. Timothy is waiting to deliver this letter, and I must take
leave for another church. But just before leaving, I must say to
you, as I said to the church at Corinth, that I still believe that
love is the most durable power in the world. Over the centuries
men have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the
chief quest of ethical philosophy. This was one of the big questions
of Greek philosophy. The Epicurean and the Stoics sought to answer
it; Plato and Aristotle sought to answer it. What is the summon
bonum of life? I think I have an answer America. I think I have
discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at
the center of the cosmos. As John says, "God is love."
He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates
does not know God.
So American Christians, you may master
the intricacies of the English language. You may possess all of
the eloquence of articulate speech. But even if you "speak
with the tongues of man and angels, and have not love, you are become
as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."
You may have the gift of prophecy and
understanding all mysteries. You may be able to break into the storehouse
of nature and bring out many insights that men never dreamed were
there. You may ascend to the heights of academic achievement, so
that you will have all knowledge. You may boast of your great institutions
of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees. But all of
this amounts to absolutely nothing devoid of love.
But even more Americans, you may give
your goods to feed the poor. You may give great gifts to charity.
You may tower high in philanthropy. But if you have not love it
means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned, and die
the death of a martyr. Your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor
for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as history's
supreme hero. But even so, if you have not love your blood was spilt
in vain. You must come to see that it is possible for a man to be
self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice.
He may be generous in order to feed his ego and pious in order to
feed his pride. Man has the tragic capacity to relegate a heightening
virtue to a tragic vice. Without love benevolence becomes egotism,
and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.
So the greatest of all virtues is love.
It is here that we find the true meaning of the Christian faith.
This is at bottom the meaning of the cross. The great event on Calvary
signifies more than a meaningless drama that took place on the stage
of history. It is a telescope through which we look out into the
long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth into
time. It is an eternal reminder to a power drunk generation that
love is most durable power in the world, and that it is at bottom
the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. Only through achieving this love
can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life.
I must say goodby now. I hope this
letter will find you strong in the faith. It is probable that I
will not get to see you in America, but I will meet you in God's
eternity. And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling,
and lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope,
from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy, to him
be power and authority, forever and ever. Amen.
Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery,
Alabama, on 4 November 1956. MLKP.
|
