Seeing through religion, finding universal wisdom

This is a series of writings we have been featuring in this page for the past few weeks based on the book ‘Strength to Love’ by  American Civil Rights Activist and Christian preacher Martin Luther King, first printed in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton in 1964, (copyright 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr.).

We last stopped at chapter five titled ‘Loving your enemies’ and today we cover chapter six titled ‘A knock at midnight,’ chapter seven titled ‘The man who was a fool,’ and chapter eight titled ‘The death of evil upon the seashore’. 

As Martin Luther King mentions so poignantly in the last speech before he was murdered on 04 April, 1968, he may not himself ‘get to the promised land’ of the human equality that he sacrificed his life for but that he fears no man because his eyes has seen the ‘glory of the company of the Lord.’ In the religious terms that he understood he had seen in his life and quest the glory of the company of Jesus who also sacrificed his life for the cause of justice and he had no fear of anything else. In a secular sense we can understand the Lord as the perfect nature of the enjoined human and cosmic awareness that go beyond the trivial and inane machinations of unrefined perceptions that humans usually bury themselves in. And whether having the tag of Christian or not we can respect the term ‘Lord’ as being a pristine, undefiled cosmic consciousness just as we understand the term Christ which is an honoured title meaning anointed one. It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah meant for Jesus. 

Chapter six ‘A knock at midnight’ is very relevant to our human world today as it unravels the purpose of religion in a Christian backdrop and the role of churches. Although this writer attempts to expand secular comprehension in the broadest possible sense, Martin Luther King, well read  in other faiths and cultures, does it in his own way as well, elaborating on terms to encapsulate diverse meanings with contextual significance. It should be reminded here that although the freedom that was so yearned by him was won for his people after his death,  that the world as we know it is still a world of bondage.

“In the terrible midnight of war men have knocked on the door of the church to ask for the bread of peace but their church as often disappointed them,” he notes as he cites the modern day lament of organised religions and its monotonous uselessness to nourish the one essential in our world; peace within and between humans. 

Martin Luther King continues, “During the last two world wars, national churches even functioned as the ready lackeys of the state, sprinkling holy water upon the battleships and joining the mighty armies in singing – ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition”. “A weary world, pleading desperately for peace, has often found the church morally sanctioning war,” he notes. 

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club,” he warns and his words are a case in point of what we see around us – not just in Christian churches but in every social institution that is a religious place of ‘worship.’  The world at large, Christian or not, is shown the hideousness of worshipping the idols of bloodthirsty greed and hypocrisy when religions  are transformed into cheerleading clubs of oppression. Chapter seven which is titled ‘The Man who was a fool’ begins with the quote – ‘Thou fool – this night thy soul shall be required of thee,” (Luke; 12:20). Here, by the term soul one can grasp that what is referred to is the fundamental crux of life empowered through breath – prana - and its connected force that enabled existence – facilitating the human presence with all its sorrows and joys. Ever lurking death snaps it in that unknown instant. 

Martin Luther King begins this chapter thus; “I would like to share with you a dramatic little story that is significantly relevant in its implications and profoundly meaningful in its conclusions. It is the story of a man who by all modern standards was considered eminently successful. Yet Jesus called him a fool.”

This is the story of a certain rich man who builds more and more storage places for his over abundant crops and says – “There will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry.’ But ‘God’ says to him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. “And it was so. At the height of his prosperity, he died.”

Martin Luther King makes a distinction here as to why exactly the man was called a fool. It was certainly not that Jesus was criticising him for being wealthy. Jesus the Christ was never so parochial in his thinking to make a sweeping indictment on wealth, he points out noting that it was the unmindful state of this man’s mental faculty that made him to be declared a fool. He was not mindful of the reality that death stands guard at the feet of all men at all times whether rich or poor. 

“Money, like any other force such as electricity, is amoral and can be used for either good or evil,” states Martin Luther King explaining that ‘nothing in wealth is inherently vicious and nothing in poverty is inherently virtuous.’

In chapter eight the title is ‘Death of Evil upon the seashore’.

Martin Luther King writes as follows, 

“In a sense, the history of man is the story of the struggle between good and evil. All of the great religions have recognised a tension at the very core of the universe.” “Hinduism for instance calls this tension a conflict between illusion and reality. Zorastianism, as a conflict between the god of light and god of darkness and traditional Judaism and Christianity, a conflict between God and Satan. Each realises that in the midst of the upward thrust of goodness there is the downward pull of evil,” he notes. He then speaks of the historic accounts of evil that held communities enslaved – such as in the case of ancient Israelites by ancient Egypt -  from the saga of which emerged community leaders such as Moses and the fervent belief in a monotheistic cosmic force – an omnipresent God which finally delivers the oppressed people to freedom. ‘God’ it is believed parted the red sea that is between Northeastern Africa and the Arabian peninsula, ensuring the liberty of the enslaved and when the  oppressors pursued closed up the parted waters, bringing upon the death of evil. 

Martin Luther King very clearly brings home the point that what is evil are not countries but the mental state of evil that the people of a country may function from, but holding always the option of redemption out of evil at any point. This chapter is about the death of evil and the hope that we could be soon burying evil and not humans. ‘This faith will sustain us in our struggle,’ he clarifies concluding that ‘this faith will be a lamp to our weary feet and a light unto our meandering path. Without such faith man’s highest faith will fall silently to the dust,’ he opines.