Letters from Birmingham Jail and my thoughts

“I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension,’"  Martin Luther King Jr. pauses to say.

He has just opened his letter addressed to his fellow clergymen with a detailed explanation of his reasons for activism specifically in Birmingham.  He notes that he is going to address their criticism of his work in the rest of the letter.  Clearly the man is proving to us by the writing itself he that he is not afraid of 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 of 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.” (90)

I too take issue with the church calling for unity and not seeking for discernment.  It is as though the church today is similar to the church MLK was encountering.  They call for a more agreeable approach but fail to realize the grave danger that would pose.  When lies, faulty beliefs, permeate the core of our nation, perhaps the need to expose them can outweigh the need for false unity.  MLK continues:

“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.” (98)

Tension is a good thing.  The deep scar in America is finally being exposed in a great way.  A move of God is on the horizon.  Yet the church still seems to be missing their role in it.

“In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevances and sanctimonious trivialities.” (105)

I have sat through way to many church services since 2014 where what was happening outside its walls was being ignored.  I would go home and weep over police brutality and then come to church and we were talking about something different. 

I found quickly that there were people in the world that did not think that racism was a huge issue.  It was just something that I had a heart for.  So I buried it.  I didn’t talk about it.  I prayed about it all the more.  I talked about it with my friends of color.  But all of my white church friends who could care less would never hear about the stirrings of my soul because it just simply was not an issue for them.  Of this I have since then repented.  Yet one can see clearly since these elections where true loyalties lie and it saddens my heart that many of my white Christian friends cannot hear the blood crying out from the ground.

When things got rough for my friends of color, the tension was too uncomfortable for the church.  A cowardice to confront had settled in.  My friends and I turned to other places for solace.  Yet this was never how it was meant to be.  MLK explains:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed.  In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.  Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’  But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven’ called to obey God rather than man.”

I have also heard Christians mocking protestors.  This baffling journey of encountering Christians who actually think protesting is pointless began in 2011 and I am sad to say has not ended.  MLK again explains to a completely ignorant church one reason (I say one because there are many) he encourages marches:

“If his [the American negro] repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.  So I have not said to my people: ‘Get rid of your discontent.’  Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.  And now this approach is being termed extremist.”

He goes on to say that he was troubled at first with being called an extremist but then he realized every prominent figure in the Bible was an extremist and he goes on to list them: Jesus, Amos, Paul.  Then he calls out martin Luther, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson.  Each has a quote by him that conjures up our thoughts about this person and we readily agree that, yes, they were in fact extreme and it did great good.

He says, “So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be?” (102)

He says, and I will end here, “Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists” (103).