Some timely thoughts from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here's some thoughts to ponder on this day set apart to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. It's from a sermon called, "A Knock at Midnight."

It is also midnight within the moral order. At midnight colours lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of grey. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe, to the moral and ethical realm.

Midnight is the hour when men desperately seek to obey the eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not get caught." According to the ethic of midnight, the cardinal sin is to be caught and the cardinal virtue is to get by. It is all right to lie, but one must lie with real finesse. It is all right to steal, if one is so dignified that, if caught, the charge becomes embezzlement, not robbery. It is permissible even to hate, if one so dresses his hating in the garments of love that hating appears to be loving. The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. This mentality has brought a tragic breakdown of moral standards, and the midnight of moral degeneration deepens....

And these thoughts are appropriate in light of the inauguration of the messiah-elect tomorrow.

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 without moral or spiritual authority. If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause men everywhere to say that it has atrophied its will. But if the church will free itself from the shackles of a deadening status quo, and, recovering its great historic mission, will speak and act fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace, it will enkindle the imagination of mankind and fire the souls of men, imbuing them with a glowing and ardent love for truth, justice, and peace. Men far and near will know the church as a great fellowship of love that provides light and bread for lonely travellers at midnight.

Otherwise, we will be left to put our *hope for change* in false messiahs, aka "politicians."

[HT: Dream Awakener]

Jesus Isn't For the American Dream

The Internet Monk has a recent rant that's worth reading called, "The Suburban Jesus Hates Me." Opines the iMonk,

"...I don’t get Jesus AND the American Dream. Some people do. Great. I don’t.

"...Suburban Christianity is frequently not about an honest following of Jesus. It’s about an edited, reworked Jesus who blesses the American way of life and our definition of normal and happy.

Read it all here.

Good stuff. I've been saying for a long time that the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of the American Dream cannot co-exist. One can only have one Lord.

Futile attempts at love & relevance

Over at RelevantMagazine.com, Spencer Spellman asks, "Are We Cheapening Our Faith?" Such a question was prompted in his mind when he passed by a church sign that read, "Give Satan an inch and he'll be a ruler."

He opines,

"Is this where the Church in America has come to? Where Christianity is seen and communicated through t-shirts and marquees. We don’t communicate our business projects, vacation plans, and political positions through marquees and t-shirts, so we don’t need to communicate our faith through such means."

His point is that much of Christianity today is stuck in the ghetto of irrelevance, and these gimmicks are our cheap attempts to love our neighbor. Read the short but good article here.

His conclusion:

"The challenge then is to recapture the love of Christ. We will never be able to recapture that love until we stop living out of our own Christian sub culture and start spending time with Christ and with people. C.S. Lewis said it well when he stated: “Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.” Let us be a people who reveal ourselves fully, and better yet, reveal Christ fully."

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If you have the time, the 9marks blog has an interesting and very humorous entry entitled, "We Watch TBN So You Don't Have To." The comments section has an interesting discussion, too, on the place of satire and mockery in the quest for truth. One person opines, "Good satire isn't cruel since the target deserves it. A punch in the face can be cruel if the recipient is innocent, but it's not cruel to punch a mugger."