The Man Who Dared To Dream

He was a man who had a dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation – a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child.

He was a man whose vision filled a great void in our nation and answered our collective longing to become a country that truly lives by its noblest principles. He was a man who knew that it was not enough just to talk the talk; he had to walk the walk for his words to be credible. He was a man who put his life on the line for freedom and justice every day, a man who braved threats and jail and beatings and who ultimately paid the highest price to make democracy a reality for all Americans.

He was born Michael King in 1929, but his father changed his name to Martin Luther King in honor of the seminal figure of the 16^th century movement known later as the Protestant Reformation. It was a fitting change of name for this man who dared to dream.

In his Birth of a New Nation speech in 1957, Dr. King articulated that dream in these words: “And so today I still have a dream. People will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers and sisters. I still have a dream today that one day every person of color in the world will be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; and everyone will respect the dignity and worth of each human personality . . .”

On the occasion of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Dr. King reiterated that dream when he famously said: “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character . . .”

One can only imagine how different life in this country might have been had not Martin Luther King’s life been snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet on that infamous day in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. For me, several imaginings appear to be certain.

For instance, I imagine that he would not have allowed this nation to forget its calling, a calling summed up in the words of a hymn: “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Further, I imagine that he would not have let us delude ourselves into thinking that there was little or no fundamental difference between Barack Hussein Obama II and John Sidney McCain III in 2008 or Willard Mitt Romney in 2012.

Still further, I imagine that he would not have permitted us to interpret the deaths of more than 2,300 Americans in a war in Afghanistan as “achieving peace.” Or if he were alive today to interpret the deaths of over 4,400 American Forces and the deaths of over 150,000 Iraqi citizens as a “mission accomplished.”

The years of revolutionary rhetoric and expectation politics might have been better spent, and perhaps we would be much further down the road toward the realization of his dream of universal fellowship had he lived. As he once said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” One can only imagine what life would have been like if this man who dared to dream had lived longer.

But even so, Martin Luther King made his humble contributions. He gave more to this nation in his thirty-nine years than many people of equal talent could ever give. He broke the silent terror of McCarthyism in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and gave voice to the plaintive longing for justice in the hearts of ten million black southern Americans. He pointed Americans in the direction of equality without ever giving in to hatred. King said one time: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

King promulgated a method of change that thrived on an organized aggressive goodwill that confronted evil and refused to be drawn into its web of complicity. He demonstrated that truth and love can be mobilized into beautiful, world-changing forces.

The man who dared to dream never despaired of his commitment to nonviolence, but he would always despair of his inability to overcome the violence-prone nature of American society. He dared to confront a nation whose total orientation seemed to be toward violence – cops and robbers, cowboys and gunslingers, bloodletting and death – with the simple notion that the human soul and mind are even more powerful than atomic weapons. In what I consider to be some of his most moving words, Martin Luther King said: “To our most bitter opponents we say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.” Those are very powerful words and exemplify what English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

His organization and message never had more than a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank, yet he turned around an entire nation in Birmingham, Alabama with a staff of only fourteen people. Had it not been for those efforts in Birmingham, the southern states might have been a bitter and bloody battlefield that would make the violence at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, or the ISIS-linked cells in Verviers, Belgium, or wherever else, pale in comparison. One can only imagine what life would have been like if this man who dared to dream had lived longer.

Even today, his life cries out to us. His warning of nonviolence or nonexistence has been heard by millions who are now ready to say, as the song has it, “I ain’t gonna study war no more.”

Certainly, one would think that his fellow humans would have unanimously acclaimed such a man who dared to dream of a better, a more peaceful world, yet his life and words were constantly harassed by those who would wrap themselves in the cloak of authority of government. For instance, the FBI spread malicious gossip, tapped his phones, and bugged his places of residence. Ironically, both President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General  Robert F. Kennedy informed him of this surveillance. But King made no protest and seemed more concerned about their fear than about his own vulnerability.

The IRS had him indicted for tax evasion, only to have the case rejected by an all-white jury in Alabama. However, his tax problems would be with him until his death. And the reason? King gave away too much of his earnings! You may remember that Martin Luther King was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace, a prize that carried with it a sum of over $50,000. King divided that prize money between civil rights organizations, Morehouse College, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He would invariably have to borrow money to pay taxes on money that he had given away. No tax shelter or charity depletion allowances were available to him, and he donated his early papers to Boston University with no consideration of deduction.

I suspect that King would be proud of the progress that has been made in the political arena. The election of our first black president, of black mayors in Los Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Baltimore, and of the more than one thousand elected officials in the South alone are the fulfillment of the hope of this man who dared to dream.

It is not generally realized how much his movement stressed the power of the ballot. Martin Luther King spent more time working on behalf of voting rights than on any other issue. The most important civil rights legislation of the 20^th century was the product of his 1963 Selma, Alabama protest, currently the subject of a major motion picture. I believe that Dr. King would be thrilled by the broadened ranks of citizen groups who seek to perfect our government through peaceful protest, vigorous investigation, and aggressive legal action. These groups are filled with ordinary American citizens of all faiths, creeds and colors who have finally learned the truth that blacks have sung about in a spiritual since the time of slavery:

“Freedom is a constant struggle,/ We’ve struggled so long that we must be free.”

Martin Luther King’s faith in America and of the world was a faith of “in spite of.” He saw humankind stumbling toward a better way of life in spite of its weakness and its perversity. He knew the goodwill that is buried deep within us all, and he worked faithfully to create situations that would allow those good intentions to be translated into good behavior through social and legal reform. One can only imagine what life would have been like if this man who dared to dream had lived longer.

Several years ago, I read A. N. Wilson’s biography of the late Irish author and scholar C. S. Lewis. It was a very controversial biography because it revealed many of Lewis’ weaknesses and failings. However, I came away from that reading with a greater respect for Lewis because I discovered that he struggled with many of the same problems that plague me. I feel much the same way about Dr. Martin Luther King. Did Dr. King have feet of clay? Of course he did. Do all of us have feet of clay? Of course we do. But the message of Dr. King’s life was that out of weakness comes strength. Dr. King accepted the burden, the mission that was his to carry, even though the cost was great, even though it would lead to his death.

Let me close with a quote that I believe exemplifies the man who dared to dream and whose birthday we celebrated on Monday of this week. In accepting the Nobel Prize for peace in 1964, this is what Martin Luther King said: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. ‘And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.’ I still believe that we shall overcome.”

And so may we also believe. Imagine what life would have been like if this man who dared to dream had lived longer.

Freedom is Not Free

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
-Nelson Mandela

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, the day on which in 1776 we declared our independence from Great Britain. Of course, declaring independence and attaining it are two different things. Our independence was attained some seven years later in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. We fought a war with Great Britain to have that independence at the cost of the blood of 25,000 patriots. Of course, as a result of that war and of that sacrifice, we neither drive on the left side of the road nor sing God Save the Queen today!

Here are my thoughts as we approach Independence Day this year.

In November, 1751, the Provincial Assembly of the Colony of Pennsylvania ordered a bell for its new State House. The order directed that the new bell should have a biblical verse inscribed around it. The quotation to be inscribed was the tenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures, which reads: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and unto the inhabitants thereof.”

Surely it was appropriate that this bell, with its challenging inscription, should be the one that proclaimed the signing of the Declaration of Independence twenty-five years later.

Of course, that old “Liberty Bell,” as we now call it, has long since outlived its usefulness as a bell. But old and cracked as it is, it is still preserved by our nation with great care among the hallowed treasures that we associate with the birth of this great nation. And even though the bell is no longer useful as a bell, that inscription still fervently stirs our imaginations: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and unto the inhabitants thereof.”

For we are the descendants of the people to whom liberty was proclaimed, and we are the people who have enjoyed its blessings over these almost 240 years. But I suspect that not many of us have really considered what a dangerous motto was inscribed on that bell, and the somber implications of that motto. Not many of us pause to appreciate what a rare and illusive commodity freedom is in the history of the human family, and how presumptuous it was to use those words on that bell. For those who ordered the bell in 1751, those who rang it in 1776, and those of us who celebrate freedom in 2014 actually do injustice to the meaning of Scripture. We have yanked that inscription out of context and have made it mean something that the Word of God does not mean in that place.

Let me explain.

The person who reads Leviticus knows that this book contains some of the most stringent laws and regulations that have ever been placed on a people. Every facet of life was controlled by the Levitical law. However, as an occasional relief in the midst of all of these demanding laws, there was provided a jubilee year. In that jubilee year, slaves were freed, and land, which had been taken away because of indebtedness, was returned to the original owner. It was about this jubilee year that the words were written: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and unto the inhabitants thereof.”

And when did that jubilee year come? Once every fifty years! The average person could expect one year of comparative freedom in an entire lifetime! The words of Scripture point out what a dangerous commodity freedom is. The Israelites were only entrusted with it two years out of every century.

C. K. Chesterton wrote in 1918: “The world will never be made safe for democracy, because democracy is a dangerous business.” Democracy? This commodity that we take so much for granted as an inalienable right of every human being is dangerous? That is preposterous!

And yet, in the last several years, we have come to know just what Chesterton meant. We look around and suddenly we find that it is a very lonely place for our particular brand of freedom. Our motto: e pluribus unum, meaning “one out of many,” suddenly takes on new meaning. The motto originally meant that we were one nation, fashioned out of many diverse colonies, nationalities, ethnic groups, and creeds. It no longer means only that. “One out of many” has also come to mean that we are the only one out of all the many nations that has our particular and peculiar form of government.

Often, we find ourselves supporting supposedly democratic governments, only to realize that after some coup d’etat, we are really supporting nothing more than militaristic dictatorships and totalitarian states. With astonishment, we discover that this free land is extremely lonely as a political entity in the world. Yes, Chesterton was right: Democracy is a dangerous business!

There are other signs of the dangers of democratic freedom. George Washington said in his Farewell Address to the Nation: “The foundation of the republic is morality, and it is foolish to suppose that we can have morality without a religious impetus.” We have always naively assumed that there is some kind of national, secular ethic that supports that morality; that morality is buried right in the fabric of the nation somehow, just as securely as the gold in Fort Knox. But the scandals of the past decades convince us that this so-called national ethic is certainly operating in a very erratic way. To illustrate, simply recall
• the TV quiz show frauds of the 1960s;
• recall the scandal of employee theft;
• recall the recurrent cheating scandals among brighter students at better universities, including the military academies at West Point and Annapolis;
• recall the “big lie” philosophy on the part of presidents and cabinet members that embroiled this nation in the wars in Vietnam and Iraq;
• recall the Machiavellian ethic that produced the strain, the stain, and the shame of Watergate, Iran/Contragate, White Watergate, Monicagate, and all the other “gates;”
• recall the escalating violence on the streets of every major city; and
• recall the new drugs available on those same streets that are more powerful and, therefore, more deadly than either crack cocaine or heroin.
The litany seems endless. We look around in bewilderment and ask: Where did our morals go? When did we lose our moral moorings?

Listen to these words: “America today is running on the momentum of a godly ancestry, and when that momentum runs down, God help America.” Do you know who said those words? I assure you that it was not Billy Graham or some other preacher-type. No, those words were spoken by none other than the late General-of-the-Army Omar Bradley, one of the great military leaders of our country! He is saying that if morality goes, so goes the nation! We are finished. Freedom rests on the precarious foundation of national ethics and morality.

What is wrong? Is not freedom a good thing? Does not just about every religion promise freedom as a great and glorious gift? Did not Jesus say: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”? Yes, freedom is a good and glorious gift. But there is a catch in freedom.

The “catch” is that freedom does not and cannot live alone. Freedom is born a twin, a Siamese twin, if you will. Freedom and responsibility are the twins. One cannot live without the other. If one dies, they both die. Try to separate them and they both perish. Freedom means “to be released from something.” Responsibility means “to be mastered by something.” It is disastrous for an individual or a nation or a society to try to have one without the other. Freedom has only one value, and that is to provide the climate in which to exercise responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are the two sides of the same coin. As Elbert Hubbard once remarked, “Responsibility is the price of freedom.”

There is one final thing that needs to be said about freedom. Our ancestors knew that freedom is never safe in the world as long as one person lives under tyranny. The Declaration of Independence was not written only for thirteen colonies. It was written for the world. Read it sometime and see for yourself. The great American experiment was no selfish enterprise. It was an example for the whole world. We will never be truly free, however, until all people enjoy the same freedom.

And yet, we know that we must always be on our guard. For me, one of the prophets of our time is Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. He writes these words to Americans: “You have forgotten the meaning of freedom. When you acquired freedom in the eighteenth century, it was a sacred notion that you have forgotten. Time has eroded your notion of freedom. You kept the word, but fabricated another notion: ‘Freedom without obligation and responsibility.’ ”

Those are strong words, but they are strong words from a person who understands tyranny. Solzhenitsyn was sent to Siberia for making a political joke. Here is a person who recognizes that freedom is not free. It must be earned by vigilance and sacrifice. Ronald Reagan once said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

I wonder how many of us today would be willing to pay such a high price for freedom. Freedom is not free! We have freedom when we are willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to gain it, and when we recognize the awesome responsibilities of being free in a free land. Then, and only then, dare we “proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and to the inhabitants thereof.”