Strength To Love by Martin Luther King Jr.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.

This quote more than any other moves me, and serves as a reminder that tolerating injustices of any kind, whether directed at me or at others, represents an incredibly slippery slope.

Nearly 50 years after his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr remains a voice of strength and love and compassion aimed at shattering the hatred that justifies racial injustice. Sadly, nearly 50 years later, much of his writings and reflections related to his faith in a loving and just god and the reality of being black in the 1950s and 1960s America ring true today. As a diverse nation, we’ve come some way from the dark days of the civil rights era; but, if the last year has provided me with any sort of measuring stick on where we as a nation now stand, we still have much further to go.

I do not share MLK’s faith. Despite being raised in a Southern Baptist family, their god and the stories in The Bible never really made sense to me. Their god was one to fear, whose wrath was fierce. And, much of the rhetoric I heard justified the supremacy of those like us — white, middle class, privileged. In Strength to Love, MLK uses his faith and scripture to justify justice. To justify love rather than hatred. To justify compassion and inclusion.

So much of this collection of sermons and reflections remain relevant in these times. In a chapter entitled, ‘The man who was a fool’, he states, ‘The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.’ I couldn’t help but wonder what he would think of our world today, where technology has boomed. I wondered if he would be demonised as a ‘fake news pundit’ or a antifada anarchist. But, I also wondered how powerful these tools could be when coupled with his various messages and teachings, particularly amongst those who share his faith. And, particularly when addressing the various unarmed shootings of young black men by police officers.

He closes this chapter with these words: ‘What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world of externals—airplanes, electric lights, automobiles, and color television—and lose the internal—his own soul?’ I’m not sure where I lie on the existence of a soul, but whilst we in the United States possess so much stuff, I wonder if we haven’t lost which makes us truly rich beyond wealth. More than anything, I can only imagine how much more fortunate (and happier) we’d be if we would only view our fellow citizens as worthy rather than as ideological or racial enemies.

Strength to Love may represent a piece of our past and a long ago moment in our young nation’s history. But, to my mind, it serves as a powerful guide for what we still need to accomplish as individuals and as a nation.

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