A Personal Relationship with Dr. King

We each hold a key in this world, a key to prosperity, freedom, and happiness. Martin Luther King jr. used his key as a racial healer, a soldier in the fight for social justice, equality and peace in dignity. The lessons he has taught us are numerous and bear personal significance to many of us. In commemorating his birthday, I propose to revisit some of his writings, focusing particularly on his letter from Birmingham jail to show why they relate to all of us in a personal way. While reading Dr. King's letter, I felt transported to this very sad episode of american history; a time that he describes so vividly and eloquently; a time during which emotions ran high and America was virtually on the verge of a second civil war, a collision course.

Indeed, the "letter from Birmingham jail" is a testimony of the profound bitterness, frustration and humiliation, which irreversibly shaped the course of Dr. King's life. It is a plea for the recognition of the equal humanity of every man, a cry of freedom coming from the deep troubled soul of a man who happened to be black. While reading this letter, I felt as if I knew Dr. King in a personal way. Certainly, not as did others like Andrew Young or Jesse Jackson, but in my own way I too have a personal relationship with Dr. King. I find my personal relationship with Martin Luther King to be the more tangible when I read his speeches and find myself between the lines, paralyzed and impotent, unable to stop neither the flow of his words nor the course of time.

Martin Luther King was a preacher, a true man of God, one who bluntly refused to be a passive bystander to the erosion of divine values instilled in every man. Although King's approach is mostly vehicled by a natural law perspective, his analysis of the social problems includes key elements of the divine law. In fact, he believed that God created man with certain inalienable rights such as the right to life, to be free, and the pursuit of happiness. To prevent man from enjoying these rights is against divine precepts. While King was seduced by the principles of civil disobedience and non-violence, his religious principles were always at the forefront of his political philosophy. King also believed in the fundamental goodness of man, on his inclination toward good. He says that every human life is a reflex of divinity and every act of injustice mars and defaces the image of God in man. For that, he sought to bring man closer to his Godly image by transcending racial, religious, and political barriers. At the end, man would be equal, under the law as he is under God. Like Jean Jacques Rousseau, King believed: "Man is born good and pure, but society corrupts him."

Like Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and non-violence to fight injustice and arrive at a new social contract. He saw that the black minority was not part of the American social contract because they were not allowed to participate in its elaboration. Having been brought from Africa by force, kept in a state of semi-bestiality, and alienated from the political process, the black minority was condemned to live in exile in his new home, unless he took some affirmative steps to push toward the elaboration of a new social contract. King believed, and rightly so, that the minority had a right and a responsibility to disobey laws which were fundamentally unjust. He makes a natural law argument when he says that one has a moral responsibility to obey just laws; conversely, an equal responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Indeed, it was King's respect for the law, which led him to disobey the law. He felt that all remedies had been exhausted and that non-violent protests such as sit-ins, boycotts, and non-cooperation, were the only way for the minority to express its frustration and discontent with the system. He defines an unjust law as one imposed on the minority and in the legislating of which it took no part.

A Personal Relationship with Dr. King 2015-03-09T21:08:00+07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: Dikantp