Dr. King includes this quote in his letter. It is something worth pondering for a while – maybe even a lifetime.

As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

If you ever study Dr. King you will quickly realize what a brilliant man he was. During his day his people had few opportunities to excel intellectually, but he did just that. In this section he displays an true understanding of law that amazes me. Also, in this excerpt he speaks of his great disappointment with the “white moderates.” Something I wish to echo as I believe this still has relevance to us today.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the
terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. 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.

Here is another excerpt from Dr. King’s letter, speaking to “tension,” something I am especially fond of these days.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “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 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. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

This past week I was reminded of the amazing words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his written letter from a Birmingham prison in 1963. He had been arrested for his non-violent protest to and this was the letter he wrote to his pastoral colleagues in the city who were complaining of King’s actions. Over the next several days I’ll post several excerpts that I found especially moving. Here is the first, asked why he was in Birmingham he responded:

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of
freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

I’m continuing my reading about empire and came across this great quote about Paul. I’m always trying to capture the original context of the Scriptures and the community value over against the hyper-individualized reading of modern Americans so I was attracted to this quote.

…Paul’s letters were written in language that would have borne powerful political connotations to its first hearers. The Greek word dikaiosyne, for example, might aptly have been rendered in the sixteenth century by the English word righteousness, but today the word nearer in meaning is justice. When Jewish writings, from the Psalms to the apocalypses of the Roman period, spoke of the “justice of God,” they were not primarily concerned with spiritual questions of an individual’s right standing before God, but with the end of an unjust social order and the hoped-for vindication of the innocent against their enemies.

If nothing else, this is certainly interesting and again pushes us to understand the Scriptures within their cultural context and their voice to the community and not simply the individual.

This Sunday we will be talking about our vision for 2009 at Transformation City. I hope you can join us – we’ll be taking a look back at where we’ve been and a look forward to where we feel God is leading us in this new year.
See you on Sunday!

This past week at Transformation City we spent a whole service talking about how foods can impact our health. Why is a church talking about this? I know, its a bit strange. But as a church one of our values is wholeness – we want to see people made whole in every aspect of their life; in their spiritual life, in their relationships with each other and with God, with their emotions and in their health. I also believe God has much to say about the foods we eat in Leviticus, not that foods are evil or sinful – but that some foods are simply not so good for us to consume. As a nation we have are terribly sick, maybe the foods we consume have something to do with our health? Grandma once said, “You are what you eat.” Maybe she was right?

If you haven’t read it yet, “The Great Physician’s Rx for Health & Wellness,” by Jordan Rubin is a great resource. In this book he lists 12 foods that, if possible, we should cut out of our diet as much as possible to improve our health, lose weight, and simply feel better and be healthier. Some of these will be surprising, but he explains them in his book.

Here they are, the 12 foods that we should try to cut out of our diet and replace them foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, grass-fed beef, wild caught fish, fermented dairy (like kefir), soups & stocks, extra virgin olive oil, cod liver oil, natural sweeteners such as honey and stevia, extra virgin olive oil and butter (yes, butter!). The 12 foods to cut if possible are:

1. Pork
2. Shellfish
3. Processed meats & hydrolyzed soy proteins (spam, lunch meat with nitrates, imitation meats such as bacon bits, etc.)
4. White flour
5. Hydrogenated & partially hydrogenated oils
6. Pasteurized, homogenized milk (replace with raw milk or cultured dairy)
7. White Sugar (Americans consume 170 pounds of sugar each year!)
8. Soda
9. High Fructose Corn Syrup
10. Artificial Sweeteners
11. Artificial flavors & colors
12. Alcohol in excess

I realize that everyone won’t agree with all of these but if you are curious then you should check out Jordan Rubin’s book in more detail. Again, these foods are not evil or sinful to consume – but maybe just not the best options to improve our health and live in wellness. Shalom!

I’m reading “In the Shadow of Empire” edited by Richard Horsley. I love the subtext to the title: “Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance.” Basically, this book points us back to the realization that most of the text of Scripture is written with the subtext that the early believers were functioning under the strong arm of the Roman Empire. In light of the current struggle of the western church as we live within an American empire I thought these comments were compelling:

…the church, as a community that stands apart from and over against empire, must recover its public voice that attests to an alternative rule in the world. Such a recovery is not an easy one, but it is to be undertaken loudly and concretely in the most mundane utterance and practice of the church. That recovery of utterance may be lined out from the prophetic tradition. For the prophets characteristically were not moralizers or explainers, or even advocates for any program. They were poets! Their work was to open the world to alternative practice by inviting their listeners out beyond “the given.” As poets they tell the truth, even in the face of empire, the truth that exploitation will not work, that brutality offends the Holy One, that imperial power is limited and called to account. As poets they tell the hope, even in the face of the empire, the hope that war will cease, that the earth will be protected, that the particularity of neighborliness will prevail against the ambitions of horse and chariot…

This chapter’s title, “Faith in Empire,” is deliberately ambiguous. The preposition”in” can be taken in two ways. It can be read as committed to the empire, acceptance of the empire’s totalizing narrative. Or it can be read as amid, in but not of, with the nurture of an alternative identity. Faith is always amid empire. It is not always committed to empire. -Walter Brueggemann p. 39-40

This past week we talked about the compassion of Christ as found in Matthew 20:34. The Scpriture goes something like this: Jesus was passing by and a couple of blind guys sitting by the side of the road yelled out, “Jesus! Have mercy on us!” The crowd tried to get the blind guys to shut up, but they again shouted, trying to get Jesus’ attention. And so they did, Jesus came over and asked, “What do you want me to do for you” (wow! what if Jesus asked you this…or maybe He is?). They said, “We want to see.” (great answer by the way, maybe this should be our response as well). And then the Scripture says this “Jesus had compassion on them.” And thus He healed them.

The Greek word here for compassion is: ’splangchnizomai”

This Greek verb is usually translated “to be moved with compassion.” But its meaning is more profound and powerful. The verb is derived from the noun which basically means intestines, bowels, entrails, that is to say the inward parts from which the strongest emotions arise. The ancient Greeks believed life was in the belly and not in the “heart.” That is why in English we usually translate this as: His heart went out to them. But even these verbs do not capture the deep physical flavor of the Greek word for compassion. The compassion that Jesus felt was quite different from simply pity or sympathy. His heart was torn. His gut wrenched, the most vulnerable part of His being laid bare.

Henri Nouwen writes this:

Splangchnizomai is related to the Hebrew word for compassion, rachamim, which refers to the womb of Yahweh. Compassion is such a deep, central and powerful emotion in Jesus that it can only be described as a movement of the womb of God. There all the divine tenderness and gentleness lies hidden. There, God is Father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter. There, all feelings, emotions and passions are one in divine love.

Wow. I think Jesus wants to have compassion upon us but the question is this: We will allow him to cover us in His “splangchnizomai”?

Following up on our message from this Sunday, talking about spiritual disciplines and the importance of prayer, silence, solitude, fasting, service and gathering with the community of faith. We focused on “The Jesus Prayer” as a way that Christians for over a thousand years have prayed as a way to center themselves upon the mercy of Christ. Granted, this is certainly not the only way to pray – but it can be a useful tool to be used in prayer. The prayer goes like this “Lord Jesus Christ…Son of God…have mercy on me…a sinner” This is very good exercise to repeat softly as you breath slowly in and out, in and out, in and out. A quote that I found as fantastic was from an Orthodox site that said:

We don’t say the Jesus Prayer, or enter wordless contemplation, to get “some benefit.” We don’t pray to reduce our stress, or strengthen our immune system, or lose weight, or add years to our life. On the contrary, we enter prayer to follow Christ, to become open to Him. His way is the Way of the Cross.

I hope you can incorpoate some of these disciplines in your daily life in this new year. Peace!