255 responses to “The Long Pilgrimage: Bankrupt Moral Leadership And The Fatalism Of Evil Upon Our Shores – Has Anything Been Learnt Since Dr. Martin Luther King’s Speech – “I Have A Dream"?”

1. 

   de hood

   September 3, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   
   

   @ac
   Hi ac. I just saw on the “Suggestions Page” where you were trying to “conspire” with David to get b’day greetings sent to me. Seems that it did not pan out. Good practice for next year though! 🙂
   Many thanks for trying anyhow.

   Loading…
2. 

   ac

   September 3, 2010 at 5:55 pm

   
   

   @dehood.
   I ain’t no rainmaker.However i did sound the bell and it wasup to the BUfamily to respond. Shame on them! smooch ! luv yuh mas!

   @Crusoe..

   Good try. Using condom would have been abomination and punishable by death as that would deny the w oman the God given right to have a child. However the men had the right to spill their seed on the ground

   @GP
   Since I have not been offically expelled from your classvia Bu. I am still expecting answers from you on my Questions. A good teacher never abandons his students.. Like Jesus says The good shepherd looks atttends after his sheep and if one is LOST he seeks after it and brings it home. You must practice what you preach. .Some sheep are wayward and hard to control.Even Zoe understands that. He never gives up on those who are Lost. Now you see to be Christ like is not easy. I expect better from you.

   Loading…
3. 

   John

   September 4, 2010 at 12:39 am

   
   

   Believe.

   It is that simple and that good.

   Many Christians don’t get beyond this.

   John 3:16
   King James Version
   For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

   The concept is also expressed in the Hymn, “Amazing Grace”.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace

   I am reading and enjoying GP’s verbalization and sharing of the Word with the world.

   It is powerful and strengthening.

   Not many Christians get there.

   Thank you GP for the edification and BU for providing the forum.

   Loading…
4. 

   Georgie Porgie

   September 4, 2010 at 5:41 pm

   
   

   Thanks John.
   I am happy that at least one person is benefitting from my weak efforts to teach the Word on BU.

   On BU the ground is stony ground or BEDROCK, according to the Greek for the word translated “stony ground” in the parable.

   Loading…
5. 

   Terence M. Blackett

   September 5, 2010 at 1:58 pm

   
   

   HERE’S MARTIN* ON – “Love in Action” (for all those still choose to misunderstand the basic tenets of MLK’s philosophy and would like to argue to the sake of argument)…

   “One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of those principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds? We talk eloquently about commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the principles of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite to the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we thread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage.”

   “The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man’s ever-recurring song of retaliation… Contrast a society that is even less prone to forgive. Society must have standards, norms and mores. It must have its legal checks and judicial restraints. Those who fall below the standard and those who disobey the laws are often left in the dark abyss of condemnation and have no hope of a second chance. Ask an innocent young lady, who, after a moment of overriding passion, becomes the mother of an illegitimate child. She will tell you that society is slow to forgive. Ask a public official, who, in a moment’s carelessness, betrays the public trust. He will tell you that society is slow to forgive. Go to any prison and ask the inhabitants, who have written shameful lines across the pages of their lives. From behind the bars they will tell you that society is slow to forgive. Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society’s final assertion that it will not forgive.”

   “Such is the persistent story of mortal life. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the Lex Talionis: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.”

   “Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law. He knew that the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with aggressive love.”

   “What a magnificent lesson! Generations will rise and fall; men will continue to worship the god of revenge and bow before the altar of retaliation; but ever and again this noble lesson of Calvary will be a nagging reminder that only goodness can drive out evil and only love can conquer hate.”

   “A second lesson comes to us from Jesus’ prayer on the cross. It is an expression of Jesus’ awareness of man’s intellectual and spiritual blindness. “They know not what they do,” said Jesus. Blindness was their trouble; enlightenment was their need. We must recognize that Jesus was nailed to the cross not simply by sin but also by blindness. The men who cried, “Crucify him,” were not bad men but rather blind men. The jeering mob that lined the roadside which led to Calvary was composed not of evil people but of blind people. They knew not what they did. What a tragedy! History reverberates with testimonies of this shameful tragedy. Centuries ago a sage named Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. The men who called for his death were not bad men with demonic blood running through their veins. On the contrary, they were sincere and respectable’ citizens of Greece. They genuinely thought that Socrates; was an atheist because his idea of God had a philosophical depth that probed beyond traditional concepts. Not badness but blindness killed Socrates. Saul was not an evil-intentioned man when he persecuted Christians. He was a sincere, conscientious devotee of Israel’s faith. He thought he was right He persecuted Christians, not because he was devoid of integrity, but because he was devoid of enlightenment. Christians who engaged in infamous persecutions and shameful inquisitions were not evil men but misguided men. The churchmen who felt that they had an edict from God withstand the progress of science, whether in the form of Copernican revolution or a Darwinian theory of natural selection, were not mischievous men but misinformed me. And so Christ’s words from the cross are written in sharp-etched terms across some of the most inexpressible tragedies of history: ‘They know not what they do’.”

   “This tragic blindness expresses itself in many ominous wars in our own day. Some men still feel that war is the answer to the problems of the world. They are not evil people. On the contrary, they are good, respectable citizens whose ideas are robed in the garments of patriotism. They talk of brinkmanship and a balance of terror. They sincerely feel that a continuation of the arms race will be conducive to more beneficent than maleficent consequences. So they passionately call for bigger bombs, larger nuclear stockpiles, and faster ballistic missiles.”

   “Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survival, then we must find an alter-native to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment. A world war—God forbid!—will leave only smouldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to untimely death. Yet there are those who sincerely feel that disarmament is an evil and international negotiation is an abominable waste of time. Our world is threatened by the grim prospect of atomic annihilation because there is still too many who know not what they do.”

   “Notice, too, how the truth of this text is revealed in race relations. Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness but also by human blindness. True, the causal basis for the system of slavery must to a large extent be traced back to the economic factor. Men convinced themselves that a system which was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. They formulated elaborate theories of racial superiority. Their rationalizations clothed obvious wrongs in the beautiful garments of righteousness. This tragic attempt to give moral sanction to an economically profitable system gave birth to the doctrine of white supremacy. Religion and the Bible were cited to crystallize the status quo. Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated to give intellectual credence to the system of slavery. Someone formulated the argument of the inferiority of the Negro according to the framework of an Aristotelian syllogism:

   ‘All men are made in the image of God; God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro; therefore, the Negro is not a man’.”

   “So men conveniently twisted the insights of religion, science, and philosophy to give sanction to the doctrine of white supremacy. Soon this idea was embedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structured part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth. They sincerely came to believe ‘ that the Negro was inferior by nature and that slavery was ordained by God. In 1857, the system of slavery was given its greatest legal support by the deliberations of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott decision. The Court affirmed that the Negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. The justices who rendered this decision were not wicked men. On the contrary, they were decent and dedicated men. But they were victims of spiritual and intellectual blindness. They knew not what they did. The whole system of slavery was largely perpetuated by sincere though spiritually ignorant persons.”

   “This tragic blindness is also found in racial segregation, the not-too-distant cousin of slavery. Some of the most vigorous defenders of segregation are sincere in their beliefs and earnest in their motives. Although some men are segregationists merely for reasons of political expediency and economic gain, not all of the resistance to integration is the rear-guard of professional bigots. Some people feel that their attempt to preserve segregation is best for themselves, their children, and their nation. Many are good church people, anchored in the religious faith of their mothers and fathers. Pressed for a religious vindication for their conviction, they will even argue that God was the first segregationist. ‘Red birds and blue birds don’t fly together’, they contend. Their views about segregation, they insist, can be rationally explained and morally justified. Pressed for a justification of their belief in the inferiority of the Negro, they turn to some pseudo-scientific writing and argue that the Negro’s brain is smaller than the white man’s brain. They do not know, or they refuse to know, that the idea of an inferior or superior race has been refuted by the best evidence of the science of anthropology. Great anthropologists, like Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville J. Herskovits, agree that, although there may be inferior and superior individuals within all races, there is no superior or inferior race. And segregationists refuse to acknowledge that science has demonstrated that there are four types of blood and that these four types are found within every racial group. They blindly believe in the eternal validity of an evil called segregation and the timeless truth of a myth called white supremacy. What a tragedy! Millions of Negroes have been crucified by conscientious blindness. With Jesus on the cross, we must look lovingly at our oppressors and say, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’.”

   Loading…