OPINION

DANA D. KELLEY: A Good Friday meditation

What else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

Just as I recommend the re-reading of the Declaration of Independence every Fourth of July, I similarly endorse and encourage an annual re-reading of Letter from Birmingham Jail every Good Friday.

As with any richly eloquent piece of profound writing, every fresh reading of Martin Luther King Jr.'s masterpiece delivers new discoveries.

Its connection to the Easter holiday season is based on both timing and content. King was arrested on Good Friday in 1963 and jailed for parading without a permit in Birmingham, Ala. His imprisonment carried through Sunday, and he wrote his famous letter on the following Tuesday, April 16.

A fourth-generation preacher, King's Christian faith was immutably foundational in his views, ideas and justifications. It was also the underlying impetus for his epistle from his cell. The Birmingham letter wasn't the result of random contemplation; it was, rather, the immediate response to an open letter published in the local newspaper and signed by eight white clergymen.

Indeed, what is most frequently lost or glossed over in all modern discussions of King's letter is the deeply religious nature of it--and his conviction and explicit declaration that the litmus test for whether a law is just or unjust hinges on whether it "squares with the moral law or the law of God."

Secularists unsurprisingly downplay the theological theme in King's letter, which makes reading and re-reading it for yourself all the more important. It cannot be grasped in its full meaning only from sound-bite excerpts that excise the pervasive religious contexts.

He showcases his argument in favor of historical precedence for nonviolent civil disobedience with the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who refused to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar.

When he defends being labeled an "extremist," his list of other extremist examples begins with Jesus (an extremist for love) and also includes the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther and John Bunyan.

In his complaint of contemporary church complacency on the civil rights issue, he wrote of how early Christians were regarded as "outside agitators" by the people in power when they entered a town preaching the gospel. But they pressed on as a self-convicted "colony of heaven" called to "obey God rather than man." Their refusal to consent to unjust Roman laws often left them facing lions and chopping blocks, but their relentless effort ultimately stamped out "ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests."

The evils of segregation King vividly described in the Birmingham letter are shocking and surreal since the majority of living Americans have never experienced such wrongs and truly cannot even fathom them as ever being status quo.

His faith in eventual success in winning full freedoms was based on his firm belief that "the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands."

In paragraph after paragraph, gems of inspiring rhetoric and biting logic sparkle with timeless applicability and appreciation.

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny," he wrote.

To those who sought to condemn his peaceful protests as precipitating violence, he responded brilliantly: "Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?"

"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability," he wrote. "It comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God ... the time is always ripe to do right."

King condemned black nationalist movements that embraced bitterness and hatred, because any advocating of violence "absolutely repudiated Christianity."

A year later, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, King delivered a stirring yet often ignored acceptance speech in which he called the award a "profound recognition" of a pressing reality: "the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression."

In 1964, he could not have imagined the level of violent crime that now oppresses millions of residents in black communities and neighborhoods. But we can know from his words what his response would be.

"Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts," he said in his Nobel Prize speech.

Few words are more unambiguous than "antithetical," which means mutually incompatible; the two cannot co-exist. That means where violent crime prevails, civilization fails. And why it should be the civil rights issue of our time.

Nothing deprives pockets of society and the residents within of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness more commonly than crime. Nothing even comes close.

The inability to form a united social and political front against the scourge of violent criminals is inexplicable. It's as if there are countless Neros, from their perches in local municipalities, producing a cacophony of fiddling on other "important" social issues (confederate statues come to mind) as thieves, robbers, rapists and murderers plunder and prey.

Great words, and the great meanings they convey, have the power to create great change. We should all go back in time to Birmingham, to a jail cell. Great answers are there.

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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 04/19/2019

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