MLK Day

Ah, Monday morning. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. I remember hearing the word when he was killed. Killed, ironically, for asking people to stop hurting each other. Killed in a small window of time that also saw the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, the brother of slain President John F. Kennedy and a rising candidate for the Presidency in and of his own right.

I still hear people occasionally jeering the decision to mark King's life and death. Sad people. People for whom hate and anger come easy and often. For whom racial epithets are joking codewords for real prejudice, burned into their hearts and minds and souls.

Dr. King had his flaws, but he was a good man. No, not elected to any governmental position. Not a military leader. But seeing how killing is wrong, in Christian ethics, and the world seems to accept with a shrug that all politicians lie, neither of these disqualify him from being, on the balance, a good man. A man that mattered, who worked to undo the evil around him.

What have you, or even I, done of such merit that we should have room to criticize him? When you have done as much to advance Christian values in the world as Dr. King did, you can criticize him.

Of course, if you are that sort of person, to have done so much good in the world, criticizing another person would not be on your mind or in your heart.

Thank you Dr. King, for sharing your dream with us. We're working on it, still.