This is a post John wrote on January 21, the MLK holiday.
“There is so much frustration in the world because we have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short-lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save us or bring happiness to the human heart.
“Jesus called the rich man a fool in Luke’s Gospel because he failed to realize his dependence on God. He talked as though he unfolded the seasons and provided the fertility of the soil, controlled the rising and setting of the sun, and regulated the natural processes that produce the rain and the dew. He had an unconscious feeling that he was the Creator, not a creature. This man-centered foolishness has had a long and oftentimes disastrous reign in the history of mankind. It climaxed in the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and in the fierce fury of fifty-megaton bombs. Now we have come to see that science can give us only physical power which, if not controlled by spiritual power, will lead inevitably to cosmic doom.
“Science is an instrument which, under the power of God’s Spirit, may lead humanity to greater heights of physical security. But apart from God’s Spirit, science is a deadly weapon that will lead only to deeper chaos. Unless his Spirit pervades our lives, we find only what G.K. Chesterton called ‘cures that don’t cure, blessings that don’t bless, and solutions that don’t solve.’
“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and to transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.
“Racial justice, a genuine possibility in our nation and in the world, will come when enough people open their lives to God and allow him to pour his triumphant, divine energy into their souls. Our age-old and noble dream of a world of peace may yet become a reality, but it will come neither by man working alone nor by God destroying the wicked schemes of men, but when men so open their lives to God that he may fill them with love, mutual respect, understanding, and goodwill. Hatred and bitterness paralyze life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.— Martin Luther King Jr., Strength To Love, ISBN:9780800614416
