In life, it’s so easy to dismiss the story of others. We tend to continually view people through our own lenses. To judge them on our own experiences, without affording them the right of having their own experiences. Not everyone was born the same color as you, with the same parents as you, with the same freedom as you.
In 2019 it is easy to forget that Martin Luther King was one of the most hated men in America. Time and dwindling ignorance have helped everyone understand more and more the importance of King’s life. The enormous impact he made is undeniable, but let us not forget the same words we champion today are the same ones who earned him a bullet.
Sadly today I can’t help but feel we’ve regressed. We gleefully elect leaders who have little or no time to respect the experience of others. And as such we perpetuate a culture that is wholly intolerant, because, we tend to view others through our own experiences. May God forgive us for becoming so self-obsessed that we get the leaders we deserve who cast off decency and decorum and treat a person’s character as something either to be discarded entirely or, and perhaps even worse, as a political selling point.
I hope I am teaching my kids that just because they don’t know what it’s like to be pulled over for driving in the “wrong” neighborhood, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen to somebody else.
I hope I am teaching my kids that because somebody loves people of the same sex, or has fallen into addiction, or has less money, or has more money, or has no power, or has all the power that that person’s story and experience is so different and unique from their own and their purpose is not to judge them for it just because they didn’t experience the same things, but to shut up and listen. Find common ground. Have compassion. Forsake yourself.
The thing that most resonates me about the Gospel, and the reason I am a Pastor and ultimately chose to give my life to God, is not to get into Heaven. It’s because there is freedom in the radical selflessness Jesus demonstrates. Part of what has gone horribly wrong in Western Christianity is that we tend to ignore the whole “Deny yourself” and instead we cling to ourselves and twist the message of the Gospel so we can be more comfortable. Then we don’t have to validate African Americans, or women, or the poor, or the addicts, or even the rich. We can judge from our comfortable roost.
In one of my favorite books “The Upside Down Kingdom” author Donald Kraybill puts it this way:
“A false split between spiritual and social leads to a warped reading of the Scripture. It tempts us to turn Jesus’ message into sweet, spiritualized syrup. 
Such a twist can dilute the truth, making it harmless. We marvel at the atoning death of Jesus but forget that it came about because he demonstrated a new way of living.”
That new way of living was giving a voice to the voiceless. Jesus was giving power and a voice to prostitutes, tax collectors, fishermen, and the disabled. The radicalness of Jesus is that those most marginalized become those most empowered. That is NOT comfortable. And I have little doubt today when Jesus sat down to eat with the people who most disgust you, you would become just like the very Jews who sent him to a cross. Because admitting that perhaps African Americans have a right to feel like they matter means you were wrong. And makes you uncomfortable. Rest assured, however, that in the end? That won’t work out well for you. God’s Kingdom is the opposite. And there is total freedom in the selflessness that Christ embodied, and Dr. King so bravely lived out. I believe that for anyone that starts with the ability to shut up and listen. And for once in your life set your opinions aside, close your eyes, and see the world through the eyes of someone else.
In his infamous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King is writing to a group of Pastor’s who have written him complaining he is rocking the boat. In response, Dr. King takes a paragraph to explain what it is like to have lived and walked in his shoes, and the people like him. For a few moments, close your eyes, and imagine what life is like when this is your experience:
“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” 
But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are), and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”
-Letter from a Birmingham Jail April 1963
There only two responses to this; it’s either empathy and indignation at their treatment with a resolve to do better, or a hateful unwilling chosen ignorance. The kind that says “Get over it.” The kind that says “Pull up your own bootstraps.” Easy for you to say. You were born with boots. Many people were not. I am a Christian, not because of other Christians. No, to be honest often it’s in spite of them. We are not perfect, but we serve a God who when you cut through all the legalism and religion and strip away the noise you find a simple message. Love. Love that only comes when we deny ourselves. And make ourselves the least. And we just listen to the cries of his people in a broken world. And then go do something about it.
Dr. King, I pray we would listen. And understand. And when we are done wiping away the tears? Act.
Two Time Seminary Dropout 