It is 50 years today since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He is one of the heroes of my life.
He died in what was my first year at University. He was already a hero of the Baptist leaders in the college where I lived (Whitley College, where I was later a staff member and eventually Principal).
His courage in the struggle for his own people was inspiring. So too was his commitment to doing all that as a Baptist pastor: always a man of faith, even in his doubts and struggles. He was always a theologian, working with the practical realities of his situation, but seeking the perspective of the liberating God on those realities.
In those days and weeks after his death, I read a number of his books and was deeply challenged by this statement:
If a man hasn’t found something he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Today, of course, he would not use the gender-exclusive ‘man’. But the hard edge of his statement is the phrase ‘isn’t fit to live’. We might soften it to ‘isn’t yet fit to live’, allowing that (for example) I as an 18 year old might be allowed some time to find that life-determining focus.
But for all that, the statement worked on me. It challenged me to have something for which I was prepared to give my all. Faced with the Draft, to enter the army and go to Vietnam, I knew that was and is not what I would live, or die, for. I followed King into a life of pastoral and theological challenge, to engage with the realities of the world. Like him, I have struggled with the church: always tempted to live for itself and to ignore, avoid, or occasionally take pot shots at the society around us. No, we are called to be a transformative presence, like yeast within the loaf: working with and for the best this world can be.
I am so grateful for King’s inspiration and example.