Our Prophets Shouldn't Make Us Comfortable

I always feel a little weird about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is not because I don’t think we should celebrate the late civil rights icon. We absolutely should celebrate his work and the work of so many others. His passion for justice, his commitment to nonviolent resistance, and the light of his theological imagination should be guides for us even today. 

I still remember reading his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” for the first time. It was like he had unlocked something I had not yet understood about the link between the Christian faith and justice. And about how the silence of white churches was as complicit in racial inequality as those who defended Jim Crow with billy club, burning cross, and unjust law.

What makes me feel weird on this day is the way in which his words and legacy are boiled down to little inspirational aphorisms. Everyone does it. Many who make these posts do it with sincerity. Yet there are many corporations and politicians that do it because that is what you are supposed to do. We slap his picture and a quote about choosing love or doing the right thing and it makes you for a moment seem righteous. 

In death we have turned Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into a mascot for the status quo when in fact there would be much about our country’s present racial inequality, economic inequality, military industrial complex, etc. that would have raised this modern day prophet’s ire.

Here is the thing about a prophet: the prophet is often a very unpopular person in their day. MLK Jr. certain was, as were prophets in the Bible, and Jesus himself. What they say in their lifetimes is often dramatically unpopular to those who are in power and who benefit from the status quo. Many of them face threats of violence or are killed. 

Yet after they pass on, we recognize that there was something good in what they said and we want to be on the side of good. We assume that we would have been on their side. We sand down the edges that would challenge us. We make them tame to the point that their cries for change don’t ever actually reach our ears. We believe we would have defended the poor, the widow, the orphan, our black sister and brother but we don’t necessarily seize the opportunity to do so in the present.

What I am saying is that a prophet—whether it be MLK Jr. or Jeremiah or Jesus—should not make me comfortable. I remember a sermon from when I was young in which my dad quoted Psalm 139:23-24 when I was young: “Search me, O Lord, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” He said that he never said that prayer and felt like God told him he was perfect, that there was nothing in him that stood in the way of what God desired. There were still things that needed to be made right.

Living this way is not a way of guilt or of shame. It is not berating oneself as horrible for all the things they have not done. It is simply the honest reality that we—especially white people on this day—can do better. The words of Dr. King should still challenge me just as the words of anyone who calls me towards a life of goodness and peacemaking should challenge me. 

I have not arrived. There is still work to do. So on this day, I hope that I am not just inspired by his legacy, actions, and words, but unsettled in the best way.