A Letter Modeled after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians”
This year, as we approached Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, something that, I know, is usually only celebrated in America, I returned to one of my favourite pieces of King’s writings, a sermon he preached in November, 1956. It seemed close enough to consider it a sixtieth anniversary of
Paul’s Letter to American Christians, a sermon I first read many years ago in Strength to Love.
But this time, I am much further down the road of the work in which I engage to be able to slip comfortably into the exclusive Christian language and theology with which the “letter” is written. Having listened to the presentation of a paper that argued King’s theology had potentially evolved from a decidedly less theistic Unitarian understanding to a more personal Baptist understanding for political rather than belief-based reasons,* I read it a second time pretending that King had presented his concerns from a non- or post-theist perspective. The letter came alive.
The idea formed that such a letter could be written for every decade and every place with a new perspective woven into King’s words, a new weft interposed where patches had become threadbare from the passage of time, or the demise of theism. And so, using King’s letter, I wrote a new one; one that might speak to Canadians in 2016. From an entirely different person, but one who might have shared the same sentiments. A letter from Socrates. I read it at West Hill on Sunday.
As you read, please note that the italics do not denote emphasis; they indicate places in the text where I have changed the words. Regular text is original to King. If you notice anything I’ve failed to mark in italics (the repetitive nature of “accept, italicize, accept, accept” can be hypnotic and I may have accepted a few revisions without italicizing them), please let me know. And please also note that I have deleted text from King’s letter and have not noted that in this letter. You can read the original online.
A letter from Socrates, 2016
I would like to share with you an imaginary letter from the pen of Socrates. The postmark reveals that it comes from the city of Athens. After opening the letter I discovered that it was written in Greek rather than English. At the top of the first page was this request: “Please read to your congregation as soon as possible, and then pass on to the other churches.”
For several weeks I have worked assiduously with the translation. It’s been a long time since I took Greek. At times it has been difficult, but now I think I have deciphered its true meaning. May I hasten to say that if in presenting this letter the contents sound strangely Vosper-ish instead of Socratic, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity rather than Socrates’ lack of clarity.
It is a stretch of the imagination, of course, to consider that the Socrates should be writing a letter to you and to me nearly 2500 years after his last words were uttered at this death. Indeed, stranger still since we have no original documents ever written by him but know of his work only through the pens of those who knew of him and his words. How this is possible is something of an enigma wrapped in mystery. The important thing, however, is that I can imagine Socrates writing a letter to us in 2016 C.E. And here is the letter as it stands before me.
Dear Seekers after Truth,
I, a disciple of wisdom, to you who live in the twenty-first century, Grace be unto you, and peace.
For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere and beyond, pressing your presence far beyond the imagined distances of my time. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris and to send sisters and brothers to look down upon you from your moon and further. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development.
But, my friends, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. The poet Thoreau used to talk about “improved means to an unimproved end.” How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So, my friends, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.
I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as people ever seeking truth in the midst of a deceitful world. That is what I had to do. That is what everyone has to do. But I understand that there are many among you who give their ultimate allegiance to systems and customs of privilege, sectarianism, and self-centred absorption. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: “everybody is doing it, so it must be alright.” For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way.
But you who seek truth, I must say to you as was said to forbears of one of your great religious traditions years ago, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Or, as was also said, “Ye are a colony of heaven.” I have always understood heaven as that eternal realm of pure ideas comingled with beauty and the best of human impulses. So this means that although you live in the colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity; both in the realm of ever-evolving ideas – of truth, goodness, and beauty – and here on earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any humanly-constructed system or institution. The seeker after these ephemeral ideals owes his ultimate allegiance to truth, goodness, and beauty, and if any earthly institution conflicts with these, it is your duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of our systems and institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of goodness, beauty, and truth.
I understand that you have an economic system that has functioned for many generations that is known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders. You have become one of the richest nations in the world and you have built up one of the greatest system of production that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But my friends, there is the danger that you are blind to the misuses of Capitalism. I agree with the mind that noted money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity.
The misuse of Capitalism can also lead to tragic exploitation. This has so often happened in your world, especially as the global economy has developed and trade agreements impinge on individual human rights. They tell me that one percent of the world’s population controls forty-eight percent of the wealth. Most of the information to which you pay attention about the One Percent soothes you because you like to think of yourselves as part of the 99% which, in the United States of America, you very probably would be. You’d have to make over $400,000 USD a year to get into the American One Percent club. But you are citizens of the world and the worldwide club has a much lower membership fee. You only need to make about $40,000 each year (adjusted for the lagging loonie) to be in the 99th percentile, making more money that 99 percent of the people on this planet. My oh my, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. If you are to be committed to that eternal pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth, you must both acknowledge and work to solve this problem. You cannot solve the problem by embracing a postmodern indifference, for systems that draw their nourishment from an ethical relativism – beyond the moral absolutes once identified by religion, a belief that one thing is no more bad than another – will dull, diminish and destroy some of the most exquisite elements of human creativity and potential. You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. No single group of people can be content to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty; it is your responsibility to expand upon that idea. If human dignity is to be preserved, all humans must have the basic necessities of life even and especially if our luxuries must be compromised to ensure they do. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth; you have the wisdom and the ability to devise ways to bring this about the world over.
I would that I could be with you in person, so that I could say to you face to face what I am forced to say to you in writing. Oh, how I long to share your fellowship.
Let me rush on to say something about religion. Truth-seekers, I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that religion is fundamentally a moral pursuit. So when religions clash, it is the study of morality that might bring them together. But I am disturbed about the ongoing refusal to do that. I cannot be blamed for believing, twenty-five hundred years ago, that gods existed. But I argued that they contradicted each other as the stories of their actions certainly exposed. My life became devoted to finding within each human being the moral impetus, identified by their choices, honed by their own exploration of those choices, and ultimately reflecting on the moral nature of humanity itself. How many thousands of religions are there now, each proclaiming a moral authority they argue is true? How can it possibly be that so many versions of what is right can be right? The tragedy brought about by this is not in the many ways in which humans seek to explore goodness, beauty, and truth – ephemeral elements, the engagement of which I call spiritual – but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the human family. You must come to see that truth is neither Christian Baptist nor Theravada Buddhist; it is neither Baha’i nor Muslim; it cannot be pursued if the human mind is locked up in a fundamentalist doctrinal perspective of any kind. Truth is bigger than all of our attempts to capture it within a religious tradition. If you are to be true witnesses for truth, you must come to see the ways in which it is compromised by traditions you too often hold dear.
But I must not stop with a criticism of religion. I am disturbed, too, about this new thing – corporatism. Corporations, defended as having the same rights as people, stand before the world with their pomp and power, insisting that they possess the only means to a profitable future. They exude an arrogance that becomes a dangerous spiritual arrogance as their promises are gathered, absorbed, and translated by a frightened populace. They have gained power around the world and shadow the promise that once was the United Nations. I am disturbed about a “person” not being a real person but using a person’s privileges to amass ludicrous wealth by destroying and poisoning the earth for generations, perhaps even thousands of years to come. I am disturbed about any corporation that refuses to cooperate with governments or world leaders under the pretense that economic growth is the only option, the only goal. I am disturbed that corporations keep you convinced that limited liability is somehow a sacred element of their functioning that must be protected at all costs when more often than not, all it protects is a corporation’s right to plunder, deceive, and desecrate. Must I emphasize the fact that truth is often not what is posted on a billboard or represented in moving images on the side of your Facebook page (amazing though they are)? You know this to be true but seem to be fooled by it at the same time! When we know what the truth is, how is it that we continue to protect corporations from truth’s sweeping indictments? Corporations must do a great deal to mend their ways and heal the planet they have ravaged.
There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the dissonance between what you know to be true and the slow change in your behaviours as time unfolds itself beyond that coming of age. You have said again and again that you understand how dreadful colonialism was and how deep its devastations. You teach such truths to your children in school. Yet even those once devastated by colonialism have converted to its powerful and ongoing presence. Privilege, once embraced, is hard to give up. The First Nations people of these lands, lands you still so often speak of as your own, await reconciliation. Paper promises have yet to be realized. Empty space exists between you and your First Nations peoples, space where relationship might flourish. You yearn to be loving people but over and over again fail to live into the so many stories that invite you to weave your future with those of your aboriginal sisters and brother. How chilling that awareness should be to you and yet perhaps its cold has not yet reached your marrow; perhaps fear has yet to be conquered by knowledge. Indeed, the fear that rages in your land about the arrival of new immigrants, refugees from war, violence, and death suppresses the larger truths that discomfort you. I had so hoped that my death had not been in vain.
So I must urge you to get rid of everything that suppresses the full and unpleasant truth about your long relationship with First Nations and apply what you have learned to your embrace of refugee peoples from all lands. The broad universalism standing at the center of truth makes both the theory and practice of privilege morally unjustifiable; you know this, now live it. Privilege too often substitutes an “I-it” relationship for the “I-thou” relationship we must pursue. No matter where our roots may interlace the face of this Earth, if we neglect to dismantle long-standing systems of injustice and to create relationships of trust and forgiveness, we undermine our humanity. That is a simple truth. Relegating First Peoples or our most recent immigrants to the status of second-class citizens is no different than calling them things. Refusing to honour their status as persons – whole and beautiful and worthy – fractures humanity and demeans the dignity of us all. The quest for goodness, beauty, and truth is diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of privilege, and all the arguments about protecting what is ours or what we deserve, all the complicated logic in the world, erudite though its scholars might be, cannot make privilege and what is right lie down together. Decide, as you have before, to commit to live into what is good. Only in living out that decision can you nurture beauty in your lives, in the lives of your First Nations peoples, and in the most humbled of the world’s people who now stand on your doorstep.
I praise your new government for committing to both attend to the recommendations of your nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the urgent needs of refugees around the world. I am happy to know that so many persons of goodwill have accepted these decisions as a great victory in our effort to overcome fear. But I understand that there are some among you who have risen up in open defiance. I hear that they organize and lobby and work relentlessly to build fear up again amongst you, stronger even than before. They have lost the true meaning of democracy and decency. So I would urge each of you to plead patiently with your sisters and brothers, and tell them that this isn’t the way. With understanding and goodwill, you are obligated to seek to change their attitudes. Let them know that in standing against the dismantling of privilege, they are not only standing against the noble precepts of your democracy, but also walking a road that forks toward the wrong side of history. Yes, my friends, there is still the need for prophets who will cry out to their nations: “Let judgement roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against these challenging and angry people. Always be sure that you struggle with methods and weapons that bring honour to humanity. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no one pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
In your struggle for justice, let your opponents know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate them, or even to pay them back for injustices that they have heaped upon you, as a people or personally. Let them know that you are merely seeking justice for them as well as yourself. Let them know that the festering sore of privilege debilitates not only those who are disenfranchised by it, but all of us. With this attitude you will be able to keep your struggle on high moral standards.
Many persons will realize the urgency of seeking to eradicate the errors of privilege. There will be many who will devote their lives to the cause of equity and human dignity. There will be many persons of goodwill and strong moral sensitivity who will dare to take a stand for justice. Honesty impels me to admit that such a stand will require willingness to suffer and sacrifice. So don’t despair if you are condemned and persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Whenever you take a stand for truth and justice, you are liable to scorn. Often you will be called an impractical idealist or a dangerous radical. Sometimes it might mean going to jail. If such is the case, you must honorably grace the jail with your presence. It might even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free future generations from a permanent life of psychological death, then nothing could be more true. Don’t worry about persecution, my friends; you are going to have that if you stand up for a great principle. I still believe that standing up for the truth is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to have uplifted truth and, in doing so, laid the foundation for a better future, come what may.
I must bring my writing to a close now. The courier is waiting to deliver this letter, and I must take leave for another event. But just before leaving, I must say to you, as I said to others as well, that I still believe that love is the most durable power in the world. Over the centuries many have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the chief quest of ethical philosophy. This was one of the big questions of Greek philosophy in which I revelled. The Epicureans and the Stoics sought to answer it; Plato and Aristotle sought to answer it. What is the summon bonum of life? I think I have an answer and wish I had written it down sooner so I might have been credited with the idea. I think I have discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. One who loves is a participant in the eternal nature of goodness, beauty and truth. One who hates cannot share in the wonder of these things.
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p style=”padding-left: 30px;”>So, my friends, allow me to paraphrase words penned by a man some five hundred or so years after my death. You may recognize them but I ask you to do more; I ask you to hear them. Let them speak to you today, in the early years of your life or in the closing out of your time on this earth:
Seekers after truth, you may master the intricacies of the English language. You may possess all of the eloquence of articulate speech. But even if you speak with the tongues of earthlings and of angels, and have not love, you are become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
You may have the gift of prophecy and understanding of all mysteries. You may be able to break into the storehouse of nature and bring out many insights that I, privileged as I was to live in a one of the richest intellectual epochs of history, could never have dreamed were there. You may ascend to the heights of academic achievement, so that you will have all knowledge. You may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees. But all of this amounts to absolutely nothing devoid of love.
But even more, my friends, you may give your goods to feed the poor. You may give great gifts to charity. You may tower high in philanthropy. But if you have not love, you are still alone. You may even give your body to be burned, and die the death of a martyr. Your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as history’s supreme hero. But even so, if you have not love your blood will have been spilt at the end of an empty life. You must come to see that it is possible for someone to be self-centered in their self-denial and self-righteous in their self-sacrifice. They may be generous in order to feed their ego and pious in order to feed their pride. We have the tragic capacity to relegate a heightening virtue to a tragic vice. Without love benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride. Without love, you are alone.
So the greatest of all virtues is love. It is here that we find the true meaning of life, or, because love cannot exist without us, it is the love we create that ultimately creates along with it, the meaning of our lives. Love is a telescope through which we look out upon the long vista of eternity and interpret the things that have gone before. Was this moment one of love? Or was this of selfish pride and privilege? What about this one? Was it of love? Ultimately, we judge ourselves by our choices and we triumph when our choice is love. Love is the most durable power in the world; it is at its most basic, the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. Only through achieving love – creating, receiving, giving its tremendous power – can you expect to become part of the unfolding of beauty into eternity.
I must say goodbye now. I hope this letter will find you strong and growing in love. It is probable that I will not get to see you even through the use of such time-spanning implements as this letter, but I am confident that our hearts pursue the same things. May you ever seek to keep one another from falling, and lift each other from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of action, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy.
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p style=”padding-left: 30px;”>May love abound
Soc.
*I cannot recall the name of the scholar who gave the paper despite searching for it on the internet. There are, however, documents of King’s that show his progressive perspective toward things like the virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus and that he referred to the Bible as “metaphorical“.
One Response
Very well done, Greta, and thanks for taking the time and effort to compose this piece. Now . . . I must look up Dr. King’s letter for the good it will inspire in me also. Best, Rob Monroe
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