I mentioned the rain because it brought a nice and welcome change to the weather. I know. I know. My people in Minnesota are rolling their eyes at me because it's been non-stop rain and declining temperatures there, but here in SoCal, the rain is nice. The smell of it. The sensation that it might be "OK" to stay in bed just a little longer came over most people I met with for coffee on those days, which is my second favorite thing to do when it rains. I mean grabbing a hot coffee or chocolate and listening to the rain come down from somewhere warm is a small joy for people like me. It made me think a little more about the passage that MLK went into in his sermon titled 'A Knock At Midnight," and I think I'm going to going into it some more today...at least one of the three components: the social order, the moral order, and the psychological order as Dr. King presented them.
I left off at the Bible passage that Dr. King presents as basis from which the sermon would be built upon.
Luke 11:5-8. It reads:
(NIV)5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[a] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
Dr. King points out that it is midnight in the parable, and it serves as a basis for his thought concerning many contemporary problems of his day and even our own today. It is midnight in the parable; it is also midnight in our world then and now, and the darkness is so thick that we can hardly see where it ends or begins. It's midnight.
It is midnight within the social order. On the international horizon nations are engaged in a colossal and bitter contest for supremacy. It's nothing new. Russia's President Putin invaded the Ukraine in what the news critics have call a move to re-establish the old Russian empire or resurrect the 'Iron Curtain'. Syria's President Assad has murdered thousands of his own people in a bloody civil war to which neighboring countries sat and watched only to do nothing. I guess they hoped someone else would do something. China is literally dumping tons of sand and dirt into the ocean to further expand its 'rightful territory', and North Korea continues to exercise its growing ability to detonate nuclear devises. Why?
It goes back to the vary nature of mankind-a deeply rooted need to feel or be supreme. We as America have fought two wars in the last decade in the name of terrorism and have been involved in two world wars there were fought just one generation ago, and the clouds of another war are in the air. New dictators now have the atomic and nuclear weapons that could within seconds completely destroy any major cities of the world. Yet, the arms race, although promoted as nuclear disarmament, continues and nuclear tests still explode in the atmosphere over the Red Sea with the grim prospect that the very air we breathe will be poisoned by radioactive fallout. It was true in Dr. King's time, and it continues to be true in our time. And the question we have to ask ourselves as we approach another Presidential election only a week away is, "Who do we want to be in the position of power that with only the push of button can bring about our very end?" Who will it be?!
Dr. King pointed out that our science has helped us in the past with coping with midnight in the social order. As was the case then and now, science has saved us. When we were in the midnight of geographic limitation and material inconvenience, science lifted us to the bright morning of globalization and shared material comfort. Cars, medicine, planes, vaccinations, food science, and health science have prolonged our lives even more than we thought possible with people living into their 100s.
We moved from the crippling ignorance and superstition of not only the church but also our mixed cultures. Science brought us to the daybreak of being free and open minded..kinda. We have virtually irradiated plagues and diseases around the world. It's natural that we turn to science in a day when the problems of the world are so complex and interconnected because we have technology. The technological advancement of man has made great distances but a short airplane ride. We can talk to anyone anywhere in the world from the convenience of our own hand without ever having to physically see them contributing to an ever growing disconnected contentedness.
It goes back to the vary nature of mankind-a deeply rooted need to feel or be supreme. We as America have fought two wars in the last decade in the name of terrorism and have been involved in two world wars there were fought just one generation ago, and the clouds of another war are in the air. New dictators now have the atomic and nuclear weapons that could within seconds completely destroy any major cities of the world. Yet, the arms race, although promoted as nuclear disarmament, continues and nuclear tests still explode in the atmosphere over the Red Sea with the grim prospect that the very air we breathe will be poisoned by radioactive fallout. It was true in Dr. King's time, and it continues to be true in our time. And the question we have to ask ourselves as we approach another Presidential election only a week away is, "Who do we want to be in the position of power that with only the push of button can bring about our very end?" Who will it be?!
Dr. King pointed out that our science has helped us in the past with coping with midnight in the social order. As was the case then and now, science has saved us. When we were in the midnight of geographic limitation and material inconvenience, science lifted us to the bright morning of globalization and shared material comfort. Cars, medicine, planes, vaccinations, food science, and health science have prolonged our lives even more than we thought possible with people living into their 100s.
We moved from the crippling ignorance and superstition of not only the church but also our mixed cultures. Science brought us to the daybreak of being free and open minded..kinda. We have virtually irradiated plagues and diseases around the world. It's natural that we turn to science in a day when the problems of the world are so complex and interconnected because we have technology. The technological advancement of man has made great distances but a short airplane ride. We can talk to anyone anywhere in the world from the convenience of our own hand without ever having to physically see them contributing to an ever growing disconnected contentedness.
As was true in Dr. King's time, it continues to be midnight in man’s external collective, and it is paralleled by midnight in his internal individual life. It's midnight within the psychological order. Everywhere paralyzing anxiety cripple people by day and haunt them in their sleep at night. Deep clouds of depression are part of many people's every day horizon. More people are emotionally disturbed today than at any other time of human history. The psychopathic wards of our hospitals are crowded, and the jails full. The most popular psychologists then and now are the Cognitive therapist. Bestsellers in psychology are books such as How To Be Happy, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Hidden Brain. The popular preachers of the day are on TV and teach us soothing sermons on "How to Be Happy" and "How to Relax," or give us Biblical tips to live by like Joel Olstein. Some have been tempted to revise Jesus’ command to read, "Go ye into all the world, keep your racism to yourself, and, lo, I will make you a well-adjusted citizen of society or the church." All of this is indicative that it is midnight within the inner lives of men and women.
It's also midnight within the moral order. It at midnight that colors lose their distinctiveness and become various shades of grey. Moral principles have lost their definition. For men and women then and now, absolute right and wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes they get on Instagram or Facebook, and the customs of a particular social group to which they belong. Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe has been applied to the moral and ethical realm of every day life.
Midnight is the hour when men and women alike are desperately seeking to obey the eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not get caught." The ethic of midnight hour is to indulge one's self in the cardinal sin of "just getting by." It is all right to misrepresent the truth as long as you do it with a little finesse. It's OK to steal, if one is so dignified that, if caught, the charge becomes fraud and not robbery. It is permissible even to hate as long as one dresses his or her hating is covered in the garments of love that hating appears to be loving. "The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest." MLK. This mentality has perpetuated the gradual erosion of moral standards, and the midnight of moral degeneration deepens.
To Be Continued........
To Be Continued........
