The Measure of a Man

Him:

Three years ago I was in Memphis riding in the back seat of a car when somebody pointed to a passing hotel and stated "that's where Martin Luther King got shot." Most of what I learned about the man was taken in during my junior high years. I know at the time of his assassination he was 39, but if he was alive now he would be about the same age as my grandfather. I used to associate him with other leaders of the Civil Rights movement like Malcolm-X, but even as a boy I knew there was something different about Dr.King.

As I've gotten older and walked with Jesus longer it becomes more and more important to me to be used by God during my very short life. So I've been asking the question: what happens when the choice is presented between saving your own skin and being courageous enough to really live? Will I choose to do what is hard? What will spur me to do so? Who has done it before me? So I started looking for people like this; I started reading about people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joni Eareckson Tada, Nate Saint, etc......and Martin Luther King Jr.

"MLK loved Jesus?!" is a question that someone exclaimed to me in the last month. Yes!!! The problem is the history we have on the guy is all told in backwards order, and all the facts are separated. What kids learn about him today is 1st I get out of school for his holiday, 2nd there are tons of things named after him and he gave a speech called "I have a dream", 3rd he was the leading face of the Civil Rights Movement using non-violent protests against discrimination and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it, 4th when digging deep you can find he was an adulterer and sinner, 5th you might hear that he was a preacher, and Lastly if you're lucky you might deduce from all of this that MLK loved Jesus. There are many books about this guy with all the facts I just stated, but none that I've found that put the pieces together.

On the other side, a high school kid proclaimed to me last week "Hitler was a christian", which is a conclusion he had jumped to simply because Hitler had quoted scripture, Luther, and had started up under the banner of the German church by manipulation. It's sad to have the facts backwards because then we lose the root of the life or death that is flowing out of people. Death flowed out of Hitler because his priority was self. Life flowed out of King because he loved Jesus, got alone with Him, got vision from Him, and then could not let fear overcome the life that the living God was offering. So he became a preacher, and said true things that no one else would say, and put his life on the line, and became the face of a movement for freedom, and was martyred and has things named after him now.

All this stuff gets twisted up because it's easy to see he was a sinner, and it's easy to say his methods were just different from a guy like Malcolm-X, and it's easy to think that he was just concerned about changing society; but that's not how you measure a man. He helped bring life to a dead culture, and was heroic, because he was a missionary, because he loved Jesus. Loving Jesus is the measure of a man because it makes him justified and changes his bent toward God and away from self. I watched "Fiddler on the Roof" for the first time last week and fell in love with the main character Tevye, as he talked with God and tried to figure out which was more important: tradition in a Jewish community or love. In the end, when his youngest daughter has just done the forbidden by marrying a Gentile, Tevye breaks and mumbles "May God bless you" to the surprise of all. He just can't help it. There are real people in history and all across the world today who are doing the scary, hard, and dangerous things because they love Jesus and walk closely with Him, and I need to know they exist so I can know it's OK to be courageous and let God use me.