Deep Wells

SCRIPTURE: You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is beneficial. 1 Cor. 10:23 NLT

QUOTE: “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., June 12, 1963, Letter from Birmingham Jail https://letterfromjail.com/

THOUGHT: Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the deep wells of freedom established by both God and the founders, and that understanding undergirded every fiber of his being as he led the Civil Rights Movement in our country. He found a truth that was higher and more compelling to obey than the law of the land, which at that time was segregation.

In his own words, which echo down to me today, he wrote a group of Christian pastors who were taking him to task for his presence and actions in Birmingham: “there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

Our founders created deep wells from which freedom and faith cry out together. We cannot have the one, in the way it was intended, without the other. Freedom is not the freedom to do anything, regardless of its benefit to self or others, said Paul. Freedom is found in self-government first, and then as MLK would say, in creating non-violent tension in a system where the deep wells are being capped.

“If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed,” said King in his letter to the clergy, “I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.”

PRAYER: Oh God, free us from the tyranny of ideas that do not flow from your own law. We need to see clearly what is true and what is just; what is untrue and what is unjust. Increase our understanding of what you had in mind when you gave us free will tempered by the gift of conscience.