I’ve been thinking about writing a lot lately, some of it related to this space. I still pay a few bucks a year for my little corner of the interwebs, and Jesus says your heart and treasure occupy the same real estate. I guess that means my heart is still in this, at least however much of my heart would cost a few dollars. I’ve eaten a lot of bacon and my doctor recently sent me home with my very own “Track Your Blood Pressure” pamphlet, so it’s possible that a large portion of my heart could be valued at that price. But I’m not sure how I’d ever find that out, so let’s just keep it simple. I’d like to write here more often soon. Deep, deep down in my heart.

Perhaps my three-month sabbatical will reconcile me and my desire to write more. We’ll see. Until then, enjoy this picture of a small man clinging to the legs of larger men. I always do.

Please take heed: The words below are built on an assertion that love – the kind Jesus models and empowers and the kind that the New Testament reveals and insists on for God’s people – is a core doctrine, essential to orthodoxy and not conditional to culture or season. I spent 1,691 words making that case. You don’t have to read those 1,691 words, but this post is the direct offspring of that one. Don’t be a knucklehead. Go read the other one (or three) first.

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This conviction that real, biblical love – for God and for other people – is a core Christian doctrine brings me full circle. I began this series examining how charitable (or uncharitable) we are, not only in discussing doctrine in a given moment, but in drawing broader conclusions about someone’s orthodoxy or lack thereof. I observe in our tribe an irony: We seem to be quite charitable, at least in some cases, to those who taught and practiced apparent heresy with respect to the core doctrine of love while we are often less charitable to those who teach or practice heresy in other areas.

What I mean is if love for other humans in the way the New Testament describes it is a core doctrine in any sense, we have permitted men and women across the centuries to violate that doctrine in some egregious ways – and consistently, not as a matter of momentary sin later repented of – yet affirmed them as orthodox, even elevating some of them as the vanguards of orthodoxy.

I’m not wondering if we should be meaner to those folks; I’m wondering if we should extend to other heretics the same grace we extend to love-heretics. I’m wondering if in understanding the centrality of love to orthodox Christian doctrine, we might more humbly assess the state of our own doctrinal purity and, in so doing, be inspired to love other heretics as we love our(heretical)selves.

At the risk of being redundant (I dare you to accuse me of being redundant for repeating what Jesus said was most important), Jesus said the most important instructions from God – the ones on which all the law and the prophets hang (or, one might say, the foundation of orthodoxy) – are to love God and love your neighbor. Right? And Jesus did not then suggest that your neighbor should have an impeccable theology in order for him to merit you showing him the kind of love that you show yourself. Right?

Both Jesus and John elaborate on this picture of the orthodox Christian life by telling us that real obedience to that command – real love for God and for others – means laying down your life in service to God and to others. “Love as I have loved,” he says. And how did he love? “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

My rough summary: Jesus saw we were bumbling heretics. This is not an untrue way of describing ourselves, certainly at least in our “still sinners” state of being – people not affirming what is true in word and/or deed. Even while were still heretics, Jesus loved us enough not only to tell us the truth, but also to lay down his life to restore us to the truth. Then he told us – and gave us the Spirit to empower us – to love other folks in the same way he loved us. Then Paul broke it down in even more detail as I have described before – you know, all that crazy talk about unrelenting forgiveness, humility, selflessness, bearing all things, and so forth.

So one would assume in our diligence to ensure our orthodox theologians are, indeed, orthodox, we would require of them adherence to this core doctrine. Love. Jesus-love that rejoices in the truth and lays down its life to reconcile people to the truth and demonstrates forgiveness and patience and so on, all because it recognizes this reality: If I know any truth at all, it is only because the Truth loved me enough to lay down his life for me. Orthodox theologians have to teach that, right?

If you aren’t smelling the trap by now you might have an errant smeller, because I’m not very subtly setting this up to make a run at a legend of orthodoxy. Before I do that, let me clarify something – I’m not taking cheap shots. What I’m about to describe really happened. And it’s really a problem that we have to deal with honestly. I know this story has been used as a “gotcha” to discredit a particular stream of theology over the years. Know this for sure: that is not my goal or my heart. I have no agenda with respect to the theological viewpoint derived from this fellow. If this guy is one of your heroes, bear with me. I believe the balance of what I’ll write about him will reveal love and grace if you’ll stay with me to the end. But I believe there is a fair point to be made in dealing in the facts, so give me a few paragraphs to try to make it.

John Calvin wrote Institutes of Christian Religion in 1536 and played a major role in the Protestant Reformation. Among Reformed Protestants, he is widely venerated as one of the most important theologians who ever lived. An entire theological system – one with enormous sway in the American church – bears his name.

Charles Spurgeon wrote about Calvin in his autobiography and had this to say of him:

Among all those who have been born of women, there has not risen a greater than John Calvin; no age before him ever produced his equal, and no age afterwards has seen his rival. In theology, he stands alone, shining like a bright fixed star, while other leaders and teachers can only circle round him, at a great distance — as comets go streaming through space — with nothing like his glory or his permanence.

Not to pick on Spurgeon, who I certainly admire, but that statement always has puzzled me. Spurgeon knew Jesus was born of a woman, right? It’s in the creeds and stuff. I’m sure Spurgeon did not mean to suggest Calvin was the equal of the Son of God and his moment of effusive praise just got the better of him. I can relate. Once in the summer of 1985 after watching The Karate Kid 17 times in 9 days at my cousin’s house I declared that Daniel Larusso had the best life of anyone who ever lived – he won the All Valley Championship, he lived near Golf N’ Stuff, and Elisabeth Shue was his girlfriend. Thankfully I wasn’t writing my autobiography at the time.

Anyway, you get the point. John Calvin is not lacking for esteem as an orthodox theologian.

A large contingent of Reformed, Calvinist folks (who obviously look to Calvin as soundly orthodox) are among those who are ill-at-ease with Rob Bell at the moment. Generally speaking, this crowd pays attention to truth, takes seriously the biblical instruction to defend sound doctrine, and engages publicly when they believe something meaningful is at stake. That description is not meant to be snarky in any way. Really. I’m just explaining the relevance of my aside about Calvin.

So here’s the rub. Calvin’s method for dealing with heretics was slightly more bloody than tweeting them farewell. During the Reformation, there was a Spanish theologian named Michael Servetus who was teaching what amounted to a non-Trinitarian version of Christianity. In essence, Servetus suggested that the Father, Son, and Spirit were not three separate divine persons, but that the Son and Spirit were essentially manifestations of the One God. He did not deny the existence, importance, or deity of either, and he did teach salvation through Christ alone by faith alone. But his teachings on the nature of Christ and the Spirit are not the traditional Trinitarian view.

Servetus wrote:

There is nothing greater, reader, than to recognize that God has been manifested as substance, and that His divine nature has been truly communicated. We shall clearly apprehend the manifestation of God through the Word and his communication through the Spirit, both of them substantially in Christ alone. The incomprehensible God is known through Christ, by faith, rather than by philosophical speculations. He manifests God to us, being the expression of His very being, and through him alone, God can be known. The scriptures reveal Him to those who have faith; and thus we come to know the Holy Spirit as the Divine impulse within us.

As you can see, he was orthodox in many ways, including in his view of salvation through Christ alone by faith alone, but he disagreed with both the common Reformation and Catholic views of the Trinity. For the record, I don’t agree with Servetus regarding the Trinity. I’m just describing what he did and did not teach.

Servetus also rejected Calvin’s strong doctrines of predestination, and he and Calvin got into a bit of a letter-writing war over their differences. It was more or less a 16th century version of what we’ve witnessed in recent weeks surrounding Rob Bell and his critics sans the iPhones, MacBooks, and marketing machines. The dialogue between the two deteriorated from tense to ugly. In 1546 Calvin wrote this to a friend:

Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings. If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my word for if he comes here, if my authority is worth anything, I will never permit him to depart alive

There is no metaphor there. Calvin is saying: “Mike is asking to come talk with me about this in person, but I’m not going to invite him because if he comes, he won’t leave alive if I have anything to say about it.”

In 1553, Servetus, apparently looking for trouble, showed up in Geneva and sat in on one of Calvin’s sermons. He was recognized (which makes me think they had the internet already and Al Gore is a total liar because, really, how do you know what this guy from another country looks like in 1553?) and arrested. He was charged with heresy on two specific counts: (1) his non-Trinitarian teachings and (2) his disagreement with the practice of infant baptism. Calvin was not the chief “prosecutor” because he was in poor health at the time, but he affirmed that Servetus should be executed. Calvin favored beheading. They burned him alive instead.

Calvin’s post-mortem commentary was this:

Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that (they allege) I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.

And:

Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt.

It’s lucky for Rob and Zondervan that Calvin wasn’t born 450 years later than he was. They probably never would have gotten Nooma 2 out the door.

But seriously, if the underlying command of Christian orthodoxy is to love God and neighbor in a sacrificial-even-to-the-point-of-self-death manner and John Calvin killed a guy who taught salvation through Christ alone by faith alone but who was, in the opinion of the majority, off in some other areas including the then-essential doctrine of infant baptism, what does Calvin have to do to commit heresy against Christian orthodoxy?

No, really. What?

How can we embrace Calvin as a model orthodox theologian despite his unrepentant advocacy for killing a man, while bidding farewell to Rob Bell (who as far as I know hasn’t capped any suckas) because we suspect from a vague marketing blurb and video that his theology of hell isn’t quite right? A bad theology of hell matters, and it should be talked about openly. But how is Calvin’s error less grievous and more forgivable than Bell’s?

John Calvin wasn’t living under some different dispensation. He wasn’t operating when God was still doing the things he did in the Old Testament that don’t make sense in our modern context. He was living 1,500 years post-Christ, and this episode happened in his mature years, not his youth.

Stop and think about this for a minute. Who among us, according to Calvin, is truly orthodox? Let’s preemptively disqualify all the liberals, Arminians, Catholics, and undecideds and consider just the home team. How many self-described Calvinists these days reject infant baptism as the biblical mode of baptism? I know one or two. It seems unlikely that John would have affirmed such folks as orthodox Christians – much less good Calvinists – since he approved the execution of a man, in part, for such a belief. That leaves us with only the baby-baptizing Reformed crowd (some of whom are thinking, “it is not news to us that we are the only true Calvinists and, possibly, Christians”). Fair enough. Unfortunately, unless they affirm the execution of the rest of us, even their reformed Baptist brethren, they would “knowingly and willingly incur” the guilt of the heretics, according to Calvin.

I often hear quoted as the standard for us getting doctrine right Jude’s admonition that we “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” And man, I’m in on that. But if that’s my standard and your standard and Rob Bell’s standard, it was also John Calvin’s standard. Surely setting on fire a man like Servetus (or cutting off his head), then suggesting anyone who opposed execution for those determined to be heretics, is not what Jude had in mind. And if not, such an action – and all subsequent defense of it – is error. And if it is error, it is error not only in misunderstanding what “contend” meant, but in understanding the essence of the essential New Testament doctrine of love.

Some will have a visceral reaction to me seeming to be so hard on John Calvin, but modernize the story. Would a guy advocating the murder of theological rivals have a book deal with Crossway in 2011? I know he wasn’t the only Christian killing sinners in those days, but we simply don’t excuse our modern theologians such enormous deviations from biblical living and teaching because of their context.

If I may be frank, modern Calvinists certainly aren’t, by and large, known for their eagerness to excuse modern Christians enormous deviations from biblical living and teaching because of their context. I’m not picking on them. I don’t think any of them would dispute that observation. Most would embrace it, as they should.

If we credit Calvin with theological brilliance then we also must hold him accountable for what hardly can be construed as anything other than heresy, presumably largely a function of what was culturally normal at the time, with respect to both his involvement in the execution of Servetus and his unrepentant spirit about it after the fact.

If we still find space for Calvin in the realm of orthodoxy, it’s because of grace. Period. Grace he deserves no more and no less than fallible pastors, theologians, and other assorted jackasses today.

My point is not to undermine John Calvin. I easily could have picked on any number of other heroes of orthodoxy. If it were up to Martin Luther, we wouldn’t even have Jude’s command to contend for the faith because Luther opposed the canonization of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. No really. And thank God for Martin Luther (unless you are Catholic, I suppose, in which case you’ll just have to love us Protestants enough to afford us our own tainted history and heroes).

I appreciate the many tremendous contributions John Calvin made to Christian thought, theology, and practice. That’s not a token statement. I really do. I value him and learn from him and thank God for him. He also was a heretic with respect to what seems to be one of the most fundamental aspects of Christian orthodoxy. But we still allow his voice at the table. In some circles, he sets the table.

I am not uncovering any startling revelation, but at times it seems we have forgotten: even our heroes of the faith were just men. And we should rejoice in any such reminder as it sends us again scrambling for Jesus, our only reliable anchor.

See, Charles Spurgeon was wrong when he suggested that no age before Calvin produced his equal. Peter was his equal. Peter, who after eating, sleeping, healing, and praying with Jesus for years, denied him three times. Peter, whose treason and blasphemy Jesus forgave. Peter who – just days after swearing not to know Jesus – was chosen by Jesus to run point on a new little venture called the Church.

Peter was John Calvin’s equal. Why? Because he was a man, fully capable of error and fully capable, now only because of Jesus, of bearing God’s image in the world. The doctrines of grace tell us this quite clearly.

Peter. John Calvin. John Piper. Rob Bell. You. Me. Men and women created in God’s image, marred by sin, restored by Jesus, and living in the tension of perfect redemption indwelling imperfect people.

Might we learn from John Calvin’s life – or from Peter’s – that we would be wise to use discretion in dismissing people as irrelevant or, worse, malevolent to the Kingdom lest we pick the wrong moment of their lives to flush them completely?

Imagine with me for a moment that we have a Delorean, the flux capacitor, and 1.21 jigawatts of power (and if you can’t imagine that, borrow some of my faith – I have enough for both of us on this one). After brief stops in 1955 and 1984 for the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance and the All Valley Tournament, let’s dial up 16th century Geneva. When we get there, let’s have a conversation with one of Calvin’s contemporaries who believes his participation in and advocacy of execution for heresy is, in fact, contrary to the Scriptures and the Gospel.

What would you say to that person? Would you counsel him to brand Calvin a heretic and warn others to avoid him given his obvious and unapologetic violation of biblical teaching? Or would you suggest he bear with the man in his fallibility and find the value of his many other contributions to the Kingdom?

And what does your answer have to say about how you deal with men and women whose doctrine you find imprecise or blatantly erroneous today?

If you’ve made it this far, I thank you. I also know for some of you there is still a big “but…” in play. For me too. The New Testament warns about false teachers in various ways, and we can’t ignore that. We can’t just have a group hug and watch passively as anyone who says “Jesus” enough claims to speak for him, restrained from heeding biblical instruction with regard to error.

But I think the key to loving truth and loving people more purely is to learn to better discern and distinguish how we handle people and how we handle ideas.

And I’m suggesting that our public discourse reveals that we’re not there yet.

I’m suggesting that we need to be quicker to listen for longer and slower to speak (and write).

I’m suggesting we need to be slower to label and dismiss people for what we deem to be sins of wrong belief, even if the beliefs themselves bear addressing.

I’m suggesting that we look deeper into the future and consider, as Jesus did, that an error (or even two or twelve) of the moment is not the sum of a man or woman.

I’m suggesting that some of what we know that we know for sure probably someday will be determined to be incorrect – or at least incomplete – and that we should hope history will find us humble in our conviction, not eager to sentence dissenters to death, if not literally then – in the economy of Jesus – by doing violence with our words.

I’m suggesting we can – and must – be more intentional in our efforts to retain the union of love and truth even in our dealings with apparently poor doctrine. There is no question that the teaching of sound doctrine and the preaching of the true Gospel are essential to our obedient response to the Great Commission. We simply can’t exalt the Great Commission to the obscurity of the Great Commandments.

Jesus said all truth hinges on two truths: we were made to love God and love people. The New Testament further connects the commission and the commandments in teaching that love amongst the professing Church even in the face of meaningful disagreement is how the Church will be known – how the world will know Jesus is who he said he is.

And then there’s this: In the hours before he was arrested and executed, Jesus prayed for all who would believe in him to love one another fully – for us to be “perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” We have to quit running from that prayer while claiming to be people who are about evangelism and missions.

Coming in Part Five…Concluding (I think) thoughts on finding solid ground as people of love and truth.

I will pick up here on the heels of Part Two. Well, more or less. The time lapse between the second and third parts truly has been much longer than I intended. One of my multiple excuses will surface in text of this post. 

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For my sake as much as yours, let me lead with a few paragraphs from Parts One and Two. These are not comprehensive summaries of the first two posts. Read them more as highlight excerpts that will remind you of a bit of what I suggested a few weeks ago. You’re free to argue with me, but only if you actually read the first two posts and don’t rely exclusively on these excerpts as foundations for Part Three below.

From Part One…

Until then, I am particularly interested in the way we are talking and writing about the book (Love Wins). I am most concerned by what I perceive to be a rapidly diminishing capacity for grace and charity among professing Christians. This strikes me as a tragic spiritual descent expedited by our largely undiscerning use of the internet in our quest to be heard. In the furor over Bell’s new book, I’ve observed that to be true at two levels – personal/communal and theological/intellectual.

I didn’t care for the level of judgment that was issued publicly before the book was in people’s hands.

We have much to repent of and grow into in the realm of loving, gracious dialogue at a personal and communal level.

From Part Two…

This is where my concern about what I’ve called theological/intellectual charity lies, and it’s a function of two things:

• the relationship between personal theology and orthodoxy for the Church,
• and the degree to which we believe everything important to our understanding of orthodoxy has more or less already been said or written.

What I believe has occurred in recent years – and is now on full display in the conversation about Love Wins – is a trend of more closely tying one’s concept of biblical and historic orthodoxy for the Church to one’s individual theology. The obvious result of that is a narrowing of the particular notion of orthodoxy. So rather than orthodoxy being a uniting center of belief for a broad range of professing believers in Jesus, it becomes a more particular theological test that distinguishes true believers from posers.

There seems to be little sense for them [Stott, Lewis, Packer, and others] of the “on these matters there is no need for further speculation or deviation from the currently held mainstream view” that is so rampant in the present notions of evangelical orthodoxy in general and in the debate about Bell’s book in particular.

And now onto Part Three…

Let me tell you what I am not chasing. I am not interested in a a version of Christianity that exalts nice conversation and surface friendliness at the expense of sound doctrine or truth. This is a straw man that often emerges when a debate over heresy is interrupted by apparently distracting questions about charitable interactions. I believe there is an error at the root of that response that most commonly manifests in the form of a statement like:

“I’m all for being loving but when it comes down to being nice or defending the truth, I’ll defend the truth.”

I know. That statement doesn’t seem to be the product of error, does it? It seems right. Right? I am certain I have said something of that sort many times. In fact, I’ve even defended mean-spiritedness for the sake of being right. I think it’s been a while, but not so long that I’m out of touch with the part of me prone to do that. It’s still down there hiding behind my cynicism about the pledge to the Christian flag (which is hiding behind my cynicism about the existence of the Christian flag).

But I’m not alone. There is an edgier version of this same idea that actually defends a spectrum of ungracious treatment among professing Christians when one crosses what the other deems to be an unacceptable line. And even if you can filter out the meanness, many of us would still have a hard time finding fault with the words between the quotation marks above. Let me explain what I think I missed for most of my life in defaulting to that idea when it was time for me to set aside niceties and just speak the cold, hard truth to someone.

First, it is true we need not confuse being nice and being loving. It is often true that it is loving to be nice and it is, I guess, always nice to be loving. However, if our conception of “nice” is that we never disagree or we always do so dispassionately, it is not fair to say that love requires us to be that kind of nice.

But that kind of nice is not what I’m after. I’m interested in love, which St. Paul, who authored much of the text whose doctrine many folks have asserted Rob Bell has violated, describes thusly:  patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, not rude, not insisting on having things its way, not irritable, not resentful, not rejoicing at wrongdoing, rejoicing with the truth, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.

Now I’m tempted to write, “That sounds pretty nice.” But I’m a word nerd and I don’t want you getting caught up on the bad definitions of nice. So I won’t write that.

But I will write this: Neither Paul’s other doctrine nor any defense of it can be divorced from his doctrine regarding the nature of love. Or from his instruction to the Colossian church to “put on” love – to wear it like an outer garment that holds together the undergarments of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and unrelenting* forgiveness of others. Or from John’s reminder that love for one another identifies us as God’s people and enables us to set our hearts at rest in God’s presence. Or from Jesus’s declaration that the second greatest commandment, which is like the first, is to love the guy next to you as though he was you.

[*I added the word "unrelenting." What Paul really wrote in Colossians 3 was, "if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." He doesn't pause to limit the scope of his instruction to minor complaints. I don't think the word "unrelenting" is an inaccurate description of how the Lord had forgiven the Colossians or of how He has forgiven us. Also this way of doing footnotes is completely unapproved by any manual anywhere, but I wanted this close enough to the original use of the word for it to make sense but far enough removed to not break the rhythm of what I was doing there verbally. See. Word nerd.]

So we can pull out all the stops in justifying speech and action that violates this doctrine, offered in striking clarity by Jesus, his brother, and the New Testament’s second most famous character, but we will always be wrong. Always.

In fact, I believe we have lost our grip on something that is fundamental to orthodox Christian doctrine in our effort to preserve orthodox Christian doctrine:

Love is an orthodox Christian doctrine.

Just reading that sentence will send some people into an eye-crossing frenzy of theological hair pulling. I know because if I weren’t the one writing it, “some people” might be me.

No, I do not mean some spacey “everybody circle up with your drum and beat out a rhythm that communicates your love to the cosmos, including the person next to you and the cat you threw off the roof to see if it would land on its feet when you were twelve” love.

Wait, what? Too personal? No one else threw their cat off the roof when they were twelve. Relentless forgiveness, remember?

I’m not suggesting that we uphold some nebulous notion of love as a core Christian doctrine that inhibits us from discussing – even defending – other core doctrines.

I’m saying that love – as the Bible describes and defines it – is a core doctrine of the faith. It is, according to Jesus, the force on which all the law and the prophets – the full sum of God’s revelation and truth-speaking – hang: whole-being love for God and love for one another so intense it can only be communicated by encouraging us to pretend like other people are ourselves.

Hey, that’s funny. Why does no one laugh when we read “love your neighbor as yourself” out loud? The only way God could get us to hear him say, “I really want you to love other people in an unreasonable, nothing-held-back sort of way” is to say, “Sit for a minute and think about how wonderful you are – how much you love yourself. Got it? That’s a lot, right? If it was up to you to be the one to love you, you’d love you a lot, right? Awesome. Now love other people like that.”

For the record, I suspect that first century Christians (and Hebrews long before them) who weren’t inundated by media and fast food and Lady Gaga and the horrors of modern dating were much less inclined to self-loathing than we are in 2011. So I think the message may have been even a little purer for them at the time.

But that’s what I’m after. Love. Real love like Jesus and the writers of the Scriptures talked about.

That love really matters. What people really are objecting to when they push back against the idea of love as a core doctrine is some vague sense of love that waters down what they perceive to be essential truth. So let there be no doubt: when I say “love really matters,” I don’t define love as playing nice even at the expense of saying the hard things.

I’m a pastor. I say hard things to people every week. This post has been delayed for weeks in no small part because I’ve spent the last month preaching about sexuality. Those sermons have not been a long list of easy thoughts on how we should all just keep doing what we’re doing in that area. If you were to wander among my people and ask them what characteristics come to mind when they hear my name, I’m guessing ”warm” or “most interested in being nice” would not be in the top 5 (or 10) things they observe about me. (Please, no one ever do that.)

Love and truth are not mutually exclusive because love is truth. Our error, in my opinion, is we have become prone to carelessly invert that statement and assume that the mere existence of truth is love. Stay with my brief amateur philosophical wandering here. I think this is important.

Perhaps when the truth is coming out of God’s mouth, we can safely assert that the existence of truth alone is, in fact, love. The problem is that we have co-opted His authority and assumed that as long as what we are speaking is true, it is love to speak it. I’ll (maybe) concede that assumption on these terms: The mere existence of truth is love if you simply read the words of God as penned in Scripture in their proper context and tone. Probably.

But we almost never do that. Even the churches most adamant about the nature of the Bible as God’s Word still have someone preach every week instead of just getting together to publicly read out loud God’s words without human commentary. That’s not a bad thing, but let’s not confuse preaching the Bible with the authority of the Bible itself.

We almost always issue God’s words intertwined with our words (as I am doing here) and packaged with our tone and affected by our biases and burdens and irritations and agendas. That does not make it unimportant work. It just necessitates Paul’s reminder in Ephesians 4 that, even (particularly) when we are trying to grow up into a healthy body that can endure competing doctrines with fidelity to the truth, we are to speak the truth “in love.”

If us merely speaking the truth was love enough, such a command would be completely unnecessary. Yet we act as though it’s Paul’s command that is unnecessary when we assume that as long as what we are saying or writing is right, we are loving whoever we are speaking to by saying (or writing) it.

Paul did not agree.

He wrote about love as an essential Christian doctrine – one that cannot be pried away at any point from other measures of orthodoxy. Like Jesus, Paul was clear: to be orthodox is to be intentional in love. Relentlessly intentional.

Coming in Part Four (now here)…Love heretics and the problem of selective history

I intended to do so earlier in the week, but I’ve been busier than expected. I’m also a part of one of the world’s smallest and most misunderstood minority groups: I hate Spring.

Before you judge me, I hate Spring because it first hated me. And because it continues to hate me. In an effort to negotiate some sort of truce between my body and Spring, I have employed mass quantities of antihistamines and steroids (the kind you spray up your nose, not the kind that cause you to end up having ex-girlfriends insult your manhood in federal court). That strategy has found limited success, but it is very effective at cloudying up myy braines so that I don’t think or write so good.

I plan to take a swing at Part Three tonight. If that plan fails, watch for it sometime next week. I will spend Friday, Saturday, and Monday at the Final Four in Houston and will preach about sex to my people on my Final Four Weekend off day.

Thanks to those of you interested enough in what I’ve written so far to care about the eventual existence of Part Three. I’m looking forward to writing it and to coming back and interacting with some of the comments at some level.

Blessings.

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In addition to desiring a healthier ethic of family dialogue (or even enemy dialogue) at a personal and communal level (which is what Part One addresses), there is another dimension of this conversation that concerns me. Much of the fighting I’ve observed in recent weeks has been about what is and what is not orthodox Christian doctrine. I think that conversation should be ongoing within the Church. Really. We should never pause long from thoughtful and passionate engagement with the Bible, the Spirit, and one another when it comes to understanding, living, and teaching God’s truth.

The problem is not that we’re doing that; it’s how we’re doing that. And the problem is not only that we often are exceedingly unkind to each other, though that is no small problem.

We also are trying to discuss what is and is not orthodox seemingly unaware that such a conversation cannot find any productive end until we have the conversation before that one: the one about our sense of the “rules” of determining what is biblically orthodox and what is heresy.

I’ll explain using Bellgate/Hellgate as an example, but first I want to offer full disclosure of my general take on Rob Bell prior to this book. I just know some can’t help but wonder how predisposed I am to critique or defend Bell, and I’d rather you not be distracted by that.

Proof Rob Bell has been to heaven. Case closed.

So. I’m not really a Rob Bell guy. I’ve never read Velvet Elvis. True confessions: I’m a 35-year old pastor who has never read Velvet Elvis or Blue Like Jazz. My application for hipster/emergent status wouldn’t even be reviewed. I also don’t wear chokers or say “dude” enough to make the Acts 29 cut, so I’m a man without a hip home. Anyway, I don’t own Bell’s catalogue. I do own Sex God, the Everything is Spiritual DVD (which I also saw him present live several years ago), and one Nooma DVD that was a give-away at a conference I attended where he spoke. From that exposure and prior to Hellgate, my take-aways were this:

• Everything is Spiritual is compelling and thought-provoking,
• when I read Sex God three years ago, the chapter on lust struck me as particularly insightful, but the rest didn’t do much for me,
• his talk at the conference I attended was about pastors learning to forgive their people for hurting them, and it was excellent and biblically sound,
• none of the above excited me enough to try to consume his writing or preaching in other ways, and
• people who have a monochrome wardrobe and who are not Johnny Cash make me nervous.

If I’m a Rob Bell fan, he’s in trouble (and he ain’t in trouble). I don’t dislike him, but I don’t go out of my way to keep up with him or expose myself to his teaching. I think he, like John Piper, is very smart, and I think he has a sincere passion and gift for telling stories that point to Jesus and for rooting what he does in the Hebrew tradition. My tendency with anyone I don’t know well is to weigh what they do and say with discernment and without a need or desire to classify them as a hero or an enemy. That is not a passive swipe at anyone else’s grid – just an attempt to explain my overall way of living and learning in the Kingdom.

As for Love Wins itself, I have read only the preface. I have read a few reviews from those who have read the book, so I have some sense of what seems to be there. If the sum of those reviews (which represent both – actually at least three – “sides” of the primary debate) are accurate, I don’t agree with all of Bell’s conclusions (which he insists, rightly or not, are more hunches than conclusions). I also don’t find it as abhorrent as some do that he is asking the questions he’s asking or arriving at the conclusions I’ve read about so far. I suspect that the difference between my reaction and those who are more offended is not merely our particular list of orthodox beliefs. In fact, my bet is that if we were asked to make a list of essential orthodox beliefs, in many cases there would be little discrepancy. However, I think our rules for understanding orthodoxy itself (as a realized concept) may be different.

This is where my concern about what I’ve called theological/intellectual charity lies, and it’s a function of two things:

• the relationship between personal theology and orthodoxy for the Church,
• and the degree to which we believe everything important to our understanding of orthodoxy has more or less already been said or written.

Historically, orthodoxy has been understood as a collection of essential beliefs that unite the Church distinctly professing Jesus Christ as Lord. Within that idea has been an acknowledgement that not every orthodox Christian believes exactly the same thing about everything. There even has been a certain amount of assumed deviation among individuals, sects, denominations, movements, local churches, etc., on the beliefs considered essential. So orthodoxy has not traditionally been understood to be either an exceptionally narrow list of beliefs or an overly broad spiritual notion of something having to do with Jesus. It is something in between.

What I believe has occurred in recent years – and is now on full display in the conversation about Love Wins – is a trend of more closely tying one’s concept of biblical and historic orthodoxy for the Church to one’s individual theology. The obvious result of that is a narrowing of the particular notion of orthodoxy. So rather than orthodoxy being a uniting center of belief for a broad range of professing believers in Jesus, it becomes a more particular theological test that distinguishes true believers from posers.

Wait. Don’t trip out on me and start thinking about Rob Bell or hell or Ghandi or Rob Bell’s glasses yet. Just stay with the concept and indulge me for a few more paragraphs as though what I’m suggesting might have some merit. I’ll try to illustrate my point soon.

What I want to surface here is not my disagreement with anyone in particular’s theology, but rather my sense of how much we use the same definition for “my theology” and “biblical and historical orthodoxy.” Of course all Bible-believing professing Christians are going to suggest that their theology is biblically orthodox. That’s not my point.

According to the historic understanding of orthodoxy, your theology most likely is going to be orthodox-plus. In other words, you believe the orthodox confessions of the Church and you believe some other things with varying degrees of conviction. Those other things are part of your theology. They are not necessarily part of biblical and historical orthodoxy for the Church. In principle, I don’t think there will be much disagreement on this. But some of you are already thinking about the applications of the principle and mentally arguing with me like I’m Rob Bell. Stop it. I’m not. Stay with me.

So as I wade into trying to illustrate my point in the context of the present controversy, consider this: I may agree with the theology of someone and also disagree with the way s/he arrives at his/her concept of orthodoxy. If it still doesn’t make sense, read the last three paragraphs again. If you do that and it still doesn’t make sense, just know this: we can believe the same things and not agree about how much everybody else has to believe what we believe to be considered part of the family. That’s the crux of my first concern.

The second has to do with this question: Has virtually everything necessary and/or helpful to our understanding and practice of biblical, historic orthodoxy already been written or taught?

Within the broadly held notion of biblical and historic orthodoxy are various theologians and Christian thinkers who we regard as orthodox. Again, there will be some disagreement on the margins, but there is a group of men (and a few women) who most of the professing Church would affirm as orthodox. Most of them are dead. Sad, but true.

Those dead folks did the hard work (before they were dead) of sorting through enormous and weighty questions to contribute to a collective sense of historic orthodoxy. When someone like Rob Bell writes a book like Love Wins, though a real critique of what he has written is taking place, often there is also this implication: We don’t need some goggled-hipster in black trying to wear Augustine’s shoes. They don’t match his outfit and, frankly, Rob Bell has hobbit feet that won’t fit in Augustine’s Hulk-sized kicks.

(Do the kids still say “kicks?” I’m sure they don’t. I have no idea.)

In other words, it’s not that Bell is only being dismissed because he’s young and not dead, but the arguments against his writing definitely are being “enhanced” by the not-always-subtle suggestion that all of the important theological questions relevant to orthodoxy were asked and answered a long time ago.

Only I’m not sure the guys we credit with answering those questions intended their answers to be used like that. I’m not so sure some of them weren’t trying to model for the generations to come a way of continuing to wrestle with the same questions – and others that surface as the world changes – in light of the Bible through the guidance of the Spirit. They knew not everyone would arrive at the right answers (and most of them don’t claim to have arrived at all the right answers), but they generally seemed to think their particular vocation was important, not just for them, but for the future of the church. I don’t think they intended their work to be the final word on theology, and the purpose of contemporary theologians is not merely to read what the dead guys wrote to the rest of us. They continue the work of grappling with the nature of truth in the context of our world.

I don’t have an agenda for a particular breadth of orthodoxy. I just think we’re prone to cherry pick historic orthodoxy to validate our preference for a particular kind of modern orthodoxy. That doesn’t make us sinister or intentionally divisive; just wrong. Sometimes we’re wrong.

So what does all of that have to do with Rob Bell? Am I suggesting that we give Bell a pass to write whatever he wants as long as it’s vaguely Christian and he can claim to be doing the same kind of thing Augustine did? Not at all. Set aside Bell’s conclusions in the book for a minute (which I may or may not have mentioned I have not read) and just consider the outcry over the pre-release promotional material.

Bell’s words from the video:

Ghandi’s in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure? Will only a few select people make it to heaven? And will billions and billions burn forever in hell? And if that’s the case, how do you become one of the few? Is it what you believe or what you say or what you do or who you know or something that happens in your heart? Or do you need to be initiated or baptized or take a class or converted or born again? How does one become one of these few? And then there is the question behind the questions. The real question, “What is God like?” because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message – the center of the Gospel of Jesus – is that God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in Jesus.

The virtual fire was ignited when Bell’s questions and statements in the video were deemed by a couple of well read bloggers sufficient to conclude he has wandered from the faith. Whatever the book itself reveals, the rewind here matters because in so indicting Bell, these men framed the conversation for thousands of people before anyone ever laid a hand on the book’s sweet translucent cover.

To be fair, video-Bell wasn’t just provoking to sell a book that would deliver fewer sparks. In the preface of the book (which I have read), he writes:

This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus.

I’ve also seen those words cited as proof that Bell is, indeed, a universalist, a heretic, a false teacher.

Now consider the following words:

I find the concept [of eternal conscious punishment in hell] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterising their feelings or cracking under the strain. But our emotions are a fluctuating, unreliable guide to truth and must not be exalted to the place of supreme authority in determining it. As a committed Evangelical, my question must be — and is — not what does my heart tell me, but what does God’s word say?

I have never been able to conjure up (as some great Evangelical missionaries have) the appalling vision of the millions who are not only perishing but will inevitably perish. On the other hand… I am not and cannot be a universalist. Between these extremes I cherish and hope that the majority of the human race will be saved. And I have a solid biblical basis for this belief.

More pot-stirring from Rob Bell? No. That’s John Stott, one of the most highly regarded evangelical theologians alive today.

What about this?

We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him.

Not Rob Bell. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

And this?

We can safely say (i) if any good pagan reached the point of throwing himself on His Maker’s mercy for pardon, it was grace that brought him there; (ii) God will surely save anyone he brings thus far; (iii) anyone thus saved would learn in the next world that he was saved through Christ.

Not Rob Bell. J.I. Packer, evangelical Calvinist theologian.

Or this?

The benefit of the death of Christ is…extended…even unto those who are inevitably excluded from this knowledge. Even these may be partakers of the benefit of His death, though ignorant of the history, if they suffer His grace to take place in their hearts, so as of wicked men to become holy.

Not Rob Bell. Robert Barclay (whose statement was later affirmed by John Wesley as orthodox Christian theology).

Last one.

And that’s what God is doing today, He’s calling people out of the world for His name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have, and they turn to the only light that they have, and I think that they are saved, and that they’re going to be with us in heaven.

Not Rob Bell. Billy Graham.

Listen, I don’t know that I agree with all of these guys. I’m certain many of Rob Bell’s critics won’t agree with all of the above statements. I’m not trying to play some silly game where I suggest that you can’t critique Rob Bell because C.S. Lewis said people who don’t “know (Christ)” might be saved or John Stott said he thinks “the majority of the human race will be saved.” I’d be a dummy to make that argument. I also recognize you can carve up what each of those guys said and distinguish it from what Bell said in the video or preface in some way.

Stott's heresy: even Nessie goes to heaven

I post the words of these widely embraced evangelical theologians and preachers to make two points:

First, Bell’s critics have argued that even his questions in the video, which suggested that Ghandi might not be in hell and poked at the prevailing notion that most humans will be in hell because they have not willfully accepted Christ, are sufficient to brand him a universalist and bid him “farewell.” The clear implication is that these questions of who is and is not in heaven and hell and how that can be discerned by us have more or less been settled, and to ask those questions as Bell did suggests that one simply does not understand or embrace orthodox Christianity. In other words, orthodoxy has been defined according to a particular theology to exclude the kind of questions and suggestions made by Bell.

What then do we do with men like Lewis and Stott and Barclay and Packer? Even if you parse their words as somehow different from Bell’s, it will only be by shades of distinction, and their statements still don’t meet the tests of orthodoxy being offered in the most stinging critiques of Bell. We must then either treat these men the same way, disqualifying them as heretics, or we must acknowledge that the Church has historically made more space within the dialogue about biblical orthodoxy for these types of questions and ideas about salvation, time, and eternity than we’ve more recently been told is true. It will come as no surprise that I choose the latter.

Second, I think implicit in the words of these men is an acknowledgement that arriving at absolutely certain conclusions about the nature of salvation and the eternal treatment of “the majority of the human race” by God is, even for revered Bible scholars and theologians, incredibly difficult. What do each of the statements have in common? They are all about the nature of salvation, time, and eternity, and they all express uncertainty. (Actually, to be fair to Packer, he seems fairly certain that some who are saved will not learn until “the next world” that they were saved through Christ.) Some offer speculations, but qualified speculations that acknowledge a meaningful level of mystery. I believe all of them assumed that part of the healthy work of the Church for the rest of time would be the complicated, controversial work of questioning, sharpening, and prayerfully working out our understandings of even the most central of Christian doctrines.

There seems to be little sense for them of the “on these matters there is no need for further speculation or deviation from the currently held mainstream view” that is so rampant in the present notions of evangelical orthodoxy in general and in the debate about Bell’s book in particular. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that these men (and others) considered the questions Bell asks in his video fair game for the work of a serious theologian.

Let me say again that I offer none of this to defend Bell’s conclusions which I have not yet read. Again, I am reviewing the conversation about the book and, moreover, what the conversation reveals about how we have come to define and communicate about orthodoxy within the Church.

Part Three (now here) still to come…a new (old) kind of heresy and the demands of honesty and love

I’ve mostly kept up with the unfolding plot, but in moderation and without feeling compelled to engage with any intensity. [If you haven’t kept up, you can get the basic summary here. Or you can try to save yourself while there’s still time, but fair warning – you may have to log off the internet for…ever.]

It’s not that I don’t believe this is an important conversation. I do. I’m just slower than I once was to give my time and energy to trending issues that don’t occupy my more immediate sphere. Mostly that’s because I’m older, slower, and busier than ever. Hopefully it’s also because I’m at least a little wiser. Let’s say it’s that, just for fun.

In this case, I also wanted some time to sift through what was happening. The tension and angst was immediate and palpable, and I didn’t think it wise for me to start spewing opinions, especially on the interwebs. So I didn’t, and I’m glad. I suspect many on all “sides” have said and written things in recent weeks they ultimately will regret, and I’ve been that guy, well, a lot. Sadly, that takes some of the fun out of throwing of rocks at those who react too quickly or too strongly. Mostly I hope to continue growing up in that area and to maybe help others do the same.

Even now, I don’t presume that my perspective is particularly original. I imagine others have said all or most of what I’ll write here in one way or another, but I don’t have time to read the whole internet to find out. I hope so. I hope I don’t find myself in a corner occupied by only me and one or two other dorks. But if I do, I’ve been in that corner before, so we’ll find something nerdy to do there and everyone else can go to a hookah bar or whatever it is freed-up non-dorky Christians do when I’m not around.

On to what you’re here for – watching me sort out this whole mess.

Bad news. This is not a review of Love Wins. The book is important. It is. I’ll get there.

Until then, I am particularly interested in the way we are talking and writing about the book. I am most concerned by what I perceive to be a rapidly diminishing capacity for grace and charity among professing Christians. This strikes me as a tragic spiritual descent expedited by our largely undiscerning use of the internet in our quest to be heard. In the furor over Bell’s new book, I’ve observed that to be true at two levels – personal/communal and theological/intellectual.

But I’ll come back to that. Let me first describe what I feel like I’ve witnessed, acknowledging that my perspective is limited…caveat emptor and all that.

Shortly after Bell’s publisher released a marketing blurb and a video of Bell himself promoting the book, the internet melted. By that I mean everyone began sounding off on whether or not Bell was a heretic. It ran the full gamut of detractors to defenders, some obviously poised and waiting for Bell to finally “out” himself as a universalist, others taken off guard by either Bell or the immediate firestorm. It was nuts. Really.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t care for the level of judgment that was issued publicly before the book was in people’s hands. For one thing, the written description of the book was almost certainly penned by some unknown marketing dweeb sixteen levels deep on the publisher’s organizational chart. I know because I spent years as that unknown dweeb. That’s how it works. So to be honest, I felt a little embarrassed for those dissecting those words. It’s completely fair to offer a critique of the publishing business and suggest that authors are ultimately responsible for how their work is sold. In fact, remind me to write about that someday. I’m just saying – whatever the book ultimately contained, it was not terribly productive to spend time on a preemptive exegesis of the ad copy.

There also was plenty of electricity from the video. Fair enough. It was Bell doing his usual routine, walking in the snow asking provocative questions and poking at the viewers’ perceptions of the obvious. I agree it is relatively clear from the video that Bell’s book was likely to go down some paths that do not represent the most common view of orthodoxy when it comes to the nature of salvation, time, and eternity. What was not clear from three minutes of video footage was Bell’s actual doctrine of salvation, time, and eternity. Consequently, I don’t think it was fair to conclude from that brief video that Bell was, in fact, off the reservation completely. I’ll come back to that too (in part two, which is forthcoming), because I know not everyone agrees.

My discomfort with the initial responses is not rooted in a soft-bellied, “why can’t we all just get along?” standard of Christian discourse. I didn’t expect silence, and it was completely fair for folks to express their concerns about what they could see and hear at that time. Some did just that. Terrific.

Others, however, used their sizable platforms to make conclusive statements about Bell and the book that were both premature and uncharitable. Even if the book ultimately demonstrates that they guessed right, I find no compelling biblical basis for that mode of operation. I just don’t. Charity aside, what seems wise or particularly discerning about drawing public conclusions about a book and its author before you’ve read one. single. word. of. the. book?

This is not Piper. Just the gear needed to read Future Grace.

Some version of the response I’m alluding to was fairly widespread, particularly among well known reformed evangelicals (a description that fits many of my friends, whom I sincerely love and respect). But one response in particular really pained me. John Piper, who I admire, posted the following on Twitter: “Farewell Rob Bell.” It was followed by a link to the most popular blog post critiquing the ad and video. Three words from a man who writes books so long and dense that the smartest people I know need decoder rings and that helmet Doc Brown was wearing in 1955 to sort of understand them.

Piper is brilliant. He’s easily one of the best preachers I’ve ever heard. His passion for God and for reaching the world is contagious.

And he was wrong. He bid Bell “farewell” based on what? 128 words of ad copy and a three minute promotional video? If once upon a time you had told me that John Piper would find a way to embody my deepest suspicions of social media – drive-by reductionism – I would have laughed. But he did. And I just don’t get it.

Look, I understand Bell was not an unknown entity to Piper or the others drawing the same conclusions. I know that the publishing of this book – even before the book itself was in their hands – seemed to them likely confirmation of their long-held suspicions that Bell was a wolf wearing wool. I don’t dismiss the clear biblical call for those appointed to lead the church to guard the flock and contend for the faith. Ultimately, whether or not I agree with them or with Bell, I’m not offended that Piper or anyone else would conclude that Rob Bell has left what they consider the domain of Christian orthodoxy. I just hoped – and still hope – we find wiser, more loving ways to go about arriving at those conclusions and then communicating them publicly.

What grew around Piper’s “farewell” and similar words from others often wasn’t pretty. Many Bell supporters reacted with equally disappointing disdain for his critics, and the scrums have been many and bloody. It’s gross. I hate it. I hate it. No one wins those fights. No one.

We have much to repent of and grow into in the realm of loving, gracious dialogue at a personal and communal level.

Parts Two (now here) and (probably) Three coming soon: the rules of orthodoxy, other heretics, and the demands of honesty and love.

Can you feel the suspense?

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that 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. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil.”

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle–have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. 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.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’m also not that much of a cultured Beatles connoisseur. I know people younger than me who are, and that’s swell. I suppose I just didn’t have the right exposure.

I remember my mom telling the story of skipping church on Sunday night to watch their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

I remember Josh Best sitting behind me in middle school singing “Get Back” over and over (and over).

I remember being aware of the Beatles as a pop culture fixture as a kid, but somehow I ended up being into the Monkees instead. Yeah, I know.

I own the 1′s album, but I recently deleted over half of it from my iphone because I realized it wasn’t there for me to actually listen to, but because it seemed like I should at least have one Beatles album on my iphone. Sorry, Josh.

The Beatles just never took for me. My non-meathead bona fides lie somewhere other than a deep appreciation for the Fab Five.

So I didn’t realize Lennon died thirty years ago. Fascinating reading, this description of my ignorance, yes? That’s sort of the point. As Lennon was eulogized on the silent screen in front of me, it occurred to me that my ignorance and (confession) indifference are irrelevant (alliteration not intentional). What I mean is the tragedy of John’s death was not lessened because in 1980 I was blissfully oblivious, likely wearing my crazy chicken t-shirt and sitting awkwardly next to the AC intake vent (which was my spot at that point in life) browsing through Where the Wild Things Are. (Mom, this is how I generally recall this portion of my life. Please don’t muck with my emotional stability by dismantling any of it.)

And the significance of Lennon’s death thirty years later is not diminished because I spent the day unawares. Or because I am more interested in the ESPN piece about how Cosell and company handled announcing his death than I am in any stories about Lennon himself.

The life and death of John Lennon mean what they mean no matter what significance I assign to them in my little world. He was a part of crafting and delivering songs the world will sing for a sizable portion of human history. That’s a big deal, whether or not they ever return to my iphone. John Lennon is John Lennon, and I’m glad I don’t have the power to alter that.

What does that have to do with Christmas?

I shared with my people on Sunday that one of the real revolutions in my life in recent years has been new eyes to see Christmas  in context of the Big Story. The exposition of that revelation deserves its own post another time (maybe I’ll use next year’s post on that one), but the essence of it is this: that scene in Bethlehem wasn’t an event that made irrelevant all past and future events. It was the event that made sense of all past and future events.

I knew that. But I didn’t know that.

As I’ve discovered this for the first time all over again for the first time, it has irreversibly altered my…well, everything. Again, it merits more words than I can spend on it now. My point for now is that as this fresh understanding has unfolded for me, it’s as if I’m discovering something completely new. I know I’m not the first to figure it out, but sometimes I stumble across something that reminds me that I’m not the first to figure it out. And, oddly, I’m almost surprised. And then I’m relieved.

Why?

Because the Story is bigger than me. The birth of that baby answered the cries for freedom that cost centuries of captives their precious last breaths. The birth of that baby satisfied the orphaned groanings of everything created for two thousand years (and counting) after.

A baby did that. Freed slaves. Adopted orphans. Abolished war. Killed death. Redeemed everything ever made. Past. Present. Future.

I’ve known that as long as I’ve known whatever I remember knowing. And now I know it in a new way. And I’m thrilled by the sense that my knowing it is new. And I’m thrilled by my realization that my knowing it is not at all new.

The life and death of Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, mean what they mean no matter what significance I assign to them in my little world. He wrote the song that is human history. That’s a big deal, whether or not I get it like I think I get it…whether or not any of us get it.

Jesus is Jesus, and I’m glad I don’t have the power to alter that.

P.S. I know there were only four. Or were there…?

I Do Not Like the Yankees

I do not like the Yankees, Sam.
I do not like them, Thad I am.

I do not like them in the Bronx.
I do not like them o’er the Sox.
I do not like to see them win.
I do not like to see them grin.

If I should see them on the screen,
I’ll call them something none too clean.
If I should see them on the street,
I’ll spit and kick them in their seat.

I do not like the Yankees fans.
I do not like them in the stands.
I do not like them jumping ’round.
I’d rather see them gagged and bound.

If I should meet a Yankees fan,
I’d promptly kick him in his can.
If he should turn to kick me back.
I’d run like hell (I’m little, Jack.)

I do not like the Yankees, man.
I’m sick to death of that high priced clan.
They have a payroll six miles high,
And titles only cash can buy.

I will not give them any due,
I would not, could not give a poo.
I’ll root the Rangers on to win,
Damn Yankees must pay for their sin.

I do not like the Yankees, Sam.
I do not like them, Thad I am.