Something Worth Dying For
CONSECRATED No. 82 - 1 Thought. 2 Quotes. 3 Verses.
1 THOUGHT
On June 23, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood to give a speech at Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan. It came as the capstone to a demonstration called the Great March to Freedom where over 125,000 people had gathered to protest segregation, racism, racial inequities, and police brutality in America. This gathering acted as a precursor to the famous March on Washington in August of that same year.
Just over two months earlier, Dr. King had been imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama during which time he wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” During a demonstration, Dr. King and many others had been beaten, assaulted with fire hoses, and jailed–which they endured without retaliation.
Just two months after his release from the Birmingham Jail, he stood before the crowd in Detroit. During his speech, he prophetically confronted the evils and injustices of the hour. As he spoke, he reaffirmed his complete commitment to the method of nonviolent protests. You can’t help but be moved and convicted by the courage of his words:
For we’ve come to see the power of nonviolence. We’ve come to see that this method is not a weak method, for it’s the strong man who can stand up amid opposition, who can stand up amid violence being inflicted upon him and not retaliate with violence. You see, this method has a way of disarming the opponent… If he doesn’t beat you, wonderful. If he beats you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense likes to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity.
Two years later, on March 7, 1965, a day that eventually became known as “Bloody Sunday,” Dr. King would participate in the Selma march. During the march, protestors were beaten, clubbed, whipped, fire-hosed, tear gassed, and jailed. The footage of the brutality led to national outrage and eventually helped lead to the Voting Rights act of 1965, which helped outlaw discriminatory practices in the voting registration process.
I would encourage you to search images of both the Birmingham and Selma Marches. They are concussive. These images compel us to ask, where does a person find the courage of soul to endure such things and to stand in the face of such violence?
In Dr. King’s Great March To Freedom speech, he continued by saying,
And even if [the opponent] tries to kill you, you’ll develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
My goodness. What a charge. What cause do you have in life for which you are willing to die? Truly, ask yourself.
I think of the words of the missionary Roland Bingham, “I will open Africa to the gospel or die trying.” I think of the words of Hudson Taylor, the great carrier of the gospel to China, “If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for China.” The words of Jim Elliot still ring true, “He is no fool who gives that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
What do you see in the world that angers you? What brokenness do you see that causes your soul to ache? What need so presses upon your conscience that you think about it late into the night?
Those things that came to mind… who’s going to do something about those things? I’d exhort that it should be you.
And if nothing comes mind, perhaps we ought to pray that God would awaken our consciences to the needs of the hour once again.
Who will rise to answer the call of God from the prophet Amos,
“Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
Righteousness like a never-failing stream.”
2 QUOTES
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
3 VERSES
“Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
Righteousness like a never-failing stream.”
Amos 5:23-24
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8
“Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.”Isaiah 1:17
A RESOURCE
Listen to Dr. King’s full speech from The Great March to Freedom in Detroit.
