Martin Luther King, Jr. What He said Matters Today.

Martin Luther King, Jr, spoke from the heart of the Gospels. He did what we must do: He challenged satanic evil with the love of Christ.

To take the brickbats of vicious attackers who know no rules except the ones they write to cripple their opponents is the Christian fate. We are facing it today. Christianity is under attack from many directions.

But we only have to look back a few decades to see the Gospel walking, marching, to victory.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Let’s consider a few of the wise things this great man said in light of our own challenges as Christians in a post Christian world. Taken from The Quotations Page, and Brainy Quote.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. 

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. 

Fath is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. 

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this we are less prone to hate our enemies. 

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. 

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But … the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’

Rarely do we find men who winningly engage in hard solid thinking There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions Nothing pains some people more than having to think. 

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals. 

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. 

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values — that all reality rests on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. 

The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. 

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.