Over the past couple of years, I’ve shared pictures
and penned two MLK-related blogs with the social media world, both of which
have quickly become some of the most highly read of the 321 posts I put heart,
soul, and clarity into. As we all know Friday, January 20, 2017 is the day the
transfer of power from Barack Obama to Donald Trump officially happens, I need
to share a few words of advice to those who may not be as “woke” as well as
those who only seek the day off from work or school to go shopping or otherwise
lay on the couch all day for Netflix instead of doing something productive.
Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split
you.
For all of what we have been told in school and our
mainstream shows about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we hear less about how he
used the day’s technology to advance nonviolence than simply sitting at home
rifling tweetstorms about the struggle playing woe is me. You don’t bring the
black civil rights fight to the forefront without knowing how to capture
sympathetic hearts by portraying the horrors of American racism as skillfully
as he did. One may also surmise that people dressed better in public, but this
was also a time when black children were hosed by fire hydrants and snarled at
by dogs and mobs alike as they marched in their Sunday best exposing the
inhumanity of our fellow man. Of course, being a learned man (educated at
Morehouse and Harvard, among institutions) in addition to following the call to
enter the ministry, King also spoke with a fervor reserved for very few others
in history!
When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in
1964, King reminded us not to let our moral progress fall behind our progress
in science and technology.
“Modern man has brought this whole world to an
awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astounding peaks
of scientific success. He has produced machines that think and instruments that
peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. He has built gigantic
bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. His
airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and
carved highways through the stratosphere. This is a dazzling picture of modern
man’s scientific and technological progress.”
“Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in
science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is
missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring
contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have
become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have
learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not
learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”
“Every man lives in two realms, the internal ad the
external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art,
literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices,
techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our
problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the
external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends
for which we live. So much for modern life can be summarized in the arresting
dictum of the poet Thoreau: “Improved
means to an unimproved end.” This is the serious predicament, the deep and
haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral
and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged
peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of
man’s nature subjugates the “within”, dark storm clouds begin to form in the
world.”
When you think about it, tech has come a long way
since these words were uttered some fifty-three years ago.
In King’s day, Americans (when they weren’t being
openly discriminatory toward black Americans through Jim Crow) were certified
ass-kickers: Consider the space race
against Russia or the creation of the interstate highway system and the
trickle-down effects of both. Without the innovative spirit of some and
President Eisenhower’s vision of travelling the USA in a Chevrolet after seeing
the German autobahn, we may still venture up and down two-lane dirt roads or
worse, walk everywhere.
With the advent of the internet, the world has
become so much closer to us as we are able to carry on constructive and
destructive discussions with others across the world. Ideas are expanded – and
sometime debunked, yet the compassion we should feel for our brothers whom we
see daily is lacking. This weekend pays lip service to getting along, but come
Tuesday morning, we are quick to flip the bird at the bro-dozer driver who just
cut us off in rush hour traffic or cast ill-formed judgments of people who
don’t look or live like us.
You can have all of the things in the world and be
materially rich, but if you are emotionally and spiritually poor, then your
life and its pursuits are all for naught.
How does technology factor today relative to what
King spoke of in Oslo? More than you think – and closer to home than many would
expect.
We have become immune to our spiritual needs and
concerns with our brothers and sisters by replacing them with stuff. When we
have to have an argument about something as fundamental as health insurance for
the less fortunate knowing many of us are one paycheck away from being in their
shoes, then we have a problem with our relationships with God AND the people we live, work, play, and
generally interact with.
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, yet have done it unto me. - Matthew 25:40
Your iPhone, Yeti coolers, and Facebook/Twitter
pages won’t get you anywhere near Heaven; ditto for the McMansion and hiding
behind rags that represent symbols.
If you think otherwise…don’t let the door hit you
where the good Lord split you.
Technology has also made us a bit standoffish – when
we meet for drinks after work (I work overnights – having a beer at 7 am is not
an issue for me), I don’t want to talk to your Samsung. I’m here to visit with
YOU. Put the damn phone down. Otherwise, I could have stayed at home with my
Miller Lite and engaged you via Twitter.
Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split
you.
Not only am I certain that King would have endorsed
Black Lives Matter, but age 88 he still would have been on the frontlines or in
an advisory capacity; unfortunately, we would never know that because many of
my black heroes and heroines did not have the privilege of living to a kindly
old age as a result of standing up for their beliefs in the face of sheer white
hatred.
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| Do #AllLivesMatter in this image? Thought so. |
We live in an age where technology has really
improved life for all of us, yet the manner in which we use it further
insulates us from reality. Take a look at your friends/followers list: Do the majority of them
look/act/work/play/worship with you? If so, it may be time to expand the social
bubble a bit. Remember, Jesus didn’t just associate Himself with one type of
man as evidenced by His disciples and their previous occupations before they
decided to follow Him. He used men who were in various positions of their lives
many of which were what we know as working stiffs to change the hearts, minds,
and souls of Jews and Gentiles alike as God commissioned.
Is this what we really want when we ask God to
enlarge our territories, or is it all for short-term material gains such as a
new job, a more reliable vehicle, a smarter home, or Mr. or Ms. Right?
That gap has further exacerbated in the schools as
well – and I’ll use the ones here in Arkansas as an example. Depending on what
side of town you live on, where are the new campuses built, and where are the
old ones closed? What if the school on the other side of the tracks is doing a
better job of educating its students than that brand new building over there
with the campus wide Wi-Fi? What do we really have to make of School Choice, or
is that for schools to resegregate themselves as the ones in Hot Spring County
has done such a marvelous job of? Looks like good ol’ racism is better than
pooling the sources to advance together for a lot of people – and these days,
the state Legislature is helping them out. In defense of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, I
am glad he is promoting computer science in all schools statewide except with
one caveat: What happens to those future
programmers who do not have internet at home or the wherewithal to afford
compilers to check their work, and how do we solve speed? Internet is ideally
the same everywhere, but bandwidth in Bentonville is nothing like what students
in Lake Village – or even Bigelow – have to work with.
Again, while we advance to places we never could
have imagined just five years ago, we must not lag spiritually or morally in
fear of letting the door hit us on the way out where the good Lord split us.
Technology can become a zero-sum game but it doesn’t
have to be. We have drones that can wipe out whole populations with the push of
a button as quickly as they can deliver a pizza to our homes. Consequently, we
must remain vigilant of a world that increasingly puts new gadgets in our hands
to take our eye off the ball so the bidding of evildoers can be done in the
dark. Those dark clouds have been forming for the past several years, and it is
only now that the larger populace is awakening to what is surrounding us: the haves taking the meager possessions from
the have-nots and casting their lots upon the altars of lower taxes and white
privilege in a last-gasp attempt to hoard all of the wealth and power.
Treason is in the air and too many of you do not
care because you’re too busy making America white again. I know the #MAGA logo,
but to me, it looks more like #MAWA – and this place could eff around and end
up like apartheid-era South Africa was some thirty years
ago if you don’t stop playing!
King warned all of us about this day some
fifty-three years ago and apparently no one really took heed to it. Now we seem
to be paying the price with the Trump administration and a Congress that
blatantly shows fealty to “Republican Jesus” rather than use all of the
advances technology has made for the greater good.
If all you know about Brother Martin is “I Have a
Dream” and not what he stood for before and after that hot summer afternoon in August 1963…
Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split
you.
