MLK - Dream or Nightmare

Dear Martin,

It’s the anniversary of your “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s eerie to hear that speech in today’s world. The only dreams on our horizons are nightmares. I say “our” because since your death the world has truly become a global community. And these nightmares trouble all of us.

At the root of much of it lies our continuing failure to judge one another by the “content of our character.” We still judge others by the “color of our skin,” that sadly has not gone away. But even more troubling is the pervasive presence and power of image. Image rules from the personal to the public to the global. It’s not who we are but who we present ourselves to be that counts. And the power of our communicational media (you wouldn’t believe the internet or today’s smart phones, Martin) allow us to project, change, and reinvent our image continuously.

On top of that, we live such fast paced lives with so many demands on us that we are tempted to project a different image of who we are for all the different worlds and roles we move in and out of. Consequently we are fragmented, with so little sense of a coherent “self” that the only sense of “character” we can imagine these days is the theatrical one of a person playing a role. For that is how we experience our life so much of the time these days. The old adage says “character” is who you are when no one is looking. We are lost when no one is looking, because when no one is looking we have no role to play, no one to whom we need to project an image and we face our own emptiness

The other side of our dilemma is related to image as well. You might say it’s the public side of our dilemma. If our sense of self and character lies submerged beneath the litter of images created, projected, reinvented, and discarded, our mind (personal and corporate) has been eroded by the avalanche of images bombarding us at every moment and the plethora of information now available to us. You spoke of the “paralysis of analysis” in your day. We need an “analysis of paralysis” in our own.
For we are mentally paralyzed these days. There is too much to know for anyone to know too much. But there’s always someone at our elbow to tell us what we need to know and think. Yet they do not give us grounds, warrants, evidence, and argument for their ideas, they give us images. And not images that might be icons leading us into the substance of the issues at hand. No, they give us images the divert us from the substance and reality of those matters and influence us by promoting images of the people involved or exploiting fears around possible consequences of actions taken about those issues.

Really, Martin, you would not believe the level of public and political conversation today. It consists in little bits of rhetoric carefully crafted to create a particular impression or evoke a certain feeling. We call them “sound bytes” today but you would know them as propaganda. And that’s about all public discussion is now. We hurl our “sound bytes” at each other or the television camera and hurry off to check our poll numbers. The noble ancient ideal of politics as discussing and ordering the life of the community for its citizens’ well-being is virtually non-existent.

We are so mentally paralyzed or impaired in our ability to critically assess the information and images that assault us that for us to make up our minds about these things is well neigh impossible. For at least in terms of our perception and processing of public issues, we scarcely have a mind worth making up!
Civility is a non sequitur these days, Martin. For civility requires a “civil” realm. One in which we must all live our lives and make our way together. A civil community, as you so eloquently reminded us again and again, requires a common good, or at least a common goal. Yet, by common consent we have neither at present. Each seeks their own good and uses whatever power they possess to enforce that good. Civility only prevails when it serves the individual goods of the people involved in any interaction. Otherwise, almost any kind of behavior, verbal or physical, goes. One member of congress actually interrupted the President’s State of the Union address to call him a liar!

Sad to say, things in the church are no better. One prominent theologian has said, “God is killing the mainline church in America, and we goddamn well deserve it.” I think he’s pretty much right, Martin. Only it’s not just the mainline church but the evangelical one too. We’re afflicted with “sound-byte” theology and a sentimentality named “tolerance,” that has robbed us our theological will and nerve. We also are committed to our nation and its interests in a way that in passion and practice precedes and supercedes our commitment to God.
And to top it all off, economics and our quest for economic security overrides everything else and has corrupted the priorities, passions, and practices of us all!

Yet, and I think you of all people will understand what I mean, it may be that God has us right where he wants us! It’s only when you’re dead that you can be raised to new life. And the God we know in Jesus Christ specializes in resurrection! Therefore, I cannot give up hope; I cannot escape that sense that God is not done with us yet, certainly as a church, and, who knows, even as a country. So I will keep on dreaming your dream with you, Martin, on this “I Have a Dream” anniversary day for you and I know that the God who has claimed us in Jesus Christ never ever fails to keep his promises.

Peace,
Lee Wyatt