The MLK holiday provides a time to check in on the new year. I actually start getting ready for this question during Advent. Once we round the corner of Christmas day and I begin to take inventory of the past year in preparation for the New Year … I know that today is coming.

Each MLK holiday I ask myself how our society is doing with Dr. King’s triplets of evil: racism, materialism, and militarism.

I am currently reading “The End of White Christian America”  and it reminded my of a post that I put up two years ago today. I thought I would share a part of it again:
The loss of my mother has caused me a nearly indescribable amount of pain. I have given great thought to changing the entire direction of ministry – it has to be about more than just helping people understand the Bible better or be a better person.
Dr. King’s ‘triplets of evil’ are alive and well in our world and impact us all everyday … but because they are embedded in larger structures they can hide from people’s awareness and so they need to be investigated, exposed, and subverted.

In honor of this holiday and my mother’s memory I want to say two things:

  1. Be kind to each other. We are all carrying hurts and concerns and scars that may be impossible to see from the surface. As humans, we are all in this together … the world doesn’t need more strife and violence and division.
  2. We are all caught up in systems and structures that work against the ‘common-wealth’ of humanity and the planet. They need to be confronted and radically dismantled.

Now, as a christian minister I have chosen to stick with the gospel as I think that it provides the tools to do these two things.
On this MLK holiday I just wanted honor the legacy of a man and movement that has deeply impacted me and inspired my vision.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Advertisement