Today has been a day of remembering a very special man, Martin Luther King. Usually on this day if I post about him, I include something about his famous and wonderful “I Had a Dream” speech, but today, a wonderful woman, and an “online” sister, Ora Stearns Smith, posted something I hadn’t seen before on her blog. It was a letter written by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King while he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama in April of 1963. The start of the letter follows, to read it in it’s entirety, follow the link to Ora’s blog posting. It’s well worth the read.
“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions…

CLICK HERE to read the letter in it’s entirety at Ora’s blog.

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Image source…click for more Martin Luther King speeches and biographical information.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Martin Luther King. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.