It was wonderful to see the parade in Augusta celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in advance of the holiday in his honor, but I wonder sometimes if the message King so famously preached has gotten downplayed in favor of a celebration that includes a day off from work.
As a society, we Americans tend to celebrate holidays without really thinking about what we are celebrating.
Most people of Generation X and those after only know of King from the several pages in a history book devoted to his non-violent protests and of his violent end on Earth as captured in the photos from Memphis.
We know about King from the lyrics of a U2 song.
My generation did not grow up in the world that King did. Segregation to us is merely a black and white photograph showing a “Colored Entrance” sign on a restaurant. We do not understand the deeper meaning that the life of Rev. King should teach us.
The segregation era in America is foreign to most of us, and our misunderstandings and/or ignorance is causing us to repeat history, only in a different way.
It seems we, as a people, are more divided now than we were during the awful segregation period in America, but this time, we are not forced to segregate; we are doing it willingly.
We speak the same language, but we talk over one another. We make race an issue without thinking of the common bond we have, a bond that is taught by almost all religions, that we are all made in the image of our Creator.
In the Holy Bible, Romans 15:7 reads: “As it is in your heart, let it be in mine. Christ accepted you and so you should accept each other, which will bring glory to God.”
One of my many mentors was the Rev. Jackson Parks who was a footsoldier in King’s nonviolent army. Parks spoke to me several times about his belief that the passage in Romans held a thinly-veiled message to us all.
“Heaven is not and has never been segregated and if we want to get along in Heaven, we must accept that fact here on Earth, that is what Dr. King taught,” Parks would tell me.
King and Parks lived during a disgraceful time in American history, where they were, under the law, treated as less than men; but neither abandoned their manhood. They stoically demanded their rights under the Constitution be respected, nothing more and nothing less.
King’s message was that if we had real faith in an afterlife, we would accept the fact that eventually all of us will face that afterlife together.
I suppose, for most of us, we only gain that kind of wisdom as the twilight begins to settle on our lifetime and we come to the realization that we are mortal and will eventually meet the God of our faith.
King was in the prime of his life when he taught a real basic concept: Heaven is not segregated.
It is that basic concept that makes King so much more than a faded photograph in a history book. He was a true modern prophet, in my opinion.
King resides now on the mountaintop and he still invites us to join him there while we are still on this Earth.
