GRACE FOR OURS, JUDGMENT FOR THEIRS
This line of attack is tired, selective, and frankly dishonest. They want to disqualify Martin Luther King Jr. by rummaging through “newly released” files and pointing at his sins, as if moral perfection has ever been the admission price for speaking truth. The irony is thick. The very people insisting we ignore King because he was flawed are often the loudest voices explaining away the documented, ongoing flaws of President Trump. Apparently, grace is available—but only for their guy.
Dr. King never claimed to be sinless. He claimed that segregation was evil, that injustice deforms both the oppressed and the oppressor, and that America was betraying its own stated ideals. Those arguments stand or fall on their truth, not on whether the man who voiced them passed some retroactive purity test. If truth only counts when delivered by the morally spotless, we will have to throw out Moses, David, Peter, Paul—and a large portion of the Bible along with them.
There’s also something deeply convenient about this timing. When a voice still has power to trouble our conscience, the quickest way to silence it is character assassination. You don’t have to refute the message if you can smear the messenger. That tactic is as old as prophets and as modern as cable news.
And let’s be honest: nobody is saying we should ignore the Constitution because some of its defenders were deeply flawed men. Nobody is arguing we should discard great art, great preaching, or great reform movements because their authors failed morally. We evaluate the claim, not pretend the claim evaporates when we discover the speaker was human.
If your standard is “flawless personal life,” then say it plainly—and apply it consistently. Until then, this isn’t about truth or virtue. It’s about deciding whose sins disqualify them and whose sins get a free pass.
Dr. King’s call to justice still stands. Not because he was perfect—but because he was right.
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APPENDIX: SIN, SCALE, AND MORAL CONSISTENCY
George Washington. Washington is rightly honored as a founding father, yet he owned enslaved human beings for most of his life and actively pursued those who tried to escape bondage. His wealth and status were sustained in part by a system that denied freedom to others while he spoke eloquently about liberty. History does not erase his achievements, but it also does not hide this contradiction. Martin Luther King Jr. did some bad things, but he did not own other human beings or enforce a system that treated people made in the image of God as property.
Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson penned soaring declarations about equality and natural rights while holding hundreds of people in lifelong bondage. His private life and public philosophy existed in open moral tension, one he never resolved in practice. The words endure because they are true; the hypocrisy remains because it was real. Martin Luther King Jr. did some bad things, but he did not build personal wealth or social standing on the permanent enslavement of human beings.
James Madison. Madison helped design the constitutional framework of the nation while owning enslaved people until his death. He understood slavery as a moral and political contradiction, yet chose preservation of order and personal comfort over kindness and decency. His compromises shaped a system that postponed justice for generations. Martin Luther King Jr. did some bad things, but he did not write laws or broker compromises that protected racial bondage.
Andrew Jackson. Jackson presented himself as a defender of the common man while orchestrating the forced removal of Native American tribes, leading to the Trail of Tears and the deaths of thousands. His policies were not private failings but state-sponsored cruelty carried out under color of law. Martin Luther King Jr. did some bad things, but he did not wield government power to dispossess, exile, or destroy an entire people.
The standard that remains. If American history can hold together truth spoken by deeply flawed men whose sins were systemic, violent, and enduring, then intellectual honesty demands the same for Martin Luther King Jr. His failures were personal and real—as are mine and yours, by the way—but they were not the ownership of human beings, the construction of racial hierarchy, or the use of state power to deny whole classes of people their God-given dignity.
BDD
