MLK — TRUTH, CONTEXT, AND THE MEASURE OF A MAN
There is a strange ritual in every generation; we raise up voices of courage when they are safely buried, then rummage through their wounds as though truth were found in scavenging. Recent noise surrounding newly released files about Martin Luther King Jr. has followed this tired pattern. Old accusations, filtered through hostile eyes, are paraded as though they were fresh revelations; whispers dressed up as wisdom; suspicion mistaken for discernment. It is not courage. It is not clarity. It is not justice.
Dr. King was not a plaster saint. He never claimed to be. He was a man of flesh and breath, bearing the weight of fear, fatigue, pressure, and relentless hatred. But he was also a man who bent his knee to Christ, who shaped his public courage in the furnace of private prayer, who carried the cross of nonviolence through streets slick with blood and fire. To reduce such a life to selective accusations drawn from agencies that openly sought his destruction is not honesty; it is historical vandalism.
The word of God teaches us how to judge rightly. We are warned that there are witnesses who speak from malice rather than truth, and that a lying tongue is an abomination before the Lord (Proverbs 6:16-19). We are told that love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Truth is not rumor. Truth is not surveillance notes compiled by men who feared the gospel’s power to dismantle unjust systems. Truth is what bears good fruit over time.
Look at the fruit. Segregation shattered. Laws transformed. Consciences awakened. A nation forced to hear words it had long suppressed. Dr. King did not accomplish these things by charisma alone, nor by political cunning, but by rooting his message in the teachings of Jesus: love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you; overcome evil with good (Matthew 5:44; Romans 12:21). These were not slogans for him; they were a costly way of life.
Some now ask why we defend him. The answer is simple. We defend truth against distortion. We defend context against caricature. We defend the principle that God often uses imperfect vessels to accomplish holy purposes. The Bible reminds us that Elijah was weary, David was broken, Peter was impulsive, and yet the Lord worked mightily through them, not because of their flawlessness, but because of their surrender (1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 51; John 21:15-19).
To attack King now, decades after his voice was silenced, is easy. He cannot answer back. He cannot clarify. He cannot repent of what was private or explain what was distorted. But Christ sees. And Christ judges not as men judge, for He looks upon the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). That truth should sober every keyboard prophet and sanctify every historian.
The church must not join the mob. We must be a people slow to accuse, careful with sources, and deeply aware of how power manipulates narratives. We can acknowledge human weakness without surrendering to cynicism. We can tell the truth without delighting in destruction. We can honor a man’s legacy without pretending he was without need of grace.
Martin Luther King Jr. stood against injustice because he believed Jesus meant what He said. He paid for that belief with threats, imprisonment, slander, and ultimately his life. The foolishness now swirling around his name says far more about our appetite for scandal than it does about his soul.
Let us be better than that. Let us judge fruit, honor courage, and leave final judgment where it belongs.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man. A giant of a man.
And all perceptive men and women of goodwill know it.
BDD
