OPINION:
“That’s right, camel jockey,” the man spewed. “What are you going to do about it?”
Those words were aimed at me, an 11-year-old Lebanese kid. They erupted from a young man whose anger and hatred seemingly came out of nowhere. He was working behind the counter of a pizza shop I had just ordered from. Minutes before, I looked back through the window after leaving with my pizza only to see him holding his middle finger up at me with disdain in his eyes. When I went back in to see if his gesture was aimed my way, that was his response to me: “camel jockey.”
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In the 40 years since then, I’ve never escaped the feeling of being made to feel “less than.” What I experienced was but a taste of the bile so many others have been forced to gulp down.
I was not a Christian then. In the days and years that followed, I associated that young man with Christianity to a degree. I thought that this religion, which at the time was still fashionable, encouraged that kind of hatred for non-white and non-Christian people. Surprising everyone — including myself — 14 years later I would come to embrace a truer gospel that valued all people, regardless of ethnicity or skin color.
Justice has become a political tool, not necessarily a goal to be achieved. The Bible is obsessed with justice as a goal, not a tool. Inspired by the Bible, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the most impactful civil justice movement in modern times.
Dr. King famously wrote that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
I’m aware that Dr. King held some theological positions I would disagree with. Yet, his statement is anchored in his belief in God.
Ironically, society distances itself from the Bible that inspired Dr. King. Should we increase that distance, we risk eroding the foundation for concepts like objective justice and equality. While the Bible acknowledges that all people — regardless of their faith or non-faith — have a sense of right and wrong (Romans 2:15), it points us to the God who directs us to “Seek justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). That God grounds the very concepts of justice, mercy, and humility.
The “Christian Revolution,” as historian Tom Holland has called it, is responsible for so much of what is good in society, like the construction of hospitals, the establishment of universities, and the abolition of slavery. Yet today, society decreasingly sees Christianity as a source for social progress and increasingly as a dragon breathing out racism and division.
To be sure, Dr. King correctly remarked that Christendom has a history scorched by racism and other social ills. But, as Dr. King would agree, it is crucial to distinguish between the social construction of Christendom and the core message of Christianity. There remain real battles to fight and real dragons to slay when it comes to racism. I fear we may never slay them if we transform the Christian message from the dove meant to bring “peace on earth, and good will toward men” and into the imagined dragon of a racially partial religion.
A godless view of morality risks cheapening the efforts of civil rights leaders and equality advocates because it deprives those efforts of their objective moral force. It reduces their efforts to mere competition for resources and dominance amongst animals, some lighter some darker. No, those advocates sought justice in their lifetimes and justice enduring beyond. As the billy clubs rained on a woman’s head in South Africa or the noose tightened around a man’s neck in the American South, both realized through their slipping consciousnesses that their earthly ends didn’t signal the end of justice. Justice, as a moral category, only exists and only persists past this life if it is grounded in an ultimately just Being whose existence transcends our earthly lives.
Pastor James Reeb, a white man, marched with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery. He died after being badly beaten because he participated in the march. Surely Pastor Reeb enjoyed safety, privilege, and maybe even some measure of power. Why give them up for someone else’s sake? While he was not the white savior of black men and women, the point remains that his sacrifices to end discrimination in the 1960s were not utilitarian. It was self-sacrificial, just as were the efforts of many more black lives, including that of Dr. King.
Such altruism is sometimes explained away in evolutionary terms. A beaver may risk its life to warn other beavers of a coming predator, for example. This isn’t moral, of course. It’s merely instinctual. So too, one might argue, civil rights demonstrators gave up their safety and their lives out of instinct bred into them by evolution, not by some higher moral authority or sense of transcendence.
Dr. King would find such a comparison grotesquely ironic. Racism, after all, denigrates those of another race are subhuman animals. Arguing that civil rights activists were acting out of animal instinct plays right into that idea. Reducing humans to mere animality guts the very idea of justice and cheapens the efforts to end racism. Inspired by the Bible, Dr. King recognized that there is more going on than mere animal instinct. He recognized, and bids us to recognize, that moral actions echo beyond our lives, even beyond all earthly lives.
I’m convinced that Dr. King understood that absent God’s transcendent moral authority, there really is no obligation for groups of people to champion the betterment of others.
“I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isles’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him,” he wrote.
By referencing the “eternal oughtness,” Dr. King avoided the logical fallacy that just because certain circumstances exist, it follows that those circumstances ought to change or stay the same. He understood that circumstances only “ought” to be a certain way if there are transcendent, objective moral standards by which to judge those circumstances and impose obligations to change or maintain them. King masterfully addressed the transcendent foundation upon which the philosophical scaffolding of ethnic equality is built.
While the Bible describes Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, and Europeans, it doesn’t divide humanity into moral hierarchies based on physical appearance. This ancient, supposedly outdated document refused to divide people along color lines. When nations outside of Israel acted wickedly, God used Israel to judge them. Showing no ethnic partiality, when Israel herself acted with equal abhorrence, God used those other nations as instruments of Israel’s reckoning. In other words, the God of the Bible judged and blessed people not based on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not pull those famously inspiring words out of the ether. Rather he dipped the pen that wrote those words in the inkwell of God’s character as expressed in Holy Writ.
This is a day of remembrance of Dr. King’s efforts. While I’ll never forget the taste of those words hurled my way at that pizza shop, the biblical message that so inspired Dr. King, has helped to cleanse my pallet, preparing it for sweeter and more just waters.
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Abdu Murray offers the credibility of the gospel message as a speaker and writer with Embrace the Truth. He has authored several books, including “Saving Truth,” “Grand Central Question,” “Apocalypse Later” and his latest, “More than a White Man’s Religion.” For most of his life, Abdu was a proud Muslim until a nine-year historical, philosophical, theological and scientific investigation pointed him to the Christian faith. Abdu has spoken to diverse international audiences and has participated in debates and dialogues across the globe. He holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School. Abdu lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their three children. Find Abdu Murray on X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.
Embrace the Truth knows people of all ages and walks of life have sophisticated questions regarding faith, reason and culture. The organization offers thoughtful answers to thoughtful people with questions and doubts.
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