The Paceline

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. died in 1968. His sermons are still teaching lessons today.

Lessons are generally good. I like to learn. But I hate it when someone insists on pointing out my ignorance – especially when they insist on having the last word.

That always provokes a reaction in me to point out their ignorance and compete for the last word. Sometimes I act. Other times I just fume. It’s not pretty. It’s especially not pretty when I’m the first to offer my “superior” point of view and vie for that last word.

And it can be dangerous to relationships. It’s like driving down a dark, two-lane highway and turning on your high beam headlights just because the cars coming at you from the opposite direction refuses to lower their high beams.

This is where MLK comes to my rescue. He gave a sermon in 1957 called “Loving Your Enemies.” The sermon is filled to the brim with good lessons – especially for the many of us in 2021 with differing, “superior” points of view. He says it best regarding high beams:

“I think I mentioned before that sometime ago my brother and I were driving one evening to Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Atlanta. He was driving the car. And for some reason the drivers were very discourteous that night. They didn’t dim their lights; hardly any driver that passed by dimmed his lights. And I remember very vividly, my brother A. D. looked over and in a tone of anger said: “I know what I’m going to do. The next car that comes along here and refuses to dim the lights, I’m going to fail to dim mine and pour them on in all of their power.” And I looked at him right quick and said: “Oh no, don’t do that. There’d be too much light on this highway, and it will end up in mutual destruction for all. Somebody got to have some sense on this highway.”

Somebody must have sense enough to dim the lights, and that is the trouble, isn’t it? That as all of the civilizations of the world move up the highway of history, so many civilizations, having looked at other civilizations that refused to dim the lights, and they decided to refuse to dim theirs. And Toynbee tells that out of the twenty-two civilizations that have risen up, all but about seven have found themselves in the junkheap of destruction. It is because civilizations fail to have sense enough to dim the lights. And if somebody doesn’t have sense enough to turn on the dim and beautiful and powerful lights of love in this world, the whole of our civilization will be plunged into the abyss of destruction. And we will all end up destroyed because nobody had any sense on the highway of history. Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.”

So now I have a mantra when my hackles begin to rise. “Dim your lights” is easy to remember and may even help prevent destruction on my gravel path of history.

Somebody got to have some sense. Lord, let it be me.