Book Review

Strength To Love by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You will discover that unarmed love is the most powerful force in the world.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have you ever started reading a book with one mind and by the time you finished it your mind was forever changed? That happened to me when I read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book, Strength to Love. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started the book — a collection of Dr. King’s writings about his philosophy of nonviolence. But, it was more than that. It was an incredibly well-organized, philosophically sound argument for love. While King’s philosophy is rooted in his Christian ethos, he transcends the bounds of religion and reveals his purist humanitarian self.

Before reading this book, I did not fully understand or appreciate the depth of King’s conviction and belief in love for humankind. Personally, the moral and religious theories undergirding the modern Movement for civil rights have been important and I appreciate them, but I have always felt they were secondary to achieving a goal worthy of any means necessary.

In Strength to Love, King riffs with mind-boggling swagger and command of language, rhetoric, theology, philosophy, humor, and storytelling. He was as eloquent on the page as he was on the stage. He went deeper than I ever thought possible to describe a fully formed, spiritually mature, and practical love as the core for all action. The creative approach to pressing his argument bursts through the page with clarity and helps the reader better understand King’s deeper motivation. He truly believed in love. His tragic and triumphant life was an expression of that conviction.

More than anything, I felt personally challenged to consider my conviction to love through offense, harm, shame, and even through violence.

I have certainly been on all sides of harm — giver and receiver. Leadership is hard. Heck, life can be hard. Our brains are set to default to fight or flee in moments of emotional and physical stress. They are not set to love.

Love can never be a neutral state.

It is active; always. It is the highest of human attributes and the absence of it reduces us to the lowest of creatures. Love requires effort and, in the context of Dr. King’s life and Movement work, it is often an oppositional force to the primal fight or flee response to the state of the world. In this way, actively loving someone or something can feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. Every muscle engaged, every doubt exposed.

We need supernatural power to live our best and full lives. We need strength to love, especially nowadays.

There is a perceptible sadness in our communities right now.

I acknowledge the hurt and the pain, I feel it too. I also acknowledge the acute burden of leaders to do more than just empathize with our people. We are solutionists who represent love in action. We are keepers of the flame of hope, justice, and enlightenment.

We have access and authority to speak into the halls and streets of power. We should gird our minds, center our hearts, and let loose our tongues from the mountainous, resonant apex of love.

We model behavior. No treasure, no time, and no talent can replace the present-minded expression of hope and love that we can offer to each person in our sphere of influence. So, stay encouraged. Stay prayed up. And, stay dreaming.

Let’s build on the legacy of our ancestors and elders, making our communities and world better with hope, strength, and love.

Honestly,

Ed.

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Excerpt: Strength to Love, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read this excerpt from his chapter titled, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians”, in which he writes an imaginary letter from the Apostle Paul from the port city of Troas.

“The Epicureans and the Stoics sought to answer it; Plato and Aristotle sought to answer it. What is the summum bonum of life? I think I have found the answer, America. I have discovered that the highest good is love. This principle is at the center of the cosmos. It is the great unifying force of life. God is love. He who loves has discovered the clue to the meaning of ultimate reality; he who hates stands in immediate candidacy for nonbeing.

American Christians, you may master the intricacies of the English language and you may possess the eloquence of articulate speech; but even though you speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, you are like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

You may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules, you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights, you may ascend to the highest of academic achievements, so that you have all knowledge, and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but, devoid of love, all of these mean absolutely nothing.

But even more, Americans, you may give your goods to feed the poor, you may bestow great gifts to charity, and you may tower high in philanthropy, but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned, and die the death of a martyr, and your spilled blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of the history’s supreme hero; but even so, if you have not love, your blood is spilled in vain. You must come to see that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteousness in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego and his piety his pride. Without love, benevolence becomes egotism and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.

The greatest of all virtues is love. Here we find the true meaning of the Christian faith and of the cross. Calvary is a telescope through which we look into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking into time. Out of the hugeness of his generosity God allowed his only begotten son to die that we may live. By uniting yourselves with Christ and your brothers through love you will be able to matriculate in the university of eternal life. In a world depending on force, coercive tyranny, and bloody violence, you are challenged to follow the way of love. You will then discover that unarmed love is the most powerful force in all the world.

I am a poet, essayist, and civic strategist celebrating 60 years of civic revolution in Birmingham, Alabama. Get to know me better here.