MLK's Beautiful Christian Dream

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a beautiful dream of a colorblind society in which people are judged based on important things like what they do and in which unimportant details, like skin tone, are irrelevant to how we interact with each other. This is a distinctively Christian vision. One of the great innovations of the Christian religion is that it is a religion for all. The world had long known societies that accepted all gods. But the Christians may have been the first to see their God as accepting all people.

The Apostle Paul had to fight hard for that. The first Christians were Jews who believed that Yahweh was the God of the Jews. So to follow the Christian God, you had to become a Jew. But Paul, with the direct intervention of a divine vision, erased this error at the Council of Jerusalem. As Paul powerfully explained in Galatians 3:28, in Christ, "[t]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This is true equality. This is unity. This is love. This is the vision of MLK, a world, but especially a Church, in which irrelevancies, like skin color, are irrelevant.

Unfortunately, Satan has successfully transmogrified Dr. King's beautiful dream into a dystopian nightmare. Now our elites insist that we see first the color of our skin so that we can properly categorize each other and practice "diversity," and "tolerance," and "inclusion." Racists focus on race so they can exclude. The elites focus on race so they can include. Neither of these is MLK's dream, and neither is Christian.

As a Christian, when I see another man, I shouldn't see a white man or a black man to be excluded or included. I should see a fellow bearer of the image of God, and, if he's a Christian, I should see a Christian brother. The color of his skin is no more relevant than the color of his shoes. Where Christianity demands unity, the elites substitute diversity. Where Christianity demands love, the elites substitute tolerance. If you've accepted what the elites are peddling, you've accepted a sorry substitute for Christianity and a sorry substitute for MLK's beautiful dream.

In honor of the vision of MLK, I determine to spend this entire day ignoring the color of the skin of my fellow divine image bearers. Going forward, I vow to oppose any movement that seeks to force me to see my fellow humans, and especially fellow Christians, first as a skin color.