King on Loving Your Enemy
Thomas Allen
In “Loving Your Enemy,” Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1963, 2010), pages 45–52, Martin Luther King, Jr. discusses loving one’s neighbor and its necessity, meaning, and importance. The following is a critical review of King’s essay.
Beginning, King writes, “Probably no admonition of Jesus has been more difficult to follow than the command to ‘love your enemies.’” (P. 43.) (King failed to obey this commandment. He showed little love for Southerners and none for segregationists. If he truly loved Southerners, he would not have deliberately created situations that he knew would injure them and destroy their property. Moreover, he would not have advocated their cultural genocide.)
Continuing, King writes, “Upheaval after upheaval has reminded us that modern man is traveling along a road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction and damnation.” (P. 44.) Then, he comments that Jesus’s commandment is not that of a utopian dreamer; it “is an absolute necessity for our survival.” (P. 44.) Moreover, it “is the key to the solution of the problems of our world.” (P. 44.) (Today, most Negroes reject King’s advice as the riots, other acts, and the protests of Black Lives Matter prove. Pure hatred motivated their removal and destruction of monuments of Southern heroes — and one with which King probably would have agreed.)
Next, King discusses the practical application of Jesus’s command. He asks, “How do we love our enemies?” (P. 44.) First, people must be able to forgive. Without forgiveness, loving one’s enemy is impossible. Forgiveness “must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged.” (P. 44.) (In King’s mind, Negroes had been wronged because of segregation and discrimination. King never forgave segregationists. Today, many Negroes cannot forgive Whites because Whites have wronged them by not giving them every privilege and benefit that they demand. Now, the great wrong is not paying them reparations for acts that today’s Whites never did.)
King writes, “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.” (P. 45.) Then, he says, “But when we forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a relationship. . . . Forgiveness means reconciliation, a coming together again. Without this, no man can love his enemies.” (P. 44.) (Thus, King showed that he never forgave segregationists. He could never reconcile himself to segregation. As long as segregationists remained segregationists, they created a mental block for him that impeded his relationship with them. Only if segregationists converted to integrationists could King forgive them.)
Then, King notes that if a person finds some good in his enemy, he is less prone to hate his enemy. (King seems never to find any good in a segregationist.) He writes, “We recognize that his [i.e., the segregationist] hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding.” (P. 44.) (His comment may be true of Northern segregationists, but it is not true of most Southern segregationists. Southerners did not base their attitude toward Negroes on ignorance, prejudice, or misunderstanding. The attitude of Southerners toward Blacks was based on 400 years of observation, knowledge, thought, reason, and facts. Consequently, they were not prejudiced against Negroes; they were not prejudging Negroes. Likewise, with 400 years of observation and knowledge, ignorance did not guide them. If they feared Negroes, it was because Negroes are more prone to violent acts than are Whites.)
Next, King writes that “we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding.” (P. 45.) (Whenever King failed to win the friendship and understanding of a segregationist, he sought to defeat him. That is why his “nonviolent” movement was so violent. Moreover, friendship depends on more than understanding. Understanding often leads to hostility.)
Continuing, King discusses why people should love their enemy. Returning hate for hate leads to more hate. (Returning hate for hate, whether real or perceived, has been the modus operandi for much of the civil rights movement. It has been so successful that it has gotten Whites to hate Whites in the name of loving Negroes.) “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” (P. 47.) (Thus, King shows that the civil rights movement rests on hatred and not on love. After all the benefits and privileges that Whites have given them, most Negroes still believe that Whites hate them. Further, more racial hatred and division exists today than during the Jim Crow Era. However, most of this hatred is directed toward the White race. Even many Whites hate their own race.)
Correctly, King writes, “The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” (P. 47.) (Most policies and programs promoted by King plus Zionism and Communism, both are a Jewish creation, prevent the chains of evil from being broken.)
Again, King correctly notes that “hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. . . . [H]ate is an evil and dangerous force.” (P. 47.) He comments on the bloodthirsty mobs inflicting unspeakable violence on Negroes. (In the years following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, bloodthirsty mobs of Negroes have inflicted unspeakable violence on Whites and other races. Thus, the civil rights movement has been successful in flipping victims and perpetrators.)
Once more, King correctly remarks, “Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. . . . Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. . . . It causes him . . . to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.” (P. 48.) (The deleterious effects of hate are seen in the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots and other race riots of recent decades. Hate has destroyed the sense of values and objectivity of many Negroes and Whites. It has caused them to replace the truth with falsehood and beauty with ugliness.)
Then, King writes, “There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men [i.e., Negroes] develop the capacity to love their enemies.” (P. 50.) (For once, King places some responsibility for improving racial relations on Negroes. Usually, he places all the responsibility on Whites. Nevertheless, love did not overcome the race problem. Force did this by shifting the oppressed from Negroes to Whites. That is, Whites are now the oppressed and Negroes are the oppressors. [In reality, the oligarchs are the oppressors. They have merely switched the oppressed race and the oppressing race.]) Although the Negro has suffered racial injustice, either real or perceived, he should not abandon the obligation to love. Negroes should overcome their opponents’ capacity to inflict suffering by enduring suffering. “We shall meet your physical force with soul force.” (P. 50.) (Most Negroes, including King, rejected this advice. They overcame suffering with force and violence and not with endurance. They meet physical force with physical force. Often, they meet passivism with physical force.)
Continuing, King states, “Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws [i.e., segregational laws], because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” (P. 51.) (Many Negroes failed to continue to love their enemies because they did not love them to begin with. Although King does not define an unjust law here, he does elsewhere. An unjust law is a law that affects people who are denied the right to vote; these people are not obliged to obey that law. See “The Real King” by Thomas Allen.)
King concludes, “Love is the most durable power in the world.” (P. 51.) He condemns the use of force. (If King condemned using force, why was his civil rights movement based and built on force? Force, not love, overthrew the South and segregation in both the South and North. As King remarks, empires built on force crumble. Since the civil rights movement was built on force, it is now crumbling. It is tearing the country apart.)
Like nearly all humans, King failed to live up to Jesus’s commandment to “love your enemy.” Most of the programs and policies that King promoted prevented people from loving their enemy, even in the sense that Jesus meant.
King always considered segregationists as his enemy. He may or may not have loved them; he probably convinced himself that he did. However, if he is judged by his fruit, that he loved them is highly questionable because he always displayed ill will toward them.
King fails to discuss indifference. Most people neither hate nor love people about whom they know nothing. They are indifferent; they give them no thought. Before people love or hate someone, they have to think about him. No one thinks about everyone all the time. No one thinks about people whom he does not know exist.
Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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