King on The Answer to a Perplexing Question
Thomas Allen
In "The Answer to a Perplexing Question," Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1963, 2010), pages 133–143, Martin Luther King, Jr. discusses evil and faith. The following is a critical review of King’s essay.
Beginning, King writes, “Human life through the centuries has been characterized by man’s persistent efforts to remove evil from the earth.” (P. 133.) Throughout this essay, he discusses evil. Most people seldom adjust to evil. No matter how much they may relish evil, their conscience lets them know that they are wrong. (This statement is not true for people who have been indoctrinated in wokeism. Much of what they perceive as evil is not evil, and much of what they perceive as not evil is evil. Also, psychopaths, who often occupy high-ranking positions in governments, businesses, and other institutions, have no conscience and, therefore, do not consider their evil actions as evil.)
However, man cannot “conquer evil by his own power.” (P. 134.) He needs the Divine to conquer evil — which is true.
Then, King proceeds to discuss how evil can be cast out. The first way “calls upon man to remove evil through his own power and ingenuity in the strange conviction that by thinking, inventing, and governing, he will at last conquer the nagging forces of evil.” (P. 134.) If people are given “a fair chance and a decent education,” (p. 134) they can save themselves. In the modern world, this approach is the most common. (Contrary to what King would claim, this approach is what he used to overcome segregation. He used the earthly approach of raw, naked force of governments.) Continuing, he discusses how man has used this approach to solve his problems. “Armed with this growing faith in the capability of reason and science, modern man set out to change the world.” (P. 135.)
After describing how science has greatly improved people’s lives, King notes that “in spite of these astounding new scientific developments, the old evils continue and the age of reason has been transformed into an age of terror.” (P. 138.) Despite expanding educational opportunities and enacting more legislative social policies, selfishness and hatred still exist. (First, being sinners, people will never rid themselves of hatred and selfishness. King did not. Second, the public schools and universities indoctrinate their students to hate Whites. Further, selfishness is the primary force behind most legislation – forcibly taking from some and giving to others.) Then, King answers why man has failed: “Man by his own power can never cast evil from the world.” (P. 136.) Correctly, he states the reason that the secular humanist’s approach has failed: It places “too great an optimism concerning the inherent goodness of human nature.” (P. 136.) It has failed because it has forgotten “about man’s capacity for sin.” (P. 136.)
Next, King discusses the second approach to removing evil from the world. “The second idea for removing evil from the world stipulates that if man waits submissively upon the Lord, in his own good time God alone will redeem the world.” (P. 137.) (When it came to replacing segregation with integration, King could not wait on the Lord. He took the humanist approach of violent protest, which he called nonviolent [just as the violent protests of Black Lives Matter were called peaceful protests], and the violent force of governments.) The second approach is based on “a pessimistic doctrine of human nature, this idea, which eliminates completely the capability of sinful man to do anything.” (P. 137.) This approach “was prominent in the Reformation, that great spiritual movement that gave birth to the Protestant concern for moral and spiritual freedom and served as a necessary corrective for a corrupt and stagnant medieval church.” (P. 137.) While the Reformation overstressed the corruption of man, the Renaissance was too optimistic. The Renaissance “so concentrated on the goodness of man that it overlooked his capacity for evil . . . [whereas the Reformation] so concentrated on the wickedness of man that it overlooked his capacity for goodness.”
King condemns a theology that emphasizes “a purely otherworldly religion, which stresses the utter hopelessness of this world and calls upon the individual to concentrate on preparing his soul for the world to come.” (P. 137.) Such theology ignores the need for social reform and divorces religion from the mainstream of human life. (It seems that the more a Christian denomination focuses on social reform, the more that denomination fades into irrelevance.)
According to King, religion should deal with both body and soul. That is, “the church must seek to transform both individual lives and the social situation that brings to many people anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.” (P. 138.)
Then, King writes, “The idea that man expects God to do everything leads inevitably to a callous misuse of prayer.” (P. 138.) (Thus, King justifies his violent nonviolent tactics.) He does not believe that Negroes should wait for God to answer their prayers for integration; they should protest. (That God would answer their prayers for integration is doubtful since God is a segregationist. Consequently, King is correct when he asserts that Negroes need to protest for integration instead of waiting for God.)
For King, prayer is supplemental to his struggle for social justice for his people. (In other words, God is to play a minor role in the civil rights movement so that King could get most, if not all, the credit and glory.) Negroes must not depend on God to bring them social justice. (Social justice means special benefits and privileges for Negroes and discrimination against Whites.)
Although they should pray, Negroes must organize themselves into violent nonviolent action and employ all their resources to obtain social justice. Likewise, Negroes need to take the same action for economic justice, i.e., a better distribution of wealth, both nationally and globally.
King is convinced that God will not remove evil from the earth even if people do nothing. (His thinking is contrary to the Bible. Evil, sin, remains until Jesus returns and establishes his kingdom. These actions of Jesus depend on God’s will regardless and independent of man’s actions. One of King’s theological problems is that he believes that people are inherently good, especially nonwhites, instead of being inherently sinners — except Southerners and segregationists, who are inherently evil.)
However, King is correct when he writes that “man is neither totally depraved, nor is God an almighty dictator.” (P. 139.) Then, he writes, “How can evil be cast out of our individual and collective lives?” (P. 140.) The answer is that “both man and God, made one in a marvelous unity of purpose through an overflowing love as the free gift of himself on the part of God and by perfect obedience and receptivity on the part of man, can transform the old into the new and drive out the deadly cancer of sin.” (P. 140.) Thus, God works through people in faith. (To accomplish this goal, man would have to become like Jesus, which he cannot do as long as he possesses a sinful nature. Further, it will not work for King’s idea of social justice because his idea is contrary to God’s.)
Then, King describes two types of faith. “One may be called the mind’s faith, wherein the intellect assents to a belief that God exists. The other may be referred to as the heart’s faith, whereby the whole man is involved in a trusting act of self-surrender.” (P. 141.) For King, heart faith is much more important than head faith. (Heart faith is emotional; it is how one feels. Emotions come and go; therefore, heart faith is fickle. Head faith, intellect, is much more stable and changes slowly if at all.)
Continuing, King states, “Racial justice, a genuine possibility in our nation and in the world, will come neither by our frail and often misguided efforts nor by God imposing his will on wayward men but when enough people open their lives to God and allow him to pour his triumphant, divine energy into their souls.” (P. 141.) (From King’s perspective, social justice arrived not long after he died. Except for a guaranteed income, Negroes have received more benefits and privileges than King advocated. Further, God must hate Whites because Albusphobia now fills the planet. Thus, according to King, when God fills a person and that person opens his life by faith in God, the result is overflowing Negrophilia and Albusphobia — at least, that is the result of what he preached.)
Then, King applies his discussion of faith to personal lives. (Based on his womanizing and marriage infidelity, King failed to follow his advice. Did he fail because he tried to eliminate his evil habits on his own without God’s help? Or, did he fail because he expected God to eliminate his evil habits? Perhaps, he did not consider womanizing and marriage infidelity sins, and, therefore, he had no evil habits to eliminate.)
Concluding, King remarks, “Evil can be cast out, not by man alone nor by a dictatorial God who invades our lives but when we open the door and invite God through Christ to enter.” (P. 143.)
In this essay, King discusses evil and faith. However, he gives sinful man too much credit for his ability to eradicate evil from the world. Evil will remain until Christ’s return and the final judgments take place. Furthermore, what King considers good, racial integration, is what God considers sin.
Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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