With thanks to St Paul’s Cathedral Adult Learning for these weekly reflections throughout Black History Month.
Alexandra Drakeford reflects on the philosophy of Martin Luther King.
Love is the ultimate legacy of Dr King. Love moulded his vision for our world. It was the basis for all his actions and philosophies.
It is not enough to simply understand Dr King’s level of love, one must embrace his commitment to seeing its execution.
The love he preached was Agape – God’s love. An unconditional love that seeks nothing in return. Agape is based on the fact that we are human, each of us divine creations in His image. When we learn to love on this level, we love one another not because we like them, but because we are all children of God.
For most of my life, I could never understand Dr King. How could he preach messages of love when he received so much hate? What was sustaining his unwavering commitment to love?
Dr King wrote that agape was ‘the love of God working in the minds of men’.
But to allow the love of God to work in our minds requires us to open our hearts and humble ourselves to let this work happen.
Agape is a transformational love that surpasses our human, earthly understanding of love. To love on the agape level, we have to transcend the fleshly standards of love and live by the spiritual standard of love. It requires us to humble ourselves before God and to love because of His glory and not because of our feelings. And this is exactly what Dr King did.
We can be tempted to put Dr King and his principles on a bookshelf, collecting dust as if they should exist isolated in history. But when we put him in this separate, above-human category, we excuse ourselves from our capability of living and loving like him.
Dr King was undoubtedly a noble and exceptional man, but what made him so extraordinary and committed to love was his ability to humble his mind and open his heart to God’s standard of love. That is what transcended and transformed him.
Instead of seeing Dr King as a man who simply rose above the rest of us, see him as a man who knew who was above. Since he knew who was above, he humbled himself to let God work in his heart and mind, so he could love the way God intended us to love each other. Embrace the humility that Dr King did and love one another the way God loves us.
Bible verse and questions
Questions written by The Revd Canon Adéọlá Eleyae, which you are welcome to use by yourself or as a group.
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
- What is your lived experience of Agape love?
- People often ‘judge a book by its cover’ – reaching judgment and making assumptions about others based on their appearance, accent, economic circumstances, education or race. What should Agape love make you see, hear and do?
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