Dr. King first delivered
this sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as co-pastor. On
Christmas Eve, 1967, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired this sermon as
part of the seventh annual Massey Lectures. (Highlights added)
Peace on Earth...
This Christmas season finds us a rather
bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without.
Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our
world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities.
And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men
can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we
don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the
misuse of our own instruments and our own power. Wisdom born of experience
should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served
as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but
the very destructive power of modern weapons of warfare eliminates even the
possibility that war may any longer serve as a negative good. And so, if we
assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has a right to
survive, then we must find an alternative to war and so let us this morning
explore the conditions for peace. Let us this morning think anew on the meaning
of that Christmas hope: "Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men." And
as we explore these conditions, I would like to suggest that modern man really
go all out to study the meaning of nonviolence, its philosophy and its
strategy.
We have experimented with the
meaning of nonviolence in our struggle for racial justice in the United States,
but now the time has come for man to experiment with nonviolence in all areas
of human conflict, and that means nonviolence on an international scale.
Now let me suggest first that if we
are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than
sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our
nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can
live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are
going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we
must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish
together as fools.
Yes, as nations and individuals, we
are interdependent. I have spoken to you before of our visit to India some
years ago. It was a marvelous experience; but I say to you this morning that
there were those depressing moments. How can one avoid being depressed when one
sees with one's own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at
night? How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with ones own eyes
thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalks at night? More than a million
people sleep on the sidewalks of Bombay every night; more than half a million
sleep on the sidewalks of Calcutta every night. They have no houses to go into.
They have no beds to sleep in. As I beheld these conditions, something within
me cried out: "Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?"
And an answer came: "Oh, no!" And I started thinking about the fact
that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars every day to store
surplus food; and I said to myself: "I know where we can store that food
free of charge? in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God's children in
Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry
at night."
It really boils down to this: that
all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the
interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't
leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world?
You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge,
and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap,
and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the
kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup
by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a
Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's
poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast,
and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to
mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning,
you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is
structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on
earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all
reality.
Now let me say, secondly, that if we
are to have peace in the world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent
affirmation that ends and means must cohere. One of the great philosophical
debates of history has been over the whole question of means and ends. And
there have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that
the means really aren't important. The important thing is to get to the end,
you see.
So, if you're seeking to develop a
just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means are
really unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there? they may
be violent, they may be untruthful means; they may even be unjust means to a
just end. There have been those who have argued this throughout history. But we
will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are
not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making,
and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil
means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.
It's one of the strangest things
that all the great military geniuses of the world have talked about peace. The
conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexander, Julius
Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order.
If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that Hitler
contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace. And the leaders of the
world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North
Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem?
They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day
we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that
it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends
through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis,
means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and
ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
Now let me say that the next thing
we must be concerned about if we are to have peace on earth and good will
toward men is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life.
Every man is somebody because he is a child of God. And so when we say
"Thou shalt not kill," we're really saying that human life is too
sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world. Man is more than a tiny
vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from a limitless smoldering.
Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as
such. Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere, we will
be fighting wars. One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may
be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese are our
brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our brothers; and one
day we've got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. But in Christ
there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In Christ there is neither male nor female.
In Christ there is neither Communist nor capitalist. In Christ, somehow, there
is neither bound nor free. We are all one in Christ Jesus. And when we truly
believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won't exploit people, we
won't trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won't kill
anybody.
There are three words for
"love" in the Greek New Testament; one is the word "eros."
Eros is a sort of esthetic, romantic love. Plato used to talk about it a great
deal in his dialogues, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine.
And there is and can always be something beautiful about eros, even in its
expressions of romance. Some of the most beautiful love in all of the world has
been expressed this way.
Then the Greek language talks about
"philia," which is another word for love, and philia is a kind of
intimate love between personal friends. This is the kind of love you have for
those people that you get along with well, and those whom you like on this
level you love because you are loved.
Then the Greek language has another
word for love, and that is the word "agape." Agape is more than
romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative,
redemptive good will toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks
nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating
in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not
because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them
because God loves them. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your
enemies." And I'm happy that he didn't say, "Like your enemies,"
because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Liking
is an affectionate emotion, and I can't like anybody who would bomb my home. I
can't like anybody who would exploit me. I can't like anybody who would trample
over me with injustices. I can't like them. I can't like anybody who threatens
to kill me day in and day out. But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than
liking. Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men.
And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle for racial
justice. We can't ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for
first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every
vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in
the process relinquish our privilege to love.
I've seen too much hate to want to
hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many
white citizens' councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate,
myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to
bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and
say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us
what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey
your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with
evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us
in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children,
and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators
of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some
wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you.
Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are
not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we'll still love you.
But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day
we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so
appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and
our victory will be a double victory."
If there is to be peace on earth and
good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the
universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations. Something
must remind us of this as we once again stand in the Christmas season and think
of the Easter season simultaneously, for the two somehow go together. Christ
came to show us the way. Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified
him, and there on Good Friday on the cross it was still dark, but then Easter
came, and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that the truth-crushed
earth will rise again. Easter justifies Carlyle in saying, "No lie can
live forever." And so this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace
on earth and good will toward men: let us know that in the process we have
cosmic companionship.
In 1963, on a sweltering August
afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C., and talked to the nation about many things.
Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream
that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking
about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the
first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had
talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls
were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn
into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my black
brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a
vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple
with the Negroes' problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as
I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and
understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their
disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw
that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating,
and as I saw so-called military advisors, sixteen thousand strong, turn into
fighting soldiers until today over five hundred thousand American boys are
fighting on Asian soil. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of
blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a
dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow
you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be,
that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a
dream.
I have a dream that one day men will
rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers. I
still have a dream this morning that one day every Negro in this country, every
colored person in the world, will be judged on the basis of the content of his
character rather than the color of his skin, and every man will respect the
dignity and worth of human personality. I still have a dream that one day the
idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of
Mississippi will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at
the end of a prayer, but rather the first order of business on every
legislative agenda. I still have a dream today that one day justice will rolldown like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I still have a dream
today that in all of our state houses and city halls men will be elected to go
there who will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God. I still
have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat
their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations
will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more. I
still have a dream today that one day the lamb and the lion will lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shallbe afraid. I still have a dream today that one day every valley shall beexalted and every mountain and hill will be made low, the rough places will bemade smooth and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. I still have a dream that with
this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new
light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will be able to
speed up the day when there will be peace on earth and good will toward men. It
will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of
God will shout for joy.