Jesus opened his mouth and taught them…“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

I raised my hand in our freshman Bible class at Abilene Christian College. “God seems to be very different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. Did God change? Did God evolve over time?”

Dr. Brecheen answered calmly and reliably. “Oh no.” “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

I was just a 17-year-old kid, and I had no doctor’s degree but it seemed like there was some Olympian religious gymnastics going on here. First of all the text says, “Jesus Christ is the same.”

Now, I was willing to make the Gospel of John leap, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But beyond that, my professor’s response though sincere lacked basic candor or authenticity. In one scripture God is ordering revenge & genocide and later his Son is teaching us to love and pray for our enemies so we can be like God! Jesus wouldn’t be the first son to rebel against his father, but from all I read they seemed to have a pretty tight oneness.

At this point I committed myself to reading the Bible cover to cover making every effort to forget what my fundamentalist preacher Father and Church had told me it said.

I still have that worn out Harper’s Study Bible, a holy artifact of my spiritual pilgrimage. Before I ever heard of Jung, Campbell, or Process Theology it became clear to me that either God or Humanity had evolved along the way. I have come to believe now we have essentially created God in our own image.

Ever since Emperor Constantine’s dream that envisioned a symbol of Christ on his victorious soldier’s shields Jesus Christ became a warrior God like his Old Testament father. He became the God of Empire.

In more contemporary western history this Christ God imbued and blessed the British and American Empires. The American creed is Manifest Destiny.

How did God’s non-violent conversion come about?

In 1846 a Universalist preacher named Adin Ballou wrote a book titled Christian Non-Resistance. Thoreau read it and penned an essay, Civil Disobedience. Gandhi read Thoreau and was inspired to employ non-violence to bring down the British Empire in India. A Christian Minister named King emulated Gandhi and brought non-violence to the American Empire.

An American Universalist influenced a New England Unitarian Transcendentalist who invigorated an Indian Hindu to set the captive Christ God free from Empire. The zealous Hindu served as a model for an African American Christian to call his nation to conscience through the liberated Jesus.

Here at home the urgent necessity for an evolved non-violent God comes to mind as riled up “Christian nation patriots” throw bricks through windows, spit on elected leaders, hurl vile epithets threaten lives, and “Christian Militiamen” are arrested for plotting to murder police officers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.

All the while our President makes a Sunday surprise visit to Afghanistan with an impassioned defense of the war exhuming the putrefied argument, “We were attacked viciously on 9/11…this is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership.”

Gandhi declared & then admonished, “Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was non-violence par excellence…I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

The Bagram tent revival closed with the ritual Presidential altar call. “God bless you. God bless the United States Armed Forces. And God bless the United States of America.”

Which God will we pledge our allegiance to; the tribal warrior Father, or his “converted” risen Son?

Dr. may sound more impressive to the ears and may garner more clout on a resume, but the authenticity, power and authority gushed like a geyser from a deeper well.

Hear now ongoing revelation from Rev. King’s sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct”.

“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long…Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.

- I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.
- I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
- I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.
- I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.
- And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.
- I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.
- I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I want to say.”

In the first year of his ministry in 1954, Rev. King preached “Rediscovering Lost Values” at 2nd Baptist Church in Detroit.

“As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow, but to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Not in the little gods that can be with us in a few moments of prosperity, but in the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and causes us to fear no evil. That’s the God.

Not in the god that can give us a few Cadillac cars and Buick convertibles, as nice as they are, that are in style today and out of style three years from now, but the God who threw up the stars to bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity.

Not in the god that can throw up a few skyscraping buildings, but the God who threw up the gigantic mountains, kissing the sky, as if to bathe their peaks in the lofty blues.

Not in the god that can give us a few televisions and radios, but the God who threw up that great cosmic light that gets up early in the morning in the eastern horizon, who paints its technicolor across the blue —something that man could never make.”

The night before he was assassinated, Martin preached to the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Behold the crescendo of his sermon.

“It really doesn’t matter what happens now…We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

I am humbly honored to be in the same flock as Martin Luther King – A Minister, a Reverend, a Preacher. Don’t neglect to honor his educational accomplishments, but call him Dr. – Second.