"LIFE" AS THE "KING'S" PARADIGM
Our main theory of existence--or theology, if you will-- starts with a beginning." In the beginning , God created the heaven and the earth."
Even our physicists' "Big Bang theory" has a beginning nearly 14 billion years ago in a super hot , super dense, extremely small dot, its origin unknown, that somehow exploded, unleashing the elements, the stars, planets, forces, mankind.
I submit, respectfully, that science and theology notwithstanding, that there is no "beginning;" that there is no "end;" that there is an eternal energy flow that we know, embody, experience very briefly as "life."
"Life," then, or the living, is the predominant fact, main pattern, or paradigm that matters to man.
What is dead, lacking "life," is of no consequence to mankind say our scriptures, not even to God. http://biblehub.com/luke/20-38.htm
No modern man has articulated and demonstrated the power of "God" in our lives, in this modern era, like he whom we honor today, who talked to & walked among us.
It is Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America , Monday, January 18, 2016. I am 65 years old. Therefore, I was alive when this great man, this great leader and visionary, lived on the earth and died upon it.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Baptist church pastor who was educated in the church and home of his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. From there, he went to Morehouse College in his native Atlanta, Georgia , where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1948; then he attended Crozer Theological Seminary, in Upland, Pennsylvania, for a Bachelor of Divinity Degree in 1951, then to Boston University, in Boston, Massachusetts, for his Ph.D. Degree in 1955, in systematic theology. Thumb-nail biography mandates mention of his marriage to Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his incomparable helpmate and love, and their generation of 4 children.
Steeped, then, in both black culture and white scholarship, he formally entered the lists as Pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he succeeded Dr. Vernon Johns. In life, away from academia, when the concrete conditions of black folks in Montgomery were thrust upon him by chance and circumstance, he did not demur nor disappoint. Rather, he entered the fray, fusing black cultural power with white scholastic power, into a potent syncretic synthesis of the best of each, and every other encountered.
First as nominal, titular leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, that epochal 381-day, successful bus boycott, Dr. King later became the oft-disputed, though never repudiated, national leader of African Americans, in fact, by vital force of persuasion, and by the self-effacing power of his excellent leadership example.
Dr. King, though a Christian, was larger than his creed; though an American, was larger than his country. He grew In his life, even more so in his death, he yet grows, as a global icon and inspiration, "Oh death! where is thy sting? Grave where is thy victory?"
Having studied Doctor King's life and works, I draw inspiration from them and power. He sought a superior paradigm, one that was broad enough to encompass all of mankind , one with the "strength to love," as he wrote in a book. That strength to love is found in life, for while all mankind may not revere the same God, or any God, they most definitely love life! So let life be the principal paradigm of man !
In short, worship life; study life; create more life; perpetuate life!
There is no light absent darkness; no night absent day; no male absent female; no life absent death. "Life" as we know it, then, subsumes science and theology; reconciles all opposites; subsumes the living and the dead as eternal, continuous energy flows of many forms, world without end. Amen!
