Martin Luther King - On Civil Disobedience

Excerpt of Transcript of the Sermon "But If Not" by Martin Luther King

O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.

But if not, even if he does not preserve us, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the images of gold you have set up and commanded us to worship." Daniel 3:16-18

Now I want you to notice first, here, that these young men practiced civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is the refusal to abide by an order of the government or of the state or even of the court that your conscience tells you is unjust. Civil disobedience is based on a commitment to conscience. In other words, one who practices civil disobedience is obedient to what he considers a higher law.

And there comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust. And I tell you this morning, my friends, that history has moved on, and great moments have often come forth because there were those individuals, in every age and in every generation, who were willing to say "I will be obedient to a higher law." These men were saying "I must be disobedient to a king in order to be obedient to the king."

And those people who so often criticize those of us who come to those moments when we must practice civil disobedience never remember that even right here in America, in order to get free from the oppression and the colonialism of the British Empire, our nation practiced civil disobedience.  For what represented civil disobedience more than the Boston Tea Party.

And never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was legal. It was legal to do everything that Hitler did to the Jews. It was a law in Germany that Hitler issued himself that it was wrong and illegal to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I tell you if I had lived in Hitler's Germany with my attitude, I would have openly broken that law. I would have practiced civil disobedience.

And so it is important to see that there are times when a man-made law is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe, there are times when human law is out of harmony with eternal and divine laws. And when that happens, you have an obligation to break it.

And I'm happy that in breaking it, I have some good company. I have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I have Jesus and Socrates. And I have all of the early Christians who refused to bow...

And this is what I want to say finally, that there is a reward if you do right for righteousness' sake...Don't ever think you're by yourself. Go on to jail if necessary but you'll never go alone.

Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you and criticize you, but you never go alone, for somewhere I read that "One with God is a majority," and God has a way of transforming a minority into a majority.

Walk with him this morning and believe in him and do what is right and he'll be with you even until the consummation of the ages. Yes, I've seen the lightning flash, I've heard the thunder roll, I've felt sin breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul but I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on, he promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone; no, never alone, no, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.

Where you going this morning, my friends, tell the world that you're going with truth. You're going with justice, you're going with goodness, and you will have an eternal companionship. And the world will look at you and they won't understand you, for your fiery furnace will be around you, but you'll go on anyhow.

But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow before the gods of evil."

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

Weekend Reading for Sunday 25 March 2012

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.

And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh.

God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses. He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.

You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

There is an inward world, which none see but those who belong to it. There is an inward world into which they enter who come to Christ, though to men in general they seem as before. If they drank of Christ's cup it is not with them as in time past. They came for a blessing, and they have found a work.

To their surprise, as time goes on, they find that their lot is changed. They find that in one shape or another adversity happens to them. If they refuse to afflict themselves, God afflicts them.

Why did you taste of His heavenly feast, but that it might work in you—why did you kneel beneath His hand, but that He might leave on you the print of His wounds?

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission -- I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me -- still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are--sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Contemplate then yourself, not as yourself, but as you are in the Eternal God. Fall down in astonishment at the glories which are around you and in you, poured to and fro in such a wonderful way that you are dissolved into the Kingdom of God.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman

This is a collection of quotations from J. H. Newman woven into a whole cloth by Le Proprietaire as a young man for a small circle of Christian humanist friends.

NY Times Floats the Corzine 'CEO Defense'

As the NY Times notes in its expansion of the statements of Corzine's attorney, it is going to be a bit hard to pin Mr. Corzine down in the case of MF Global, because it is unlikely that he sent an email to Ms. O'Brien saying "Please meet our margin call with funds stolen from the customers' accounts."

The defense will be that Mr. Corzine, who had been personally running the prop trading gambits that took MF Global down, could not be bothered in understanding his own firm's cash position, and that no one dared to tell him that they were dipping into customer funds.

The weight of this of course would naturally have to seem to fall on someone, but the defense offered will be that this will have been an inadvertent error, that the firm was so hopelessly mismanaged and out of control that they were not even able to keep their own books straight.

Like most of the mainstream media, the NY Times expands on the Talking Points being promoted the spokesmen and public relations campaign for Mr. Corzine.   Given the nature of this story, and the blanket of secrecy that was thrown over it by most of the involved parties, except the customers of course, it would be a real effort to do otherwise. 

I am still quite intrigued by who leaked the Congressional memo to Bloomberg news.

Dealbook/NY Times
New Details Emerge on MF Global, but No Smoking Gun
By AZAM AHMED and BEN PROTESS
March 23, 2012, 6:19 pm

New details have emerged about MF Global’s chaotic final days and a critical transfer of customer money that has become a central focus in the wide-ranging federal investigation into the firm’s collapse.

In a memo prepared for a coming Congressional hearing, investigators described how Jon S. Corzine, the firm’s former chief executive and former New Jersey governor, asked an executive in the Chicago office to transfer $200 million to replenish an overdrawn account at JPMorgan Chase in London.

The Congressional memo cites an e-mail from the Chicago employee, Edith O’Brien, who authorized the transfer, saying it was “Per JC’s direct instructions,” referring to Mr. Corzine.

At first, the revelation fueled speculation that Mr. Corzine had instructed the transfer of customer funds, despite his assertions to the contrary. But it appears to be no smoking gun.

While the memo makes clear that Mr. Corzine was involved in patching the overdraft, it does not indicate that he requested the funds be drawn from customer accounts. He asked only that the overdraft be fixed. And in a footnote, the memo noted that futures brokerage firms like MF Global frequently deposit firm money into customer accounts and may withdraw it at will.   (Do they?  Do they frequently deposit their own money into customer accounts? Is that what this memo really says? - Jesse)

While the memo makes clear that Mr. Corzine was involved in patching the overdraft, it does not indicate that he requested the funds be drawn from customer accounts. He asked only that the overdraft be fixed. And in a footnote, the memo noted that futures brokerage firms like MF Global frequently deposit firm money into customer accounts and may withdraw it at will.

In a statement on Friday, a spokesman for Mr. Corzine said the former chief executive stood by his earlier testimony before Congress. In December, Mr. Corzine told lawmakers that he did not authorize the illicit transfer of customer money.

“I never gave any instructions to misuse customer money, never intended to give any instructions or authority to misuse customer funds, and I find it very hard to understand how anyone could misconstrue what I’ve said as a way to misuse customer money,” Mr. Corzine, a Democrat who also served in the Senate, said before the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The spokesman, Steven Goldberg, added that Mr. Corzine “never directed Ms. O’Brien or anyone else regarding which account should be used to cure the overdrafts, and he never directed that customer funds should be used for that purpose. Nor was he informed that customer funds had been used for that purpose...”

Read the rest here.

W. C. Handy: Father of the American Blues

Listen to the PBS Radio Documentary W. C. Handy's Blues.

"William Christopher (better known as WC) Handy didn’t invent the blues -- but he heard them in a deep and understanding way. He figured out how they worked. He wrote them down, arranged them, and did the business of bringing them to the world.

Handy’s classic “St. Louis Blues” is one of the most recorded songs ever. But even though Handy’s blues were phenomenally popular, he also strove to secure respect for himself and for other African-American composers. He was one of the first black composers to hold onto the rights to his music, and he published his own and other black composers’ work.

In this hour-long radio special, host Dr. Ysaye Maria Barnwell (of Sweet Honey in the Rock) celebrates the life and legacy of WC Handy the musician, the composer, the arranger, the publisher and the pioneer."

Here is the PBS Documentary Home Page For W. C. Handy's Blues.