Yesterday I went to downtown Montgomety headed to a coffee shop I frequent without thinking about the time and route of the MLK parade. It was underway, coming up Dexter Av. as I attempted to turn toward the coffee shop at 22 Dexter Av. I found a parking place within eyeshot of the coffee shop on the adjacent block and waited about 20 minutes for the foot traffic and traffic barriers to be cleared. The turnout was apparently good and, while I waited, I was thinking about the history of MLK in Montgomery and this city’s role in the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s. I have returned to this place a different person. I appreciated it in the 70s-90s when I lived here before. I was young and very engaged in its political and cultural life. I see this community through different eyes now, more mature eyes, more accepting eyes than advocating eyes….. but still very hopeful eyes.
As I read this quote from MLK the word “hate” jumped out at me. As I have grown, I have learned that “hate” in the lexicon of the world/flesh implies a mean-spirited and malicious dislike and disregard for another, at times even expressed in violence against the object of hate.
When we read in English that Jesus said for the one He calls to follow Him that person must “hate” father, mother, sister, brother, and all that distracts, demands attention, or influences them away from or contrary to the Father’s will, we may be confused and unbelieving that such words could be Christ’s. But it belies another, ancient and biblical view of “hate.”
Yet, when you turn away from the people, places, and things that have distracted or influenced you in lieu of the Father’s will, you may find yourself among them once again with awakened eyes that see them differently. Now your “hate” or separation from them has taken on the mind and heart of Christ and you are different toward them, no longer separate from them. In this, too, one comes to see oneself as “in” but not “of” the world. One becomes able to not only see differently but to move differently, engage differently, love differently, respond differently. One becomes able to actually be a true friend of even the friendless whom one previously saw as different from oneself, but now is just the same kind of different in a world that often hates anything it sees as different from itself.
Sometime separation from is necessary to reorient the heart’s perspective. And like, MLK, I choose love, because hate, regardless of which lexicon one uses, the malicious one of the world, or the biblical one defined by Christ’s call for separation from others’ influence in order to be fully in Him, dismissing others from one’s life altogether becomes a burden. We must learn to take the burden of differences, stay in the yoke with Jesus and be prepared to love and accept others as they are, praying for them, being present to them, but keeping our boundaries and tasks aligned with His….. for God’s glory, others’ gain, and our best expression of God’s goodness through us that He desires.
CBB 1/20/26
