A Christmas Sermon On Peace
Martin Luther King, JR.
[1]This Christmas ason 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 e its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismisd as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourlves by the misu 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 Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete.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 rved 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 rve 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 condi
tions 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 the conditions, I would like to suggest that modern man really go all out to study the meaning of nonviolence, its philosophy and its strategy.
[2]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.
[3]Now let me suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than ctional. 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.
[4]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 tho depressing moments. How can one avoid being depresd when one es with one's own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night? How can one avoid being depresd when one es 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 hous to go into. They have no beds to sleep in. As I beheld the 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 mylf: "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."
[5]It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapabl
e network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together becau 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 Chine. 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 univer 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.
[6]Now let me say, condly, that if we are to have peace in the world, men and nations m
ust 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 tho 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 e.
[7]So, if you're eking 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 tho 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, becau the means reprent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, becau the means reprent the ed and the end reprents the tree.
[8]It's one of the strangest things that all the great military genius of the world have talked about peace. The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexande
r, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in eking a peaceful world order. If you will read Mein Kampf cloly 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 ek, but one day we must come to e that peace is not merely a distant goal we ek, 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 becau the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.
