Today I would like to talk about the weapon of love.
In the late 1950s and early 60s, the pattern of Southern segregation was interrupted.
African-Americans began to employ "the weapon of love" to break the destructive cycle of intimidation, disarm their adversaries, and achieve the basic equality to which they were entitled.
Now, I would like to focus just a little bit on James Lawson, a young minister who moved to Nashville in 1959 with the intention of defeating the city's system of segregation.
Lawson had a brilliant plan.
Many people say, love your neighbors! serve them! But he recognized the importance of "training and strategizing and planning and recruiting and doing the kinds of things you do to have a movement." He realized that in order for his plan to succeed, things had to work very systematically.
He began by holding workshops in the basement of a local church.
They decided that their first target of focus was going to be lunch counters in department stores where blacks were allowed to shop, but not eat.
Then, he prepared his troops for battle. He noted that they all have to have a common discipline. If they were all to do their own thing, nothing would work out for their benefit.
They held "practices" where they would pretend to be at the lunch counter, and others would come to them, put cigarette ashes in their hair, and shove them around. Lawson said it was not enough to simply endure the beating. When it came to retaliation, he said, "That urge can't be there. You have to do more than just not hit back. You have to have no desire to hit back. You have to love that person who's hitting you. You're going to love him."
Lawson stressed that forceful love was "not simply a technique or a tactic or a strategy or a tool to be pulled out when needed," but rather a way of life.
So you're probably wondering, what in the heck does this have to do with anything? How would this way of "fighting back" defeat segregation?
Well, they talked a lot about the idea of "redemptive suffering." It would not only affect themselves, but it touched and changed those around them as well. Suffering put them and those around them in touch with their consciences. "It opens and touches our hearts..."
After rehearsing everything they could think of, they went and sat at the lunch counters. Of course, they were not served. Day after day they did this, and finally the owners of the counters closed off their markets. One day, before going to the lunch counters, the large African-American group heard that the cops were going to leave and the whites were going to be able to beat up on them. The officers believed that if the they left, the whites would pursue a fight with the blacks, and the blacks would retaliate. But that ws not the case. That day, the officers left. The whites started beating up on the blacks, but did the blacks fight back? No. They endured the kicking, punching, and screaming. The police came back and arrested the African American group. Once that group was gone, another one came in. This happened multiple times. Each time, the blacks turned the other cheek and walked happily to jail. They felt empowered! They were going to jail by choice! They refused to pay bail or fines, even reduced ones, forcing the city to either incarcerate them or let them go. Mayor Ben West chose the latter. Eventually, after a march through the city, the African-Americans recieved public recognition from the mayor that the segregation was unfair; he could not agree that it was morally right for someone to sell them merchandise and refuse them service. He then admitted that the lunch counters should be desegregated.
Now, after this, do you think they gloated and paraded about in their success?
Well, they didn't.
They told the lunch counter owners that there would be no announcements of the desegregation.
"No announcement. No press. No police."
With this, the relationship between the White Americans and the African Americans began to heal.
The point I'm trying to get at is this:
1. They loved their enemies.
2. They realized that their fates (the whites and blacks) were connected.
3. They knew that they needed to simply win over the enemy instead defeat the enemy.
4. All they tried to do was get the whites to do, in a sense, was repent.
5. The African Americans were so rather humble. They didn't want credit for the battle they had won, they only wanted what was right.
You know what's interesting though? While studying this, I couldn't help but to think of our Savior,
Jesus Christ.
Throughout Christ's life, He loved the people who hated Him. He served those that spitefully used Him.
I never really understood how He could "turn the other cheek" as He did, but now I can see that He knew their fates (He and everyone else) were, and are, eternally connected.
Without Him, we would have no opportunity for eternal life, and without us, His life's mission would have been, in a sense, vain.
Christ's life was a mission full of service and giving. He has never tried to defeat someone who has harmed or ostracized or hated Him, but instead, His whole life was spent trying to simply win over the people. He just wanted them and still wants us to believe in God, the Eternal Father, and to make choices that display that we are on His side, the right side, on the right hand of our Father in Heaven.
He just wants us to repent. He is there, ready, for us to be His friend. He wants to be our friend! He wants to look at us as sons and daughters of God. He wants us to look at us on an eternally equal level.
Finally, He has never taken credit for the battle. When we are all standing before Christ and the Father, Christ will humbly look to the Father and give Him the praise and recognition that is rightfully His.
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