Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “The person who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as the one who helps perpetuate it. The person who accepts evil without protesting against it, is really cooperating with it.”
Recently, I have been reading about human psychology, especially mass psychology. The question was asked, “If you were in Germany in the 1930’s, would you have been a part of the Nazis?” Most of us shirk that thought, but we need to remember these were good people caught up in a bad ideology. Nazism was billed as the wave of the future, and the way of the enlightened. The first steps of Nazi domination were small and billed as care for the mentally ill, or health concerns in the nation. Soon the asylums were emptied as the patients were euthanized, and the Jews were required to wear yellow stars.
Where would you have drawn the line? Most people want to “go along to get along,” yet some going along really is getting on the slippery slope with no way to stop.
My earliest community memories included the last vestiges of Jim Crow South. Many good people stood by as some black people were unfairly treated, cheated, and even physically injured because they just wanted to get along. They may have even convinced themselves that that person deserved this treatment because they were black.
The quote by Dr. King above is an indictment of those of us that find almost any excuse for not to raise our voice against evil. Dr. King did view the world as containing good and evil. He decried the evil of segregation and mechanisms that kept so many in poverty. The evil had to be confronted, and only by showing the evil in the light of truth was the evil vanquished.
In our text this week, Jesus confronted the evil one by exposing his lies and deception to the truth of God’s Word. So on this MLK Day weekend, how are we fortifying ourselves with truth to expose the evil that wants to dominate all around us?
Pastor Greg
