"Whom you would change you must first love..." MLK

the following is an article I wrote a year ago for the Calvin College Chimes, the student newspaper for Calvin College where I did my undergrad. The quote from Dr. King, "whom you would change you must first love" has come to my mind often when thinking about multicultural issues. DSM
Moving forward, not drawing back
As MLK said, “Whom you would change you must first love”
By Daniel McWhirter
Staff Writer

Individualistic, consumerist, ignorant, loud: if you think, “America,” or “American,” when you read this string of adjectives, then you are not alone on this campus.

In my first class of the semester our professor had us break into groups and come up with adjectives for Latin America. The professor then had us repeat the exercise with the United States in mind. Tellingly, every single adjective that was written on the board under “America” was negative, the adjectives I’ve strung above in an attempt to catch your eye being a representative sample. Lest you suspect that I managed to work my way into the only all-Canadian class on campus, let me assure you: most of us in the room were U.S. citizens. Neither was this experience, nor the perceptions behind it, an anomaly: there is a growing sense of discontent and frustration among students with their own culture. Whether it be a reaction to the cavalier foreign policy of the present administration, or a recognition of the bankruptcy of consumer culture, the number of dissidents is growing. And more power to them, I say.

However, this growing attitude of discontent and frustration, of criticism, too often takes a nasty turn that unsettles me. I will not call it cynicism. That adjective has been rendered trite by over-use and seems to miss the mark anyway. It is something akin to arrogance, mixed in with a bit of spite — a lack of love and concern.

Not only do we criticize our culture, but we too often fail to love it in the first place, to see something worth changing for the better, something worth saving. I’ve heard it said that Martin Luther King, Jr. admonished, “Whom you would change you must first love” — wise and true words that hold for both individuals and larger institutions.

To be able to see the ill in us — the broken institutions and malignant attitudes and habits — is imperative. Yet to operate on our cancerous body we must first know what it is we are saving, what to excise and what to nurse to health. To simply draw back in disgust at the sick and disfigured form of the diseased — to leave it to rot — is an attitude both selfish and unloving; an attitude all the more duplicitous in this situation as it is we ourselves who need healing.

Disgust at a culture, even one’s own, is never a virtue; rather it betrays a lack of love on the part of the beholder. The wrongs in the world are what they are, not because they are ugly in themselves, but because they mar what is good. Sin and brokenness in our culture and in ourselves is a tragic desecration of God’s creation and should cause us to lament and repent. However, revulsion, contempt, disgust — these are false responses to the desecration, steeped in evil themselves. They hypocritically stand over the broken and fallen and sneer — curse the broken for their disfigured forms without acknowledging their own culpability. Even God himself, who could truly stand apart from the refuse heap of our situation in shock and horror, chose instead to come down to us and soil himself with our flesh. Following his example, the wrong in our culture and in ourselves ought to sadden us, moving us ultimately to compassion and service.

Individualism, consumerism, ignorance; these are aspects of our cancer, and the healing of these sins is our task as Christians. Were we not in 21st Century America, we would have other ills to lament, repent and heal, however this is our task. That we recognize the ills in ourselves is the first step, and we should be moved to lamentation and repentance. But let us keep disgust and contempt far from us.

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