By Forest Whitaker
January 18, 2016
Today we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Even though Dr. King no longer walks among us, today and every day, he still speaks to us. His words—engraved on a monument in America’s capital—move us to continue demanding a more just and equal society. And his voice—echoing in our minds—inspires each of us to ask if we’re doing all that we can to help our fellow human beings.
The day before he died, Dr. King delivered what today is one of his most well-known speeches, where he famously declared, “I have been to the mountaintop.” In that speech, he spoke about a man who is robbed traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Lying destitute on the road, the man is passed by both a priest and a Levite before finally a Samaritan comes along who tends the man’s wounds and takes him in.
But Dr. King presents a slightly different version of the Good Samaritan parable. He tells us that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was incredibly dangerous back in those days. It’s a steep, windy road where attacks and ambushes were common. Dr. King asks us to consider: Perhaps the priest and the Levite were scared. Maybe they thought the bandits who robbed this man lying in the road were still around and would attack them if they stopped to help him. Maybe they feared this man was a bandit himself and was only pretending to be injured. And so, Dr. King tells us, in that moment, as they passed this stranger lying in the street, the priest and the Levite asked themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the Samaritan turns the question around. He asks himself, “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
Dr. King does not tell this version of the Good Samaritan parable to excuse the inaction of the first two men. Rather, it is a reminder to each and every one of us that, sometimes, doing the right thing is not as easy as it might seem. Life is busy, and it is full of personal hardships and struggles. It can be all too easy, even for a well-intentioned person, to become bogged down in questions like, “What will happen to me?”
The greatest thing we can do to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King is to look around us, at the most vulnerable members of society, and ask ourselves, “If we do not help these people, what will happen to them?”
The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami expressed a similar sentiment when he said, “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg.”
Every life is precious. Every individual matters. And every day, in the United States and around the world, we see eggs coming up against high, solid walls. A boy in South Los Angeles struggling to overcome a wall of gangs and violence. A young woman in South Sudan trying to spread messages of peace against a wall of conflict and poverty. Or an African American man in New York City who might end up dead because he gets into a disagreement with law-enforcement agents and comes up against a wall of discrimination and brutality. If we do not stand with these people—the most vulnerable among us—what will happen to them?
The challenges are great, but that does not excuse inaction. The records of human history are filled with examples when a single person stood up to injustice and made a difference. A woman on a bus in Montgomery, standing up against a wall of segregation. Or a man in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, standing up against a wall of suppression. These famous acts of courage changed the world.
Inconspicuous acts of courage can matter just as much. When we look at the black and white photographs from the Civil Rights era, it is easy to spot the Martin Luther Kings or the Rosa Parks, but we often overlook those anonymous faces marching alongside them in the crowd, those ordinary men and women standing up for what they knew was right. Oftentimes they acted at great personal risk—maybe they’d lose their jobs, maybe they’d be beaten, maybe they’d be killed—but still, they asked themselves how they could make the world a better place, and they pressed their fingers on the right side of the scale of justice.
Who’s to say who was the one person who ultimately tipped the scale and brought down those walls? It took all of them, working together, to change the world. Now, fifty years later, we see the photographs they left behind, and we look at the world around us, and we know that they made a difference. They made history.
What walls will we bring down? All around the world, our brothers and sisters are lying on the side of the road, waiting for a Good Samaritan to come along. We must remember Dr. King’s words and ask ourselves what will happen to them if we do nothing.