Saturday, September 19, 1998

King offers message on rediscovering lost values

By Tom Schaefer

Knight Ridder Newspapers

I was in Atlanta last week when Kenneth Starr's report on President Clinton landed with the force of an F5 tornado.

More to the point, I was at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as details of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky tryst began to spill out of every media outlet.

Should the president resign or be impeached, or should he apologize and move on with "doing the people's business"? The fate of the Clinton presidency became the topic de jour for pundits and people in the street.

On a train ride to downtown Atlanta, I overheard a woman express disgust with the president's behavior. "The man ought to resign," she said, almost spitting out the words to a passenger across the aisle. "He has lied to the American people and violated his oath of office."

Hours later, while sitting on a mall bench, I heard a middle-age man express disgust with the special prosecutor. "He's simply out to get Clinton," he said with a snarl to a woman seated next to him. "This has been nothing but a witch-hunt."

Each saw the same set of simple facts in different and complex ways. Granted, those were only two chance encounters I had, but they seem to reflect the divide separating people over this sordid affair.

Most are upset with the president's behavior, according to various surveys, yet many aren't ready to see him leave office via resignation or impeachment. The political good they believe Clinton the president has achieved outweighs the moral failure Clinton the man has exhibited.

Religious leaders who have weighed in with their views also reveal a division of opinion. Some suggest Clinton's statement of remorse to his family, to Monica Lewinsky and her family, to staff and cabinet members and to the nation reveals the depth of his sorrow and the sincerity of his repentance.

"What does one do beyond admission and repentance, except plead for forgiveness?" the Rev. Jesse Jackson said following last week's White House prayer breakfast.

"Those who have the capacity to forgive will forgive," Jackson said. "Let those who want mercy be merciful."

Others say that Clinton's response still doesn't obviate the need for some form of punishment, which many insist requires the president to resign or Congress to move forward with impeachment.

"Character does matter," said James Dobson of Focus on the Family. "How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world."

Is forgiveness or moral uprightness the higher good? And are they mutually exclusive? I pondered these and other questions as I walked through the King Center. Here were reminders of the man who, in the 1950s and '60s, was the conscience of our nation -- his clergy vestments, his marching boots, his Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, history has shown that he also was a man with moral lapses and personal failings.

Could we still learn from Dr. King about finding our way through this national crisis?

Returning to Wichita, I picked up the recently published "A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration From the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr." (Warner Books). The 225 pages include 11 sermons the civil rights leader and Baptist minister preached, first as a graduate student at Boston University and finally as an internationally respected human rights leader.

One of his earliest sermons was titled "Rediscovering Lost Values," and although it marked the nascent period of King's theological development, it seems as timely today as when he preached it 44 years ago.

"The great problem facing modern man is that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live," he said in a sermon on Feb. 28, 1954, at Second Baptist Church in Detroit.

As sure as there are physical laws that guide our universe, King said, so there are moral laws just as unyielding. And what King said he saw in people's attitudes was a relativistic ethic toward morality "destroying the soul of our culture."

But King was not a fatalist. He also believed that people can be redeemed. Each person has dignity and worth, he said, made in the image of God. "One day we will learn that."

In stirring, straightforward words, King provided a blueprint for personal behavior and human redemption: Acknowledge what is wrong, stand up for what is right, offer forgiveness to the penitent.

How we apply King's message in this perilous time -- or fail to apply it -- may determine not only the fate of our president but the future of our nation.

It's that simple -- and that terribly complex.

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(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer(at)wichitaeagle.com )

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(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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