“True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgement of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.”
Spoken by one civil rights leader, these words remind us that true reconciliation will not be found lest it stands conjoined with truth.
On this day in which we celebrate the work and life of Martin Luther King, Jr., this seems a simple thought, yet it is one King himself saw as the very foundation of the Civil Rights movement. The goal was not to defeat the oppressor but “to awaken a sense of shame… and challenge his false sense of superiority. … The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.” Truth is the only foundation that can lead us to that end. Today in many ways we may stand closer to the great dream Dr. King put before our nation some forty years ago, but in many ways we have grown less wary of overlooking the foundation. Most postmodernists, I heard someone say recently, are not skeptics but non-realists.
We live in a world where the light of hope has gone out in many minds, where too many roam wearily in the dark chambers of pessimism and many have concluded that life is meaningless. There are those who look at the great injustices of the world, at the tormenting poverty of many nations, at racial and religious persecution across the globe, and in looking throw their hands up in defeat at the hopelessness and senselessness of life. They conclude with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “Life is a tale; Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
But how should we have ever known injustice if there was no such thing as justice? How should we have ever been able to recognize bad if there was no such thing as good? Badness, it turns out, is just a parasite, said C.S. Lewis; it could not exist if there was no such thing as good. The cry for hope, the cry for justice, the cry for racial reconciliation, are cries for completeness. Cries that say with the prophets of old, “This is not the way it was meant to be.” But there is most certainly a way that God intended. There is a way that God has provided for us to be reconciled to Him.
More than two thousand years ago there was another voice reminding the world that all reconciliation must be grounded in truth. In the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus on his way to Nazareth and to the synagogue, as was his custom. It was his turn to read the chosen Scripture for the service. Luke writes,
And Jesus stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ (Luke 4:17-21, ESV).
In the synagogue that day Jesus read one of the most beloved passages of Scripture from the prophet Isaiah, a passage that is often at the forefront of religious social reform. And of this passage where we hear of God’s plan for restoration, where we hear the hopeful cry of justice and liberty, of God’s comfort and grace, Jesus says, “Here I am. This is all fulfilled in me.” Jesus reminds us not only that God’s word is true, but that God’s truth will be fulfilled. He reminds us that truth is a Person, that it is tangible, practical, and knowable. In Christ we are reminded that more than having recognized it, truth must have its way with us.
On this day of remembrance, as we consider our world and conclude this is not the way it was meant to be, let us remember that God has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation. Let us also recall the foundation of reconciliation set before us in the Scriptures: It is Christ Himself. For in Christ, said the Apostle Paul, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting our trespasses against us. By his grace God has provided Christ as the only way for us to be reconciled to Him. Might his truth have its way with us.
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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. “A Slice of Infinity” is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.