MLK and Universal Truth

Yesterday we enjoyed another holiday by celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Though MLK is best known for his "I have a dream" speech, he also once said this:

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." 

This is a sobering truth that we must always teach our children, one which is at the core of education.  Apart from a universal standard for truth, finite man's laws are basically arbitrary.  Without that standard, might makes right, and laws are based on the whims, bad or good, of the ruling government.  Perhaps they are "good" laws, but we have no universal means by which to verify their goodness.  Perhaps they are "evil," but we have no ability to condemn them.  There is no moral Law-Giver, and therefore no moral law, by which to distinguish good from evil.

During the formative years, our children must never assume that "right" and "wrong" are moral absolutes of themselves, as though they are terms with intrinsic authority. Conversely, we must never let them think "right" and "wrong" are ideas without any moral content whatsoever; that right and wrong are relative to opinion.  We must teach them that the only way to condemn evil (whether Hitler, racism, Planned Parenthood, or whacking lil sis on the head with a toy truck) and the only way to praise what is good is to appeal to an absolute, changeless, and loving standard of truth.

That truth can only rationally and satisfyingly be the gospel, the Story of the God-Man whose name is Truth, and who loves us infinitely and personally.