Why Martin Luther King, Jr. Matters

I've heard two competing versions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s meaning this long weekend -- one from my pastor and one from this column in the New York Times.  The pastor, understandably, claimed Dr. King as a hero of faith, quoting one of his last sermons about seeing the promised land from the mountaintop.  The column claims Dr. King as a fighter for economic justice, in addition to civil rights.  Both of these views have some support in the history I've read on the subject of "the King years" -- I've read the first volume and a little bit of the second of a three-volume history by Taylor Branch.  The emphasis in the history, though, is on the struggle itself, not so much attempting to claim Dr. King as part of one camp or another.  The civil rights story is very much a human story, filled with hate and mistakes and questing for something better, groping for answers in the face of overwhelming obstacles.  The "I Have a Dream" speech, as much as it was a triumph, was also the beginning of a long, political campaign, similar to a war in all its fits and starts.  And Dr. King was a leader who galvanized the battle on both sides, bringing the situation to a head with his stand against violence and for human rights.  Dr. King's character was not saintly, but it was principled, and it is his struggle for something better in human nature and in the real world of politics and everyday life that is worth remembering.  Dr. King demonstrated the force of moral action in the face of ruthless hatred and ignorance, and he ultimately helped millions of people overcome those fearsome obstacles.  So he is a good example for us as Christians, and it is important to see him as someone who was concerned with economics as well as more abstract forms of justice, but more than both of those ideas, I see him as a symbol of humanity's struggle for meaning in a world that would deny us all some of those chances at meaning if it could.