Keep Moving

Keep Moving. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. Looking back isn’t going to help you, moving forward is the thing you have to do, even if you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward, because a man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.   

In a speech delivered in 1960 in Atlanta, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “I would like to use as a subject for my address this day, “Keep Moving From This Mountain.” For the moment, I would like to take your minds back many, many centuries to a group of people whose exploits and adventures have long since been meaningfully deposited in the hallowed memories of succeeding generations. At a very early age in their history, these people were reduced to the bondage of physical slavery. They found themselves under the gripping yoke   of Egyptian rule. But soon a Moses appeared on the scene who was destined to lead them out of the Egypt of slavery to a bright and glowing promised land. But as soon as they got out of Egypt by crossing the Red Sea, they discovered that before they could get to the Promised Land they would have to go through a long and difficult wilderness. And after realizing this, three groups, or rather three attitudes, emerged. First group wanted to go back to Egypt: they felt that the fleshpots of Egypt were more to be desired than the ordeals of emancipation. Then you had a second group that abhored the idea of going back to Egypt and yet could not quite attain the discipline and the sacrifice to go on to Canaan. These people choose the line of least resistance. There was a third group, probably the creative minority, which said in substance, “We will go on in spite of the obstacles, in spite of the difficulty, in spite of the sacrifices that we will have to make.”

In every movement toward freedom and fulfilment. We find these three groups. But this day, I am concerned mainly with the second group, the individuals who didn’t want to go back to Egypt necessarily and yet didn’t want to go on to the Promised Land, the individuals who choose the line of least resistance.

As Moses sought to lead his people on, he discovered that there were those among them who would occasionally become emotionally and sentimentally attached to a particular spot so that they wanted to stay there and remain stationary at that point. One day when Moses confronted this problem, he wrote in the book of Deuteronomy, the first chapter and the fifth verse: “You have been in this mountain long enough, turn ye and go on your journey, move on to the mount of the Amorites.” This was a message of God through Moses. And whenever God speaks he says go forward, saying in substance that you must never become bogged down in mountains and situations that will impede your progress. You must never become complacently adjusted to unobtained goals; you have been in this mountain long enough, “turn ye and take your journey.”

In a real sense, each of us today is in a wilderness moving toward some promised land of freedom and fulfilment. In every age and every generation men have envisioned some promised land:

Plato envisioned it in his republic as a time when justice would reign throughout society and philosophers would become kings and kings philosophers.

Karl Marx envisioned it as a classless society in which the proletariat would finally conquer the reign of the bourgeoisie; out of that idea came the slogan, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Bellamy, in Looking Backward, thought of it as a day when the inequalities of monopoly capitalism would pass away. Society would exist on the basis of evenness of economic output.

Christianity envisioned it as the kingdom of God, a time when the will of God will reign supreme, and brotherhood, love, and right relationships will be the order of society. 

In every age and every generation men have dreamed of some promised land of fulfillment of freedom. Whether it was the right promised land or not, they dreamed of it. But in moving from some Egypt of slavery, whether in the intellectual, cultural or moral realm, toward some promised land, there is always the same temptation. Individuals will get bogged down in a particular mountain in a particular spot, and thereby become the victims of stagnant complacency. 

To Be Continued ……