On MLK
One price of success is the higher scrutiny you will be subject to.
Perhaps the reason you’re still at your current level is because of the private battles you’ve not won yet.
Perhaps God is protecting you and you’re experiencing a dimension of grace to change your ways before it’s too late.
Everyone knows the role that Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) played in the civil rights movement.
Naturally, because of his prominent role in the struggle against inequality, MLK was subject to greater scrutiny by the powers that be.
What they found wasn’t pretty.
Behind the cool, calm and charismatic Reverend that gave the “I have a dream” speech, the FBI allegedly found a man who drank, smoked, spoke vulgar and had multiple sexual partners.
While some of the FBI findings were released sometime in 2019, this image of MLK had been painted by his associates in books they wrote as far back as the 1980s.
If you look through the annals of history, you’d find it littered with the blood and bones of great men who may have gotten public victories but were limited by their private battles.
I’m reminded of the story of the two wolves:
‘A fight is going on inside every person. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil and the other is good. The wolf that will win is the one that is fed”
This story is instructive.
Take care of your private battles. Do everything in your power to avoid joining the list of casualties on the road to destiny.
Overhead Aversion
In their 2014 paper, “Avoiding overhead aversion in charity”, economic researchers, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth Keenan, and Uri Gneezy observed that people are usually hesitant to donate to charities that spend too much on admin costs (e.g., staff salaries, supplies, utilities, etc.). They called this phenomenon overhead aversion. But charities that don’t spend money on these overhead costs will not have the infrastructure in place to meet their goals. Thus, these researchers conducted a study to find out the contexts where overhead costs won’t prevent people from donating to charities. In their study, they sent a donation request on behalf of a charitable organization to 40000 potential donors in the US. One group of potential donors were told that the charity had already received $10,000 from a private donor; another group was told that every dollar donated up to $10000 would be matched; a third group was told that the charity had already received $10000 from a private donor that would be used specifically for overhead and administrative costs; the final group were simply asked to donate. Ayelet and her collaborators found that the third group – the one where donors were told that a private donor had covered overhead costs – made the largest donation!
Ring of Gyges
In his classical book, The Republic, Plato has his brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, engage Socrates in a conversation about whether it is being just, or having a reputation for being just that makes people to happy. The brothers construct their argument by invoking the mythical ring of Gyges which was supposed to make people invisible at will. The brothers hypothesized that if such a ring existed, one can tell the true nature of human beings. A person wearing the ring of Gyges will have no constraints on his actions but will be steal, kill and live wildly without any fear of negative consequences. Since there is no real ring of Gyges, Glaucon and Adeimantus argue that people only act virtuously to escape consequences in the form of damage to their reputations when they are caught.
The Beloved Sleep
For years, I read Psalms 127:2 as,
“It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep”
But the original Hebrew, in which the Old Testament was written, did not have commas and full stops; and this may have posed a challenge to the English translators.
Now, watch what would happen if you’d place a comma in the second part of that verse…
“…for so He giveth, His beloved sleep”
The Lord is doing the giving, while His beloved ones are doing the sleeping!
Pretty cool, right?
The truth is that until you receive a revelation of the love that God has for you, you’d never be able to sleep and rest in His Love.
You can only rest and sleep when you secure yourself in the fact that your Heavenly Father loves you deeply!
Just take a look at what John the Beloved called himself. Do you know that Jesus didn’t bestow John with special preferential treatments? The truth is that Christ loved all His disciples the same – even Judas Iscariot.
But what distinguished John from the other disciples?
Well, John simply secured himself with the revelation that the Mighty God in human form could actually love him. He meditated on this, and magnified the love that Jesus had for him in His heart.
The truth is that until you receive the revelation that you are God’s beloved, you cannot rest and sleep and allow Him to give His benefits to you.
Instead, you’d always want to do things to earn/merit God’s blessings, favor and all. You’d wake up early and sleep late, all in a bid to merit God’s blessings by your works!
But there’s a better way!
Receive a revelation that YOU are the Lord’s beloved. And then you can rest and sleep, as your Heavenly Father does ALL the giving, while you do the receiving!!!
