"Loving Your Enemies" Sermon, Christmas Day 1957 Quotes
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Source: "Loving Your Enemies" Sermon, Christmas Day 1957
Speaker: Martin Luther King Jr.
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says, "love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Context
This line was spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. in a sermon called "Loving Your Enemies," delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama (December 25, 1957).
Dr. King delivered this line in a powerful sermon on Christmas Day. He'd spent the last few weeks thinking about how to counteract hate with love. After all, he knew Jesus was pretty big on that whole "love your enemies" thing, but Dr. King realized this was a pretty tall order. Especially when his enemies were perfectly happy to do things like threaten his family, shoot into his windows, and bomb his house.
Of course, Jesus didn't leave a whole lot of wiggle room for hatred and neither did MLK. In this quote he talks about the practical side of love. For one thing, if supporters of civil rights go around hating other people, then they're just adding more darkness to the world. Nothing's ever been solved that way. They're just piling more evil on top of an already evil system. Nope. The only way anything good has ever happened is with love. They've got to break the cycle of violence and hatred by refusing to engage in it.
And you know what? He was right. Because of love (and years of non-violent resistance) Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement racked up all kinds of victories for equality. Score one for Team Love.
Where you've heard it
This is definitely a loving-your-enemies kind of quote, so you'll probably hear it in that kind of context. Hey, just because someone is a jerk to you doesn't mean you have to be a jerk right back or, you know, pass laws denying them basic human rights.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
We'd like to see someone try to call you pretentious if you drop this quote at your next get-together. You don't mess with the King.