The relation of the individual to the self, the State and God are often at odds. An individual is often compelled to act one way in private, another in government relations, and still another in his or her relationship to God. However, for some individuals the relationship with God overrides the relation with self and State. Such individuals are driven by a higher law than manmade law or personal codes of conduct. We see this as the case in Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, King’s response to a group of clergy trying to persuade him to obey the State. As King writes, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just” (4). If we examine the writings of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs and examine the life of Jesus and Antigone, we see that all of them, like Martin Luther King, resisted authority in order to follow a higher law in the face of an immoral manmade authority.
The writings and lives of Martin Luther King, Harriet Jacobs, Olaudah Equiano, Jesus and Antigone all represent an ethical code of conduct that is willing to sacrifice to promote justice. All of the authors express their efforts against the state on behalf of a higher moral power as a means of bringing injustice to an end. As Martin Luther King writes to the clergy in his letter, “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here...We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (King 1). Like King’s civil protests, Jesus was basically viewed as a threat by the state. Jesus believed Jews had moved against the laws of God, much as King felt laws sanctioning racism did. Jesus wanted to do away with political laws and thereby fulfill the laws of God. Jesus believed the purpose of the law was service, compassion, and love, and that God wants mercy not sacrifice. Nevertheless, Je
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