Prologue

Unexpected Places

My grandson Big John and I made good time on the interstate. The slight drizzle that tailed us for most of the 188-mile drive south from Jackson held off until we reached New Orleans, where it became real rain, clickety-clacking on the hood of our car like a band of tap dancers in the French Quarter. Big John turned the wipers to fast, and we swished our way through the final few blocks to our hotel.

In a way, the downpour and clogged streets were a fitting welcome. You see, the Big Easy has always made me a little uneasy, though I am no stranger there. No doubt the voodoo underbelly and nonstop carnival mood feed my anxiousness. But I would like to think I am also moved by the pain I feel for my folks there: the poor who don’t know they are poor and the downhearted who are still staggering years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Most visitors come to New Orleans to have a good time. Not me. It seems I always come on serious business, and this trip on a rainy day in November was no exception. An hour or so after we checked in to the Marriott, Big John and I found two empty, cushy chairs in the lobby. Finally, we could relax. As we sat and chatted, hundreds of people whirled past. Some, like me, were in town for a conference of evangelical theologians; others had come to enjoy the jazz music or some Cajun cooking. I looked Big John square in the eyes and asked, “How in the world did I get here?”

At some point, we all ask this same question—or something like it. What am I doing walking down the aisle to get married? Why was I asked to teach the Sunday school class? How did I end up living on the most dangerous street in the city? Why does justice matter to me? The unexpected is precisely that: something we did not foresee or pursue, or an event or circumstance that unfolds in a surprising way. It may be an “aha!” moment or a sudden tragedy, an honor we never imagined or a challenge we never believed we’d be able to overcome. Whatever the specifics might be, these moments have a way of getting our hearts pumping and our nerves on edge—whether from joy, sadness, hope, or fear. They also have a way of defining our lives.

I’ve found myself in a lot of unexpected places—so many, in fact, that the question “How in the world did I get here?” has become a thread that runs throughout my story, just as much as justice and love run through it. As you read on, you will see what I mean.

I dropped out of school somewhere between the third and fifth grade, but now I have thirteen honorary doctorates. Colleges and seminaries invite me to speak to their students. And I have an academic center and two scholarship programs that bear my name.

I was sixteen when a white deputy sheriff shot and killed my twenty-five-year-old brother, Clyde, in New Hebron, Mississippi, where we had grown up. Clyde had returned home from fighting in World War II just six months earlier after being honorably discharged from the army, with combat ribbons to show for it. He and his girlfriend, Elma, were waiting in a long line with other blacks for the movie theater ticket booth to open (whites got their tickets at a separate booth in another area of the theater). The crowd was a bit noisy, and the deputy sheriff had instructed everyone more than once to be quiet. Clyde and Elma, who were turned away from the sheriff, were talking, when the officer clubbed Clyde over the head. Clyde grabbed the deputy sheriff’s blackjack—probably an automatic reaction intensified by his military training—and struggled with him. The officer took two steps back, pulled his gun, and shot Clyde twice in the stomach. The local doctor tried to tend to his wounds, but what he could do was limited. So my family carefully placed Clyde into my cousin’s ’41 Chevy and headed to the nearest hospital in Jackson. Clyde’s life was drifting away as he continued to bleed during the entire car ride. He was taken to a treatment room at the hospital and some time later officially declared dead. My big brother, a heroic survivor of World War II, was defeated by the unspoken war at home. I was devastated. I was the youngest sibling and looked up to him more than my other siblings (Clifton, Mary, and Emma Jean).

My family sent me from Mississippi to California, fearing that I would meet the same fate as my brother if I stayed. To them, it looked like I might not make it out of my teens. As I write this book, I’m eighty-six years old, and I’ve celebrated sixty-five years of marriage and fifty-six years of Christian ministry.

When I was a boy, I was paid fifteen cents for a hard day’s work hauling hay. Decades later, a just-elected United States president asked me for advice on how justice is an economic issue. As a civil rights worker in the ’60s and early ’70s, I was arrested and beaten for fighting for freedom in rural Mississippi. Twenty years later, I found myself on a stage just to the left of President Ronald Reagan when he gave his “Evil Empire” speech.

How in the world did all this happen?

I’ve traveled the world to cities such as Beijing, Tokyo, São Paulo, Sydney, Nairobi, London, and all the major cities in the United States, preaching about the human race, freedom, and faith. I have shared meals and conversations with governors, billionaires, sports stars, university presidents, megachurch pastors, and all sorts of so-called movers and shakers. I have received pats on the back, accolades, and praise. I have written books, been interviewed on television, and even served on prestigious boards and panels.

I am tremendously grateful for these opportunities and for the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. But deep down inside, I’m still the kid who grew up in a family of sharecroppers and bootleggers in a small town in the Deep South. I’m still most comfortable picking greens with my childhood friend Ed, chatting with a single mother while waiting in line at Popeyes, or sitting on the steps of a row-house porch in Philadelphia with my friend Shane and some of his young neighbors as we enjoy a sunny afternoon together and wipe ice cream from the kids’ faces. While I appreciate the attention I’ve gotten for my work and the kind words people have said about me, the look you see on my face most often is not so much one of accomplishment but, rather, one of astonishment.

How in the world did I get here?

The only answer I know to give is that these things can happen when you walk with God. It’s easy to look at a person—to see where he started and how far he has come—and think you know how the story will end. But I’ve learned what Saul learned on the road to Damascus: when God’s involved, everything can change in an instant. You may think you know where you’re headed, but often God has a different plan—something “exceedingly abundantly above all that [you] ask or think” (Eph. 3:20 NKJV). Sometimes a light drizzle becomes a deluge. Other times you open your eyes to find yourself by still waters. Sometimes you hear thunder clapping along with the rain. Other times the clouds disappear so you can see a billion stars in the sky.

Just when I think I’ve witnessed every possible thing, something else comes along. Sort of like a rainbow appearing after a lightning storm. On the last night of that conference in New Orleans, a popular band called Switchfoot performed at the House of Blues, just a few blocks from the Marriott where I was staying. The music was too loud for my ears, but my daughter Elizabeth and one of our interns, Nikki, went. Switchfoot’s set included a song they say was inspired by my first book, Let Justice Roll Down. And, yes, Switchfoot put my name in the song title: “The Sound (John M. Perkins’ Blues).”1

Now, how did that happen?

Anyone who knows my story would expect this book to ooze with justice issues. After all, the pain caused by injustice has motivated me to spend a lifetime working for social change on behalf of widows, prisoners, the poor, and anyone who struggles. So how did someone who has experienced the anguish of poverty, racism, and oppression end up wanting to write a book about love as his climactic message? Good question.

For decades I’ve tried to meet people where they hurt. I’ve preached and desired to see “justice for all,” and I still fervently believe in it. God loves justice and wants His people to seek justice (see Ps. 11 and Mic. 6:8). But I’ve come to understand that true justice is wrapped up in love. The old-time preacher and prophet A. W. Tozer had a way of making the most profound truths simple and palatable. He once said, “God is love, and just as God is love, God is justice.”2 That’s it! God’s love and justice come together in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and we can’t be about one and not the other. They’re inextricably connected.

God is holy and just. He is life. He is light. He is love. When we try to understand people’s actions, whether at a crime scene or just in everyday life, the most important thing to look for is their motivation. John 3:16 tells us that because God so loved the world He sent His only Son to save us. Love is what brought God down from heaven and generated the incarnation. Love was always God’s motivation, which is why it must be ours as well.

As I think about what I want to say to people—from a pulpit, in a book, at the dinner table, in the lobby of a Marriott, or in line at Popeyes—at this point in my life, it’s all about love. As I look back over my personal journey—the highs, the lows, and everything in between—it’s all about love. Love is the first, middle, and final fight.

We live in a broken world. How should we react? No doubt, some actions lessen the pain—and that’s a good thing. But neither clenched fists nor helping hands alone will bring about the complete transformation God wants. Only love can touch us at the point of our pain and begin to heal us and make us whole—individually and collectively. We are called to love. To love God, to love our neighbors, even to love our enemies. Yes, love can be a real struggle. Anger is easier. Even a tireless, lifelong campaign for justice might be simpler.

I often tell people that justice is a stewardship and economic issue, but truthfully, I think love is as well. Justice and love are intimately tied together in this way. Caring for those who have the least, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, showing mercy to those around us—these are all issues of love, but they are also issues of justice. We cannot have true justice unless it is motivated by love, just as God’s greatest act of justice, sending Jesus to die for us, was motivated by love.

Years ago, before the emancipation of slaves, Frederick Douglass described the contradiction and failure of the church in America, saying:

Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad: it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!3

Today I fear we can say the same thing in regard to the racism that is still deeply ingrained in the church in America, and I think I can use these same words as an indictment of the church today. But it is time to repent. It is time to forgive. It is time to move forward from the racism and bigotry that we have allowed to define us for too long. It is time for love, rather than pride and division, to be our final fight.