10
The Final Fight

Love. No matter where I start, I always end up here.

The birth of my second child, Joanie, was such a happy time because now I had a boy and a girl. When I saw her in Vera Mae’s arms, joy swelled up within me. I was consumed by something greater than me.

I can remember one of her early birthdays—we had a big party for her. We invited all of the neighborhood kids and gave each one a balloon. If I close my eyes, I can still picture the scene.

As Joanie grew up, it wasn’t all balloons and birthdays. It seemed that she was the most difficult of my children. Perhaps I was a bit difficult too. I always tried to show her love but never felt that I was adequate. As she tumbled into her teen years, she developed a strong-willed mind of her own. Don’t ask me where she got that—I know! I only have to look in the mirror.

Our son Phillip came along and became what I call my “knee baby.” I probably gave the most time to him, but it was needed because he was sick with polio. No doubt Joanie was slighted. As each child came along, it seemed that there were more needs and less time—and never enough time to catch up with Joanie. There was always an awkward gap between me trying to express my love for her and her receiving it.

Joanie’s wedding day was a pinnacle of joy. Naturally, as the father of the bride, I was delighted in the usual ways. At the same time, no one knew it, but I was actually uneasy and conflicted. I wrestled with how disappointed I was in myself for not being able to show her deeper, more tangible love.

As I escorted Joanie down the aisle, so many memories danced through my mind. She was a beautiful woman. I was to give her away to Ron Potter, and I also was to preach a sermon. Several different people were giving talks, and I was to give the last one. But I was so taken by my emotion and tears of joy that I couldn’t speak. That was one of only a few times in my life that the emotion of a moment so overwhelmed me. Many feelings rushed through my head and heart, but I knew that Ron would give her love at a depth I never could give her. The genuine joy I felt was indescribable—and still is even all these years later.

Ron has loved and does love Joanie in all the ways she deserves. In many ways, they have a model marriage. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s an example to follow. They made the decision to adopt children. Varah was the first. I fell in love with Varah the moment I saw her. There is so much love for her and in her that no one would guess Joanie is not her birth mother. In fact, to me, through love, Varah has become one of us. It was the same with their youngest daughter, Karah. Those two children are the apples of my eye. I love them so dearly.

People ask me to speak about justice, the prisons, race relations, and economic development—and I’m happy to discuss those topics, because I know how important each one is. But I’ve discovered that I can’t talk about any of them for long before love finds its way into the conversation. I have often said that sometimes when I read the Bible, I see justice in every verse. I could say the same about love—maybe even more so.

Looking back—especially at my conversion and early discipleship—I can see how my own need for love, my experience of God’s love, and my understanding of the Christian responsibility to love others always undergirded my thinking about life, faith, and ministry. I just didn’t always articulate those things as clearly or intentionally as I could have.

God used three key passages of Scripture to start me on my path of walking with Him. The first is Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This was around the same time that Spencer, who was just three years old, had invited me to attend his Sunday school class. So I went to church because of my love for my son, but what I found there was this amazing idea that God and His Son loved me. It wasn’t just a little bit of love we were talking about either. Jesus loved me enough to give His own life for me. As I studied the Scriptures over the next few months, that verse in Galatians spoke to the deepest longing in my life—the desire to experience love that didn’t end the way my mother’s had ended when she died, and that didn’t leave me alone like my father had left me on the railroad tracks when he came to see me for the first time that I can remember. My father had given me to my grandma to care for me after my mother had died when I was seven months old. I could tell that God’s love was a great motivating force for Paul, and I wanted to experience it for myself.

So one Sunday morning, the best way I knew how, I asked God to come into my life—and that’s when I discovered something fascinating and wonderful about God’s love. You see, in that moment, I felt a deep sense of my own sinfulness—my depravity, my emptiness—as well as His deep, forgiving love. I tasted the fear of God. At the same time, though, I was aware of God’s presence and met by His grace—it felt like He was putting His arms around me, squeezing me tight, and loving me with His deep, forgiving love. When I felt loved by God, I sensed my own dirtiness and ugliness but knew He was embracing me anyway and His grace was sufficient. When I was fully aware of my sinfulness is when I experienced God’s love most fully and couldn’t resist Him.

I liken my experience to Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. I can hear in Paul’s teaching his sense of God’s love. Paul knew Christ in suffering. He felt like he wanted to love God to the point that he would experience suffering like God suffered. Paul saw the depths of God’s love for him, and he was willing to suffer for His love. There is some of that in me. I have known His goodness. He has seen me through so much tumult. I’d like to go with Him through even more. So I wonder, How much do you have for me, God? Not as a martyr per se, but as one in all that Christ was and is—including the pain. Without the pain, there is no true love. And in some ways, the power of love increases as the suffering is endured. Knowing Christ’s pain takes me to a deeper place with Him. The pain of Christ and the forgiveness of our sins are at the core of the gospel.

I did come to see that God did know who I was, and He still loved me. He helped me comprehend both my need for a Savior and His willingness to be that Savior for me—to pay the consequences of my sin because of His great love. That experience changed my life forever.

After my profession of faith, an older white man named Wayne Leitch began to disciple me. An artist and theologian, he was the director of Child Evangelism Fellowship in Monrovia, California. He had hope for an elementary school dropout, and he became like a father to me. Out of respect, I called him Mr. Leitch. We talked about many Scripture passages, but three in particular set the course for the rest of my life: Acts 1:8; Galatians 2:20; and 2 Timothy 2:1–2. These three passages have become my life’s ministry. Mr. Leitch helped me understand another truth of these passages—we, as Christians, must be stewards of God’s love. We are to be Christ’s witnesses. We are to share with others what we have received from Him. In other words, our work is to proclaim the message about who Jesus is and what He has done for humanity, including how He loves us so much He was willing to die for us.

As I’ve continued in my Christian walk, I’ve come to understand something else about being a witness for Christ: it’s not just about telling the story. If we are going to help others understand who Jesus is, our own lives must reflect His character and love. Our lives should bear witness—not primarily to how much we love God but to how much He loves us and how our hearts have been turned because of His deep love for us. Our lives should show that His deep love for us brings us great joy, even in the midst of tribulation. That He would reach down and pick up somebody like me (or like you) and show His love for me and then give me the privilege of sharing that love with others—that’s God’s miracle. That’s incarnation. Jesus was incarnated so we could experience God’s love; now we are called to live and minister incarnationally so that others can experience it as well.

The other passage that played an important role in my discipleship comes from Paul’s writing, and it has to do with how we carry out our mission. Paul instructed his disciple Timothy that “the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2). This passage instilled in me the importance of developing the local church and raising up indigenous leadership from the community to carry on God’s work. No one person is going to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. The good news about God’s love will spread as individuals and small groups of people tell the story and live the reality in front of others who can then do the same.

That’s the kind of witness that draws people in. Sadly, when many look at the church in America today, they don’t see a group of disciples characterized by love for one another. Instead, they see (and hear) a group of people making a lot of noise about issues—abortion, homosexuality, and other social and political hot topics. It’s not that those things aren’t important—they are very important, and Christians are right to raise issues and take stands. But those things shouldn’t define the church. Human personalities shouldn’t define the church, either. Our Christianity should be defined by Christ—who loved us and gave His earthly life for us—living His everlasting life out through us.

I like the way A. W. Tozer writes about Jesus’s sacrificial love:

What brought Jesus Christ to die? “Thou visitest him,” the Scriptures record. Why did he visit us? Was it that he might carry out the eternal purpose? Yes, but that is not the way to look at it. He visited us because we were a fixture in his mind. He came for us as a mother wakes in the morning and runs into the room to see if the baby is all right. It was love that brought him down to die. God’s anxious, restless love was incarnated in human flesh. This accounts for the character of Christ and for his attitude toward people and his tireless labor for them. This ultimately accounts for his dying for them at last. . . .

Our Lord’s great pain for us compelled him to come down to earth. Calvary was a pain. . . . The nails were painful. And the hanging there, perspiring in the hot sun with the flies, must have been a painful, awful experience. But one pain was bigger than the other. It was the bigger pain that drove him to endure the little pain. And the smaller pain was his pain of dying. The greater pain was his pain of loving. . . . To love and not be loved in return is one of the most exquisite pains in the entire repertoire of painfulness. So He came, He lived, He loved, and He died and death could not destroy that love. It is still a fixture in His mind.1

God loved us so much—He was so pained by our separation from Him and our rejection of Him—that He was willing to endure both the day-to-day pains of human existence and the excruciating physical pain of death on the cross. That’s a depth of love that I can only barely begin to comprehend, but as much as I can understand it, I am amazed by and grateful for it.

In studying John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” I’ve come to see this verse as the centerpiece of the New Testament. I think the most important thing we can know about God is how much He loves us and wants us to be part of His family—and how the way for that to happen is through Christ, not our own striving. So becoming a Christian is discovering God’s love for us, and being a Christian is learning to love God back—and then finding ways to show God’s overflowing love to the people around us. Or, as John writes:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7–11)

John emphasizes that love begins with God. We experience God’s love first, and then we are able to truly love others. It’s tempting for us to claim that our love and our good works start with us. But really, the more we receive Christ’s love and the more we worship God in gratitude for the love He’s shown us, the more we are motivated to show love and do good works.

Sometimes we look at the Bible and think that the Old Testament is about the law, and the New Testament is about love, but in fact, the central truth of the Old Testament is that God loved Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants. He formed them into a nation, redeemed that nation from slavery, and brought them into a good land to inhabit. Even though they often rebelled, and God had to discipline them, He always brought them back. He never stopped loving them; they remained “a fixture in His mind.”

He loves us all with a divine purpose. He loved Abraham because He had a divine purpose. Deuteronomy 7:9 says, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.” Everyone who came after the Israelites would know that He would carry out His love for them too. That covenant love is exemplary of His love—a love that endures. The Old Testament was a prototype that He was holding up for all of humanity. He was going to then send all those who accepted, cherished, and embraced that love into the world to share the good news. The church is the vehicle for spreading that good news.

Israel’s story reveals a great deal about God’s love for us today—how He sent Jesus to redeem us from slavery to sin and how He remains faithful and committed to us even when we fall short in our obedience to—and love for—Him.

God’s love isn’t the only thing that helps develop our ability to show compassion and do good in the world—the love of other people does that for us as well. We’re involved in God’s work in one another. When I was a new Christian, one of the ways God taught me about His love for me was through Mr. Leitch, who met my hunger to know God by discipling me in the study of the Bible. He also affirmed what he saw God doing in me and preparing me for. When I had just started teaching—when I was still overcoming my stutter and feeling inadequate for the ministry God seemed to be calling me to—Mr. Leitch told me that he believed that one day people all over the world would ask me to come and share the gospel in their communities. I doubted him. But God used this older brother in the Lord to rid me of my unbelief—to help me see what He could do in my life. He gave me hope. He used Mr. Leitch as part of His redemptive process in my life.

God too had to rid the apostle Paul (who was once known as Saul) of his unbelief. He had an amazing encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. After striking down Paul, God asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4), but I think His underlying message was “Saul, I love you. Why don’t you love Me?” Jesus could have taken care of everything right there. He could have sent him on his mission to the gentiles immediately. But He didn’t. Instead, He sent Paul into the city and used a man named Ananias to be an instrument of His love in Saul’s life. Ananias came offering forgiveness, healing, and fellowship to this Pharisee who had been persecuting believers. Jesus’s intervention in Saul’s life—His meeting him personally—was the greatest love Saul could or would ever know.

When we love others in the name of Christ—even if they have wronged us in the past and even if showing our love makes us vulnerable to the possibility that they will harm us again—we participate in God’s redemptive work in their lives. Both Paul and Peter acknowledged love’s power in their epistles. Paul counseled married believers not to leave spouses who didn’t know Christ, because “how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” (1 Cor. 7:16). Similarly, Peter exhorted wives to “submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives” (1 Pet. 3:1–2).

These apostles understood that devotion and loving obedience have the potential to draw people to Christ. When we come to know Christ, we have a responsibility to so love others that they may also recognize Christ’s redemptive power and great love for them. Of course, there’s no guarantee someone will change just because we love them, but there is power in deep and sincere love.

I speak often about the ways that we black men have let down our women, children, and communities. Fatherlessness is an epidemic today, and my heart is broken for the women, and especially the children, who have been abandoned, so I plead with men to take responsibility and love their families.

Sometimes when I address this subject, women ask me what they can do to confront this failure in our men and strengthen our families and communities. I tell my sisters that, as hurt and disappointed as they may be, the way to bring our men back is to show them deep love as human beings created by God in His image and with inherent dignity. I understand that this is not an easy thing to do, but God calls us to love the people who have hurt us—just as Jesus loved Saul who was persecuting Him. Jesus used strong language to make a statement about loving those who are hard for us to love:

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? (Matt. 5:43–46)

Love is most powerful when it is unexpected—and when it does not come cheaply. God’s love for us is certainly like that. We have not earned it, and it comes at the highest cost: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). In the same way, we are called to love those who sin against us, even if we must sacrifice something to do so.

When asked what God’s greatest commandment is, Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:37–40). In Luke’s version of this teaching, Jesus illustrates the second commandment by telling the parable of the good Samaritan—a story in which two religious leaders ignore a neighbor in need, while a Samaritan gives his time and money to help someone whom he most likely would have considered his enemy (see Luke 10:25–37). The Samaritan could have felt justified in leaving an injured Jew in a ditch—according to human standards, he didn’t have any obligation to help someone who probably wouldn’t have helped him if their situations had been reversed. But he showed love and mercy to this stranger—to this enemy. When He finished telling the story, Jesus said, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

Now, I’ve noticed something interesting about my “enemies” as I’ve gone through life: I often learn from them. Many times, when people cut me down, there’s some bit of truth in what they say—and if I can hear that truth, I may be able to grow and do better in my service to God. When that happens, I’m grateful for my enemies. Maybe I even love them a little bit for helping me become a better Christian. Jesus may have had that idea in His mind when He told us to love our enemies, but I think mostly He just meant for us to do it, whether or not we see any benefit in it. The real advantage for us, of course, is that the more we practice loving the people who are hard for us to love, the more we reflect Jesus’s character and build our “grace muscles” so we can respond in an even more Christlike manner the next time.

I’ve understood from early on in my Christian walk that God commands us to love all people, and I’ve known that God has called me to be a reconciler, but I’ve still struggled to love some people. I’ve had nightmares about Lloyd “Goon” Jones and the other highway patrol officers who beat me and the Tougaloo College students in jail, and learning to love them has not come easy. Judge Cox is another one. He was a federal judge who always ruled against blacks. That was his way of dispensing justice. Judge Cox was the federal judge presiding when we were suing to move the case surrounding our beating to the federal court. He treated us like dogs in the courthouse, eventually ruling against us.

We appealed and moved it up to the fifth circuit court that also ruled against us. We were getting ready to take it to the Supreme Court, but our lawyers encouraged us to settle. The attorneys decided if they dropped the charges against us, we should drop the charges against them, so that became the settlement.

Goon Jones was the highway inspector who led the beating in the jail. He was also the officer who led the May 15, 1970, shooting at a girls’ dormitory at Jackson State University (JSU). In the wake of the Kent State University protests and in objection to the racial harassment that often took place at JSU, a historically black university, students initiated their own set of demonstrations beginning on Thursday, May 14. The student/police action culminated in officers shooting up a girls’ dormitory shortly after midnight on Friday, killing two people and wounding twelve others.2

On the same day as the JSU demonstrations, Connie Slaughter, one of my attorneys, had taken Goon Jones’s deposition in regard to my case. She had the chance to cross-examine him. In many ways, the shooting probably seemed like payback for him. Having a black woman ask him all those questions and accuse him of lying—it was basically unthinkable at the time, and the shootings at JSU probably seemed like an opportunity for him to once again assert his dominance and place in society.

Goon Jones retired from the state highway patrol to run for Simpson County sheriff, a position he held for nineteen years. He beat us up, and it made him more popular. In 1995, Jones and a jail trusty were shot and killed by a black man in Jones’s front yard. When Jones died, my daughter Elizabeth asked Vera Mae how she should feel that the man who had beat her daddy had been killed. Vera Mae said to Elizabeth, “The Bible says, ‘You live by the sword, you die by the sword.’” (See Rev. 13:10.) Goon Jones was arrogant too, and that makes it harder. When someone acts in humility—when there’s some sign of repentance for their harmful actions—forgiving them is more tolerable. But when a person displays a haughty mind-set—well, it’s really hard to show them love.

I know I’m not the only Christian who sometimes has a hard time loving my enemies. A recent nationwide Barna Group study looked at positive and negative contributions that Christianity has made in society. On the negative side, this is what they found: “When asked to identify what they thought were the negative contributions of Christians to American society in recent years, the most frequent response was violence or hatred incited in the name of Jesus Christ. One out of five Americans mentioned such vitriolic attitudes.” On the positive side, “One out of every five adults (19 percent) mentioned how Christians in the United States have helped poor or underprivileged people to have a better life.”3

Of course, that positive statement thrills me. But the two taken together remind me of something the apostle Paul wrote: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3). We as Christians are called to be recognized as Jesus’s disciples by the love we show to others—instead, we’re known for our hatred. This is tragic—and dangerous. Consider John’s teaching on this subject: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

When I think about loving people who are hard to love, my mind often returns to Saul and Ananias. Paul called himself the worst of sinners (see 1 Tim. 1:15), and his actions before he encountered Christ really were horrific. He approved of the murder of Stephen—and on the same day, a persecution started in which “Saul began to destroy the church” (Acts 8:3). As believers fled Jerusalem, Saul continued “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1–2).

I wonder what I would have done if God had instructed me, as He did Ananias, to minister to this man. What would you have done? What would I do today if God told me He was doing redemptive work in the hearts of the leaders of al-Qaida or ISIS—and He wanted me to be a part of it? Could I love someone who had been committed to destroying people like me? Come to think of it, am I praying, even now, that God will get hold of their hearts? Am I praying that they will have transformational encounters with Christ that will completely turn their lives around? (Did I ever pray for Osama bin Laden in that way?) What would my reaction be if the 9/11 masterminds sent out a new video saying that Jesus had visited them like He visited Saul? Would I go to them, ready to provide whatever healing and encouragement they needed so they could begin to dedicate their lives to the cause of Christ? If they turned themselves in, they would still need to face the consequences of their actions.

My forgiving al-Qaida and God forgiving them would not remove the government’s responsibility to bring them to trial for the murders they have committed. Honestly, I probably would find it very hard to forgive them, considering they murdered nearly three thousand people on September 11 and many others throughout the years across the globe.

It seems to me that we have a limited and distorted idea of love. Somehow we’ve developed the mind-set that to love one person or group, we have to hate another person or group. So we direct our love toward the groups we’re part of—our families, our denominations, our political parties, our ethnic groups—and feel free to hate anyone outside of these boxes. We may not hate them individually, but we hate them collectively. We condemn people for not belonging to the same groups we belong to—we look down on them for not thinking like us, worshiping like us, voting like us, or looking like us. Maybe we justify this behavior because we think the other group is wrong about God. Jesus doesn’t let us get away with that though. He taught that even being angry with someone else was like murder—and it made the angry person subject to judgment (see Matt. 5:21–22).

As a reconciler, I find myself interacting with people on all parts of the political spectrum. I tend to get in a little trouble with all of them from time to time, but I’m willing to risk offending people if it will help all of us to love better. One area that causes some tension—including at CCDA, where there’s a great deal of political diversity—is the pro-life debate. Some liberals get nervous when I say I’m pro-life. For the most part, I think they’re reacting to the right-wing idea of pro-life, which sometimes seems interested in only certain kinds of lives—unborn children, for instance. I am extremely interested in the rights of the unborn, but my passion for life does not stop when a baby emerges from his or her mother’s womb. I believe God wants us to be concerned for every life, including the lives of our young black men in jail, Mexican immigrants (legal or not) living in America, gay men and women, and so many others—saints and sinners!

A while back I gave a talk at an immigration rally in Phoenix. I told the people there that I didn’t come to talk about the legal questions—I don’t know enough about that aspect of the issue to speak on it. I just came because I wanted to be with my neighbors. I wanted to say to my neighbors on both sides of the US border that I love them. When I think about borders, what often comes to mind is Jesus and His family going to Egypt to escape Herod’s persecution.

Can you imagine how different things might have been if Jesus hadn’t been allowed across into Egypt? He took refuge in a foreign land until it was safe for Him to return to His home country. I don’t know how to translate that into immigration policy, but I know it says something to us about neighbors and borders. It is the government’s responsibility to monitor and manage its borders, but that has nothing to do with me loving my neighbors on both sides. I give the state the responsibility of managing immigration, and I take responsibility for showing love.

According to that recent Barna Group survey I already mentioned, the second most frequent response in the negative contribution category was “the opposition of Christians to gay marriage.”4 I personally am not in favor of gay marriage. However, I think it is significant that the way in which Christians have approached this issue is viewed as a negative contribution to society. So much hatred finds its way into discussions about this issue, and I often feel the need to apologize to the gay and lesbian community for the church’s inability to find the right language to affirm gay people as human beings. Yes, people have different opinions and beliefs about this topic, but there must be a way to discuss it and demonstrate love at the same time.

Another hot-button issue is gentrification, which takes place when urban developers come into dilapidated, urban neighborhoods, fix up the houses, bring in new businesses, and up the property values in the neighborhood.

Clearly, the revitalization of neighborhoods that were once run-down or abandoned is a good thing, but too often upper- and middle-class folks move into these neighborhoods, displacing low-income families and pushing out existing businesses. Instead, what we need to see is development that is centered on love and looks first to the people already living in an area and works with them to develop their neighborhood. New businesses can provide job opportunities for people who used to have to drive far away to find work and can instill hope in people who have been stuck in cycles of poverty. Through such collaboration, thriving multiethnic, multiclass neighborhoods can result rather than segregated neighborhoods at the expense of poor minorities.

In my own hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, I have been encouraged to see some of this type of development happening. I have seen it, for example, in the Fondren and Belhaven neighborhoods, where Belhaven University, my son Spencer’s alma mater, is located. During segregation, Belhaven was an entirely white neighborhood. When segregation became illegal, the same thing happened in Jackson that happened all over the country: the white people fled to the suburbs as black people started moving in. However, in Belhaven, things were different. Because the college was there along with a prominent church, many wealthier white people chose to stay despite changing neighborhood dynamics. It definitely took some stretching, but I watched Belhaven University (Belhaven College at the time) welcome my Spencer and learn to embrace him. Today the school is probably one of the most diverse private Christian schools in the nation, with students from thirty countries.

As a result, the Belhaven neighborhood has become fairly diverse itself, and when I go there to eat lunch or spend time in the businesses, I see blacks and whites working and eating together. It’s a comfortable multiethnic environment.

However, I don’t want to pretend that Belhaven is without problems. In 2015, an older white woman was murdered by younger African American men who robbed her, and my heart aches at the thought of what her family has felt and the fear her neighbors have experienced. It is my hope, though, that the Belhaven community will not be subject to the same fate as so many other urban communities. Even as more gentrification occurs in Jackson, I don’t worry as much that the minorities of Belhaven will get pushed out. I see the people of that neighborhood acting in love toward one another. I pray they will continue to come around each other in the love they have often displayed, embracing their neighbors who are different, comforting the ones who are mourning, and caring for one another the way a community should.

Love like that might look pretty strange to the world—but it would surely get people’s attention. I think it would get God’s attention too. Many people might get angry, but it would also make them ask about this God who commands His people to love in that way—because He first loved them. Love like that would certainly be compelling.

When I talk about love being the final fight, sometimes people are confused about what that means. When we think about fighting, we usually think about inflicting physical or emotional harm on one another—we punch, we shoot, we yell—we are violent. When we think about love, we get an entirely different picture in our minds—we think of gentleness, perhaps, or romance or kindness. So what does this love fight look like? One thing that’s important to understand is the biblical definition of love. John describes love this way:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:16–18)

Love is action; it is truth; and it is sacrifice. Love is being willing to give our lives for and to one another. It is sharing what God has given us—whether that means material possessions, wisdom, or anything else He has entrusted to our stewardship.

Inside and outside the church, we’ve missed this. Liberals, conservatives, Christians, Jews, and Muslims—we’ve missed a genuine understanding of God’s message. It is, very simply, His love for us, and the power He gives us to love one another. Jesus willingly died for people who mocked and rejected Him. He loved them that much—and He fought for their salvation. He fought not by inflicting violence on those who sought to harm Him but by submitting Himself to violence in order to bring about redemption for those He loved.

My most unshakeable belief is in God and His love for me. Whatever else I think I know, I am certain that He loves me, and I believe Paul’s statement that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). Because I am convinced of that love, I am committed to spending the rest of my life fighting the good fight by being a conduit of God’s love to those who desperately need to experience it.

Love was my first fight, and Lord willing, it will also be my last. It is my prayer that CCDA and all the organizations around the country that have been influenced by these ideas will continue this fight.