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The Power of Forgiveness

I’ve returned many times over the years to the spot in New Hebron where my brother Clyde was shot. Early on, as I stood in that place, all the emotions of that day would come rushing back to me—the pain, the fear, the confusion, the anger.

Recently when I went back, some sixty-two years after Clyde’s death, I was surprised to notice that I didn’t feel any of those things anymore. I remembered them, sure, but I didn’t feel them. I have to admit, that shocked me a little bit. As I stood there, I reflected on all God has done in my life since that terrible day. I remembered how Clyde’s killing was, in a way, what got me out of Mississippi. It drove me to California, where I came to know Jesus and heard God’s call to ministry. This tragedy contributed to who I’ve become, and that reveals the grace of redemption. It still amazes me the way God takes truly awful things that happen and uses them for His good purposes.

Until that recent visit I guess I hadn’t realized that my forgiveness of the man who killed my brother—and the people who maintained the system of injustice that made that killing not only possible but also permissible—was so complete. Any hatred I had harbored toward them was gone. Of course, most of those people are gone too, so they’ll never know that I’ve forgiven them. But that’s okay. My forgiveness of those people is God’s gracious gift to me. Forgiving has healed me and set me free.

During that visit I saw both blacks and whites lining the street together, waiting for a Christmas parade to start. The health center we started is still there, serving the community. I rejoice about those things.

To build a system that accommodates the oppression of anyone is wrong. Frederick Douglass said there isn’t a single attribute of God, not a single thought, which would accommodate the oppression of another. How can you oppress a brother or sister and call yourself a child of God? To put it another way, “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them” (1 John 2:11). Those who exercise hatred and oppression have distanced themselves from God and are in a position of grave need.

Of course, it’s not always easy to see oppressors as needing our love and compassion. Corrie ten Boom was a Christian in the Netherlands who, along with her family, helped Jews escape the Holocaust during World War II before they were imprisoned by the Nazis. Corrie and her sister were prisoners at the extermination camp called Ravensbrück. In her memoir The Hiding Place, she describes the moment when she first thought of her oppressors as people who needed compassion. This conversation took place just after a mentally handicapped girl was brutally beaten by one of the guards:

“Betsie,” I whispered when The Snake was far enough away, “what can we do for these people? Afterward I mean. Can’t we make a home for them and care for them and love them?”

“Corrie, I pray every day that we will be allowed to do this! To show them that love is greater!”

And it wasn’t until I was gathering twigs later in the morning that I realized that I had been thinking of the feeble-minded, and Betsie of their persecutors.1

The heart of God’s love is forgiveness. It is in His nature to forgive, for He is a merciful God. David knew that because he writes, “When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions” (Ps. 65:3), and “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. . . . He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103:8, 10). Paul knew it too: “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14). So did Peter: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus” (Acts 3:19–20).

I mention these three men specifically because they illustrate so well an important biblical idea: God uses the weak and sinful to show His power and strength. David committed adultery with Bathsheba and sent Uriah into a situation where he would almost certainly be killed. Paul was, at minimum, an accessory to murder and a persecutor of Christians. Peter denied Christ before His crucifixion. Yet God called David a man after His own heart, established David as king over Israel, and incarnated Himself in the world as one of David’s descendants. God turned Paul and Peter into the two greatest leaders in the New Testament church. His ability to use these individuals didn’t depend on their being perfect—it depended only on their being forgiven. I don’t claim to know all the reasons for God’s choice to use such broken people to do His work in the world. I do know that His doing so makes it clear that the power comes from Him and not from the human beings who serve Him.

I also know that God’s history of choosing and using damaged men and women gives me hope. It should give all of us hope. If God could and would forgive, heal, empower, and bless these sinful human beings, can’t we trust that He is ready and eager to do the same for us? I’m tremendously thankful to know and serve a God who is merciful—who doesn’t hold our failures over our heads but instead binds up our wounds, cleanses us of our iniquity, and allows us to participate in His great plan.

The stories of David, Paul, and Peter bring to mind another biblical principle: the more we’ve been forgiven, the more we love (see Luke 7:36–50). The greater our experience of God’s forgiveness for our sins against Him, the more devoted we are going to be to Him. Likewise, the more we experience mercy from our brothers and sisters, the more we will love them. So forgiveness has power both for the forgiver and for the forgiven. Experiencing forgiveness in either direction provides a wonderful release from bondage—whether that bondage is to bitterness or guilt. I’m sure that’s why God instructed us both to forgive and to ask for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer (see Matt. 6:9–13).

There’s a part of the Lord’s Prayer that can be both terrifying and liberating if we take it seriously. “‘Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6:12–15). So many of us struggle to forgive those who have sinned against us. Because of that, these can be frightening verses. But I think this is a hopeful message. The point here is that we can have our sins forgiven, and we can forgive others. The fact that we ought to forgive others is a burden. The fact that we can forgive others is a blessing.

As Christians, we must talk about evil, sin, and darkness. I am convinced that racism and all the other “-isms”—tribalism, sexism, classism, and others—that keep people apart are evil. The first sin of Adam and Eve separated human beings from God and from one another. Anything that widens that divide is also sin—it contradicts God’s will for humans as a community and for each of us individually. It’s total rebellion against the gospel, which bridges the gap between human beings and God, and between one human being and another. So we must talk about these things. But as we do so, we need to lower our hostile voices. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions. We need to ask, “Is it judgment or love that brings light into dark places?”

One thing my experience with sin has taught me is that it makes victims of both the oppressed and the oppressor. Both are bound by unforgiveness. Forgiveness finally breaks through our rejection and prepares our deepest emotions to align with the will of God, telling God that we need Him and that we cannot forgive in and of ourselves. It’s our yielding to God, rather than to temptation. In forgiveness I recognize that I, John Perkins, have a problem, and God’s power is needed to fix it. Since God knows all, my confession of sin affirms the deity of God, and all the attributes of God. What’s needed then is a benediction:

Now may the God of peace—

who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,

the great Shepherd of the sheep,

and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—

may he equip you with all you need

for doing his will.

May he produce in you,

through the power of Jesus Christ,

every good thing that is pleasing to him.

All glory to him forever and ever! Amen. (Heb. 13:20–21 NLT)

Many people complain these days about how our culture is rabid about scandal, and I don’t blame them. It’s unfortunate that there are people out there—whether enemies or opportunists—who are eager to bring up the past sins of others and use them to cause trouble. That is cruel and ungodly behavior. But there is a flip side to this coin. With the internet and twenty-four-hour news stations and all the other ways to share information almost immediately, it’s difficult to keep our transgressions a secret anymore. Transparency—this understanding that it’s getting harder and harder to hide anything—could make us more likely to seek and extend forgiveness. After all, that is what God commands us to do: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

This brings us to another key piece of the forgiveness puzzle, and that is repentance. Repentance is the gateway to God’s grace; it is the only way out of our sinful condition. Peter exhorted the crowd at Pentecost, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). John assures us that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). And way back in the Old Testament, God promised Solomon, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).

I had the privilege of being friends with the late Frank Pollard. Dr. Pollard was the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Jackson during the 1970s. In 1979, Time magazine selected him as one of America’s most outstanding Protestant preachers—and he was an outstanding preacher. Dr. Pollard would have liked to allow blacks to attend his church, but most of his deacons wouldn’t have allowed it. He left First Baptist in 1980 to serve as the president of Golden Gate Baptist Seminary near San Francisco, only to return in 1986, at a time when blacks were now accepted. However, it wasn’t until November 1998 that any black preacher spoke from First Baptist’s pulpit on a Sunday morning. Prior to that, another black preacher spoke at a Sunday evening service during a conference.

Dr. Pollard and I were regarded as senior statesmen of sorts, and we did several workshops together from time to time. At one of these workshops, after he had retired from pastoring at First Baptist, he said to me, “One of my greatest regrets is that I never had you at the church to preach.” He told me this with such deep sadness, as if he realized that God had called him to do something, and he hadn’t done it. That’s one of the saddest things in life—to recognize a missed opportunity to be obedient to God. I was grateful that Dr. Pollard said what he said—not because I had felt bad about not getting to speak at his church, but because I knew he needed to know that he was forgiven. I certainly understood how he had felt trapped by the culture he was in, and I didn’t want his heart to be heavy anymore because of this thing he hadn’t done. I was glad to have that chance to tell him that I forgave him for that—and I know God forgave him for it too.

That moment between Dr. Pollard and me was very personal. At the gala in June 2010 to celebrate my and Vera Mae’s fifty-nine years of marriage and fifty years of ministry, another distinguished white Mississippi man offered a more public confession. That man was former Mississippi Governor William Winter. Before I share with you some of the things he said that night, let me give you a little background about our relationship.

I first met Governor Winter back in 1967—only he wasn’t the governor yet. He ran for that office the first time in 1967 and lost in the primaries against a man named John Bell Williams. Williams had been in the US House of Representatives. He won as a Democrat but then endorsed a Republican’s bid for president, so his own party eventually stripped him of his party leadership role. Anyway, he came back to Mississippi and ran for governor. In his campaign, Williams painted Winter as a superliberal who was going to turn the state over to blacks. Winter was friendly to the black community—and he wasn’t willing to reject us to try to win the election, so of course he lost. He ran again in 1979 and won. That was the year that the second health clinic, this one in New Hebron, was opened. Governor Winter was invited to speak at the dedication.

Governor Winter and I were honored together ten years after my beating in the Rankin County Jail in Brandon for our reconciliation work in Mississippi. We were honored together again in 2010 by Mission Mississippi for Reconciliation Month in the state of Mississippi.

A lot of the elderly in the community, both black and white, came out for the dedication, and they just loved Governor Winter. He went around and shook everybody’s hands, and they were in awe of him. During his time in office, he showed tremendous concern for education, pushing for the Mississippi Education Reform Act of 1982, which got passed. That was the first time statewide public kindergarten was mandated for every school district in Mississippi. A couple of years after the New Hebron clinic opened, we started another one in Jackson and invited Governor Winter to dedicate that health center as well.

At the dedication he asked me, “John, if you were the governor, what would you do for Mississippi?”

I told him, “I’d spend some time up in the Delta, going around and talking to people. I’d tell them what government couldn’t do for them. I’d talk to them about what we, the government, could do together with them. I’d use my governorship to give hope to people in these towns and try to motivate them to do their part to improve their situations.” Well, shortly after that conversation, I read in the paper that William Winter was planning to spend a week in the Delta!

My family moved out to Pasadena the next year, but when we returned in 1996, I invited Governor Winter over to our house, and after that we began to get invited to participate in various events together to speak about reconciliation. He served on President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race around that time, and in 1999 he founded the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. Winter and I had always gotten along well and respected each other’s work. Still, I wasn’t expecting the words he spoke at our anniversary celebration. Rather than try to explain what he said, I’d like to share these excerpts with you:

I don’t have to remind you of what Mississippi was like in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s. I remember those years, as many of you do. Those years when this man was beaten and almost killed, and his brother was killed, just a few miles from where we have gathered tonight. Why? Simply because of what they look like. Simply because they were African American.

We hear a lot about terrorism these days, but let me tell you something: Mississippi had its share of terrorists back when John Perkins first came along. But he did not let them destroy him or his commitment as a Christian to stand up for right and justice. He possessed those special qualities of leadership that gave him the vision to transform what is into what ought to be. Not what ought to be just for ourselves, but what ought to be better for all of us.

A free society cannot exist for long if too many people in that society put their own image above that of their community. So if we really love our country, we don’t have a choice but to work, to serve our neighbors—especially our less fortunate neighbors—and to build up the community in which we live.

That is the only way our system can survive. And that is a lesson I think that John and Vera Mae Perkins have taught us; I know they have taught me. They have been an inspiration for me. I would say to them that wherever black people were enslaved for a long time—both literally and by a system of racial apartheid or racial segregation—we white folks were also prisoners of that system. I would say to you, John and Vera Mae, when you did so much to help break that old system—to help free black people from it—you freed me as well.

And one of the regrets that I have is that I didn’t have as much courage as I should have had to openly and visibly support you in those early efforts, and I apologize. I apologize to all of the African Americans in this gathering tonight and in this community and in this state for that dereliction of not having gotten out in the frontlines. But I also express my gratitude for enabling me to live a freer, more open, more rewarding, and more fulfilling life because of your breaking up that closed society.

Whether we recognize it or not, whether we want to accept it or not, all of us in this country are party to a contract that was entered into a long time ago. And that contract was expressed in the words of the Declaration of Independence where we pledged to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Those words bind us today just as surely as they bound the people who wrote them. And if anything, their significance is greater now than it was then because the world is smaller now, and it’s more dangerous now. The issues are more complex; the stakes are higher.

All of this simply means that we cannot live in isolation from each other. And we must find more ways to give real meaning to that contract that we have with each other. As never before in our history, we are called upon to sustain and expand our commitment to build up the communities where we live. Here in the Jackson metropolitan area and all of Mississippi, as far as we have come, we have to understand how much more we still have to do. For unless we continue to work, to breach the fault lines of race and class and financial disparity that still divide us, we can never expect to reach our true potential as a state and as a nation. These problems weigh especially heavily on us here in Mississippi because of our past mistakes that I’ve referred to—because we deferred for so long putting into effect the terms of that contract.

And all of us have to be involved in solving those problems now and solving them together.2

Confession is powerful. It has power in it. It has erasing power.

I was absolutely blown away by my friend’s words. They reminded me of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”3 Mr. Winter also reminded me of what God had taught me back in Brandon—that racism enslaves the oppressor as well as the oppressed. To hear not just a white man, but a former governor of Mississippi, acknowledge those truths and apologize to me and African Americans everywhere was pretty amazing. It was a healing moment, and it gave me hope that maybe someday we will see something like that on a national level (not that the apology would be directed at me, of course, but just that there could be a national acknowledgment of the sin of racism that has stained our nation’s history).

A few people have tried to offer such apologies. Different white Christian groups have sponsored national days of repentance in Washington—I’ve been to a few of those. Some politicians have made an effort too. Tony Hall, who served as a Democratic congressman from Ohio for more than twenty years, and Duncan Hunter, a Republican congressman from California, tried several times to introduce measures to offer an apology for slavery. Their measures got little traction in the US Congress though.

Some people argue that because slavery occurred more than a century ago, asking people to repent again is beating a dead horse. I understand that, but I also look around and see the legacy that slavery has left among black people—how it has damaged our sense of self-worth so severely and how other forms of bondage have risen up to take its place. We haven’t fully exorcised this demon from our national soul. Until we do, our best strategy is to repent. When confession comes out of our mouths, sin is forgiven and room is made for love to come into our hearts. Through love, real change can happen. Creating laws to protect people’s civil rights (and enforcing those laws) can bring about a degree of justice, but true justice will come only as we love one another and consider one another’s needs as important as our own.

Let me clarify one thing here. I agree with those who object to blacks and other minorities who seek repentance from only whites. We have made progress, and it’s not right to label ourselves victims or use racism (historical or present) as an excuse to do nothing. We shouldn’t expect whites to solve our problems. What we can do is invite our white neighbors to join us in the efforts we are making to improve our lives and communities. The fact is that we were deprived for many years, but now we have opportunities—and we can sometimes still use a little help in order to fully take advantage of those opportunities. We don’t want to use guilt to try to get people to help us; we want to use understanding about how God liberates us to enter into renewed relationships and move forward together. I need to be able to say to a white person I’m asking to help me with something, “This is not about you being wrong or me being wronged. This is about the time being right for us to work together in ways we never could before.”

The damage that resulted from the old system of segregation has left African Americans in a hard state. The breakup of the family, laws and systems that have kept us from flourishing, redlining in housing developments, and so many other lasting effects of segregation make it so much easier for a black man to rob or hurt an innocent white person without much thought because of the damage that has been done. On the other side, the damage done to white people from centuries of racism makes it easier for them to avoid living in black neighborhoods, fear black people walking the streets, or even commit vicious hate crimes against blacks. The lasting guilt and lingering fears of racism cause people to view those who are different as being almost subhuman, rather than seeing them as children of God created in His image. This is why we talk past one another when racial incidents flare. This is why we ignore other people’s stories or perspectives. This is why we always react defensively first, instead of humbly listening to and trying to understand the other side of the story.

But there is a better way. There is the way of Jesus Christ, shown to us on the cross—the most humble and grace-filled act there ever was. Due to our redemption, we have an obligation to forgive and accept the forgiveness of others. In forgiving and being forgiven, the healing process begins for both parties involved. Our acknowledgment of mistreatment and hurt is healthy for us; it’s good for others too.

Right now we live in a country with a lot of fear and distrust and animosity between political parties, ethnicities, socioeconomic groups, generations, and other categories. And if we are being honest, our churches are just as divided by the same things. Maybe we will never have a perfect country or live in an ideal society, but the church must begin this process of confession and forgiveness. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a church that repents of systemic injustice and instead brings forth love and healing? What would it look like for us to love our neighbors across the aisle, our neighbors who watch a different news network, listen to different kinds of music, and attend different schools?

You have to be a bit of a dreamer to imagine a world where love trumps hate—but I don’t think being a dreamer is all that bad. Joel prophesied that God would “pour out [His] Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions” (Joel 2:28). I’m an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together.