Spencer Perkins and Philip Yancey

About two months before his death, Spencer Perkins told me that he was reading Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace?  Spencer said that Yancey's book might be the single best book he had ever read.  Previously under the guidance of John and Judy Alexander, Spencer and his White yokefellow, Chris Rice, had begun a new adventure of grace in their relationship and ministry which had helped them deal with "irreconcilable differences".

Without question, Philip Yancey's deep insights into grace expanded Spencer's understanding of and commitment to grace as a way of life.  Here are a few of Yancey's pearls of wisdom on grace:

1. From a Jewish woman in Israel regarding her attempts at reconciliation with Arabs: "I believe that we Jews have a lot to learn from you Christians about forgiveness.  I see no other way around some of the logjams.  And yet it seems so unfair.  I am caught between forgiveness and justice."(pg. 81)
2. Regarding Romans 12:19, "Do not take revenge, my friends. . . . it is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord."  "At last, I understood: in the final analysis, forgiveness is an act of faith.  By forgiving another I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am.  By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all the issues of fairness for God to work out.  I leave in God's hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy." (pg. 83)
3. "The word resentment expresses what happens if the cycle [of unforgiveness] goes uninterrupted.  It means literally, "to feel again": resentment clings tot he past, relieves it over and over, picks each fresh scab so that the wound never heals." (pg. 89)
4. "The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative." (pg. 91)  In other words, reliving the past with bitterness and resentment or becoming a prisoner of the past which shuts out future growth.
5. Martin Luther King: "Forgiveness is not just an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude." (pg. 125)

Spencer absorbed these profound ideas and applied them to himself and his fellow Afro-Americans.  Since Spencer and his father, mother, brothers and sisters lived in Mississippi most of their lives, they knew from bitter experience the daily trauma of racial oppression and poverty.  In addition to this they suffered from the profoundly traumatic events: the brutal beating of their father and the degrading experience of integrating Mendenhall high school as teenagers.  The humiliation, the bitterness went deep into their minds and emotions.

Joanie, for example, exploded, "I hate white folks," and it took her over 25 years before she finally could forgive white folks.

So Spencer's article, "Playing the Grace Card," reflects a personal intensity and reality that transcends even Yancey's superb book.  It is no small thing when a Perkins' family member replaces "I hate white folks.", with "I forgive white folks."

Here are some of Spencer Perkins's deep insights on grace:

1. "Our willingness and ability to give grace or to forgive others is an accurate indicator of how well we truly know God."
2. ". . . . my willingness to forgive them [my oppressors] is not dependent on how they respond.  Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free.  We no longer need to spend precious emotional energy thinking about the day that they will get what they deserve."
3. "And if, one step at a time, our discipleship as Christians could include giving each other grace, if our children could learn and practice forgiveness as well as they practice praise and worship, if we could literally create a counter-culture of grace. . . . the world would have to take notice."

In Christianity Today, July 1998, Spencer Perkins' article, "Playing the Grace Card" I quote:

"We are at an impasse over race because we cannot forgive, declared Spencer Perkins in what became his last public statement.  Speaking at a conference on racial reconciliation last January, the activist and writer confessed his past struggles in dealing with "white folks" and how he discovered a radical way forward in helping our racial divide.  The following week he died of heart failure at the age of 44.  Perkins, along with Chris Rice, directed Reconcilers Fellowship in Jackson, Mississippi, coauthored More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (IVP), and coedited  Reconcilers magazine."

Spencer writes:  "It was winter 1970, and my mother was taking my seven siblings and me to visit our father in the hospital.  No auto accident or natural illness had landed him in the life-threatening condition.  Rather, it was the nightsticks and fists of white law-enforcement officers that had nearly beaten him to death for his civil-rights activities."  

"My sister Joanie, then 14 years old, took one look at my battered father and stormed out of the room repeating angrily, "I hate white people.  I will never like them!"

"My mother tried to convince her that her attitude was not very Christlike.  But at that moment, with my father lying bruised and swollen, I could tell that even though my mother knew the right things to say, her heart was not in the words she spoke."

"Not that it would have mattered.  My sister was having no part of those tired, old words--love and forgiveness--anyway.  Those white people were not going to get off that easily.  All of us siblings wanted those men to get what they deserved.  To our knowledge, they never did."

"Today, to the casual observer, my sister looks as though she has reneged on her vow.  She has white friends, attends an interracial church, and functions well in a white environment.  But all her life, like many African Americans, Joanie has had a safe, time-tested method for emotionally dealing with whites."

In conclusion, I wish to make this final observation.  As important as it is for blacks to forgive their white oppressors in order to have authentic reconciliation between blacks and whites, it is ten times more important for white Christians, on a massive scale, to repent over their oppression, to engage in restitution, and then assist in the rebuilding of poor black communities.  But instead of repenting, most white Christians rationalize and see themselves as righteous ones.  Self-righteous people do not repent.