Go and Do

Nine Axioms on Peacemaking and Transformation From the Life of John Perkins

John Perkins, Shane Blackshear

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781725299368, 9781725299375
• eBook ISBN: 9781725299382
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Shane had the privilege of meeting his long-time hero: civil rights leader, and minister, John Perkins. Little did he know that we would form a friendship and John would become a mentor. Over a series of years they had numerous conversations as Shane wanted to know from John what leading a life faithful to Jesus Christ actually looks like.What followed was a series of vulnerable and heartfelt conversations between John and Shane and their reflections on those conversations. John's words and advice are distilled into nine axioms for peacemaking and transformation.

Chapter 1

Know Where and Who You Came From

A Son of Sharecroppers

I (Shane) sat in the counselor’s office thinking about how I ended up there. I was in my early twenties,had recently become a pastor of a church I was planting with a few friends, and I was desperate to change some patterns in my life. My biggest problem was that I was angry, almost all of the time. If someone cut me off in traffic I fumed. My rage wasn’t just reserved for strangers, those on my church planting team were targets too. If a team member didn’t show up for an event or workday I secretly judged and resented them. Blowing up and yelling at them seemed unbecoming of a pastor, so instead I seethed internally, becoming quiet and withdrawn. The result was downward spirals of isolation, resentment, and bitterness.

I had done what I was told was required of me to become a Christian earlier in my life, namely, praying a prayer to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I had walked down the aisle of my church and gotten baptized when I was six years old. When I was twelve I began having massive doubts about God’s existence, and even if there was a God I wasn’t sure about my standing with him. The good news is that at the end of some gut-wrenching wrestling with doubt I ultimately came out on the other side with a more real and serious faith in a more relational God. And yet, even then, that experience alone hadn’t prepared me for much of the nitty-gritty of life, specifically the struggles I seemed to experience with anger. It seemed that an experience with God, and my sincerity, weren’t enough on their own.

As I sat in that counselor’s waiting room that day, I would have told you that my rage came from a place of justice. I was simply angry at people not behaving as they should, not following through with their commitments, being selfish, and putting their desires before others.

That day the counselor patiently helped me unpack what had been going on inside of me. The acuteness and constancy of my anger eventually subsided. Years passed, and I was better and happier, and while my anger was there it wasn’t perennial. I still struggled with understanding why and how it had held such a tight grip on me. This was just one of the things weighing on me when I met John Perkins.

John Shares: Where He Came From

The first day I met John he was in Austin to speak at a conference. We met up in his hotel room downtown. I sat on the sofa in his room and he in a puffy chair to the side. I had just met John for the first time in person a few minutes earlier, as he ate breakfast downstairs in the lobby. I knew a lot about John but only from reading his books. I had only heard his voice in the YouTube videos I watched of his sermons and talks. Suffice it to say that I was a little nervous meeting him in person. Truthfully, I really wanted him to like me.

Lucky for me, John seems to like almost everyone he meets. Seconds after meeting someone new he’ll start talking about the last conference he went to, a sermon he’s working on, or the latest news about his wife or grandchildren, as if you’ve been friends for years and he’s just catching up on the latest goings-on of his life.

There we were in that typical midrange big city hotel room sitting on a couch and chair that no doubt looked just like the couch and chair in every room in the building. I was still nervous to be sitting across from someone I so admired and so larger than life. I tried to act casual.

“So, Dr. Perkins,” I tried to say as nonchalantly as possible, “what was your childhood like?”

He stared off nowhere in particular as if trying to think of where to start.

“Well, you know, it seems like now, as I reflect back, my grandmother had been the mother of nineteen children, my grandfather was already dead when I was born in 1930. We had been sharecroppers and bootleggers. Of the nineteen children, many of the girls had babies and they said they had been married to some man, but they weren’t around. So, when my mother died, my daddy dropped me off at my grandmother’s house along with these other children. So it was a big house. I guess the first thing I remember, probably, was crying, looking for a person to care. I’m sure my grandmother loved me. I would always cry in her lap. I was probably crying saying ‘Momma,’ because the first thing I remember knowing was that my mother was dead. I didn’t have a mother to call upon. I think there was a heavy feeling of sorrow around me.” His voice was taking on the cadence of a sermon the more he talked about his mother.

“As I look back at having lived this life, that deficit of cradle love from my mother probably set the course of my life. Now that I think about it, I think it was that longing for love and acceptance, deep belonging, I didn’t understand it at the time, where I was going, but I was being shaped by that and the desire to be loved.”

I was taken aback by John’s awareness of how his very early experiences in his family of origin had profound effects on the rest of his life.

John has shared the story of his mother’s death publicly in the past. She had a disease called pellagra, and it was caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin in the diet or the body’s inability to absorb niacin. During that time, it was an epidemic in the United States and caused over 100,000 deaths.

What took me aback was that I could see that for John, it was still fresh, and it shaped his outlook on life from a young age. He told me about how his mother’s sickness had played a role in the way he saw his place in the world.

As he often does when recalling something, John squinted his eyes shut and looked down and to the side as he talked. “Probably less than ten years ago I was having my early morning prayer and Bible study with my youngest daughter. She was taking over my ministry and I was trying to anchor her in the story of the Bible. I had been studying and discipling people in the Bible for forty years probably, and that morning we were studying the Gospel of John. In the text, John 19:26–27, Jesus was on the cross and said ‘this is your son’1 to his mother and said to John ‘this is your mother.’2 There was this exchange, and it hit me then. My mother died. This is a similar thing. Jesus is about to die. It’s a similar exchange. Jesus takes care of his mother before he dies. My mother died, and I was taken care of and I said ‘I was probably taking the nutrition she needed for her life.’ She needed protein, and I was nursing, taking it from her. I stood up, looking at my daughter and I said something like ‘I killed my mother!’ You know, very emotional like.” His head bobbed as he talked as if to emphasize the impact his realization had on him that day.

“My daughter put her arms around me and she said, ‘It happened exactly the way she would have wanted it to happen.’ It’s true, my mother would have chosen to give her life so I would live. In that realization that morning, I saw myself as being an absolutely successful person.” His voice rose with those last three words. He knew he had lived up to the hope his mother had for him.

John so clearly saw the connection between his later decisions and the story of his mother. “That was always fuel for my success too, that thought, one day she would ask me, ‘What did you do for people like me?’ So that responsibility, that debt to my mother, all came together, and it has sort of shaped my life. It was an emotional moment in my life, cause—um—I don’t know, I couldn’t fault my mother for dying on me, I had to take responsibility, I couldn’t fault my grandmother for taking care of all those grandchildren. I remember seeing my father mark an X for his name and I realized he couldn’t read or write, so I couldn’t very well fault him for not having the tools to care for me.” John’s words came from a deep contemplation that happens over a lifetime.

“I’m glad I didn’t know earlier that nursing me is what killed my mother,” he explained. “I think I probably could have been an alcoholic had I known it earlier, so when I realized it I just took responsibility for what I could take responsibility for and I moved beyond being a victim of my life circumstances.” An expression of gratitude had formed on his face.

“I look forward to meeting her. She’ll be the judge, she’ll be one measure of the success of my life. You know, that has meant a lot to me, and it’s always impacted me. For instance, it was always difficult for me to criticize the poor. I would get mad at the poor, or rather mad at a society’s indifference to the poor. No, I didn’t grow up being conscious of the effect my mother’s death had on me, but I bet you I grew up with it in my subconscious and that helped to guide me.”

As noted, after John’s mother died, his father took John to live with his mother, John’s grandmother. I was curious to know more about his father and the effects he had on John’s life. “As a kid, did you ever see your father after he dropped you off at your grandmother’s?” I asked.

“He came to see me when I was about three or four. I knew he was coming. When he arrived, I was asleep in bed. He came in the night and took me out in the front of the house by the fireplace. I remember it was somewhat embarrassing. He called me his baby and at that age I was too big to be a baby. But it felt like I belonged to him.” He clo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Know Where and Who You Came From
• Chapter 2: Affirm Dignity
• Chapter 3: It Will Cost You Something
• Chapter 4: Embracing Forgiveness
• Chapter 5: Imagination and Creativity Is a Must
• Chapter 6: Be Incarnational
• Chapter 7: Pursue Diversity
• Chapter 8: We Have to Know Our History
• Chapter 9: We Must Be the Church
• Bibliography