Ex clan member, Tom, rolls up his shirtsleeve to reveal an arm with a bicep-sized section of flesh missing, it hints of a dark past.  This happily married seminary graduate was once known as “mad-dog killer” for his racially motivated bombing attacks in the late 1960’s.  As a Ku Klux Klan member, Tom admits, “I was a thoroughly indoctrinated, well-trained fanatic, willing to put my life on the line for the cause.”  He spent eight years in a Mississippi prison, where he turned to Christ.

Tom came to the Lord six years before he got out of prison.  “What got me in prison was bombing and attempted bombing, which grew out of hatred for blacks and Jews.  Once I came to Jesus, (He) revealed the sins in my life, including racial hatred and violence.”  The rhetoric of the Klan was to fight for God and country.  Racism and anti-Semitism were covered with a thin veneer of religion.  The Lord changed my heart and delivered me from this deception. My great desire was to read the Bible, pray, and live for God.  The more I read, the more my mind was renewed.  I saw racism as incompatible with Christian faith.  You don’t have to read far in the Bible to hear the call to love God and love others.  I realized blacks weren’t as they were portrayed in the propaganda I read.  In the first year, all the racism went away. Often racism is an expression of pride and arrogance on the part of those that are looking down on another race or ethnic group.  A particular group (could be) responding with anger for being regarded that way and treated unfairly.  It can be complex, but ultimately it comes down to one thing-sin, individual sin, corporate sin, and institutional sin.  The ultimate solution isn’t social engineering-it’s God’s grace. 

We need to preach a Gospel that is more powerful than race, ethnicity, social class, and economic class.  The Gospel has to unify people across all barriers.  There are lots of ways to do that, but when the world sees Christ bringing people together across these barriers, this is one of the most powerful witnesses of the Gospel we can offer in a congregational setting.  Billy Graham has said the biggest obstacle to world evangelism is alienation – racial and ethnic hatred among people who differ from us racially.I didn’t have that racism kind of prison experience.  I do know that Jesus tells us to love one another as believers, love our non-believing neighbors, and even love our enemies.  When it comes to love, we in America think of it as an emotional event, but it’s an act of the will, first and foremost.    Jesus summed it up, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  This means we can love people we may not particularly like.

With racism, there can be a very high cost, as hatred twists and distorts the soul.  The more you give yourself to hatred, the more you become diminished as a human being.  Think about the Nazi death camps, what Communists did in Russia and China, & Osama bin Laden – you can twist yourself into a demon if you allow hatred full vent in your life.  The devil gets a toehold, then a foothold, then a stronghold.  (My toehold) began with the desegregation of public schools.  Instead of going about my business and letting it die down, I stayed with it and began to read racist and anti-Semitic literature.  That was the foothold.  Before I knew it, he had a stronghold.  I was obsessed with hatred of blacks and Jews.  It can happen with anything.   It’s a fundamental problem in human nature.  It is the fruit of allowing anger to go unchecked in one’s life.  Anger has tremendous destructive power.

It’s important to sense where you are on the anger continuum.  I was off the charts – I needed a lot of help.  I found this through a combination of reading the Word and the Holy Spirit working in my heart and mind to reduce it to an appropriate expression.  Today not much gets me angry.  But things that used to upset me don’t bother me now because I’m focused on doing the will of God.                                                                                                                     I was arrested during an attempted bombing because the FBI paid off two people who were in on the planning.  They set up an ambush.  I could find reasons to be quite angry about that.  I could have spent the rest of my life with an unforgiving spirit toward those who betrayed me.  But by God’s grace I was able to forgive them.  If we look at reality and not technicalities, what I did was a serious crime with potentially murderous consequences.  Maybe somebody did throw a charge at you that you aren’t actually guilty of, but you’ve done the same thing numerous times before.  Is this ultimately injustice?  Aren’t we really getting what we deserve?  Reducing it to technicalities evades dealing with the real issue.  I can’t say I was treated unjustly.

At one point during the shoot-out, I had lost a lot of blood and was barely conscious.  The police opened up with their shotguns at 36 inches.  I could be consumed with hatred for them, because it wasn’t necessary or legal.  Or I could do what Jesus did.  Forgive.  It lies at the heart of resolving a lot of anger.  It has freed me from a lot of circumstances that would generate, intensify, or prolong anger. Justice consists of receiving what is due us.  If we’re ruthlessly honest we’d say, “Thank God I haven’t received justice.”  All of us have gotten by with things that could have had serious consequences.  You don’t have to go to prison for that to be the case.  Based on my prison experience, most guys I knew had done a lot more than they’d been arrested for. Occasionally innocent people are wrongly convicted.  And prisoners are sometimes treated unjustly in prison.   But at the end of the day, it’s about forgiving those who mistreat you so you aren’t bound up and alienated from God.  Nothing will quench the Spirit quicker than anger and unforgiveness.  I’m filled with gratitude to God.  If I got what I deserve, I’d still be sitting in a 6X9 cell.  I’m thankful to be out, to have a chance to serve the Lord, and to help other people. 

                                                                        Tom