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

By John Perkins and Shane Blackshear

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781725299382

John Perkins

John Perkins has traveled and worked with South American indigenous peoples since 1968. He currently arranges expeditions into the Amazon and has developed the POLE (Pollution Offset Lease on Earth) program with the Shuar and Achuar peoples as a means of preserving their culture against the onslaught of modern civilization. He is also the author of The Stress-Free Habit, Psychonavigation, Shapeshifting, and The World Is As You Dream It.

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Introduction

Go and Do Likewise

One of the most famous passages in the Bible is found in Luke 10:25–37. Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. If, like me (Shane), you grew up in church, you know the story well. It’s long been a favorite in children’s church gatherings in part because it’s a simple and easy to understand story, with a simple and easy to understand lesson: be kind and take care of others. While being kind and taking care of others is certainly important and consistent with Christian teaching, there’s much more to this story and a far more radical narrative is at hand.

Let’s start with the actual text.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him, What is written in the law? What do you read there? He answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? He said, The one who showed him mercy. Jesus said to him, Go and do likewise.

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That’s the story and you’ve probably heard it read aloud several times, but it’s worth the trouble to pause here and ask some questions of the text. The Good Samaritan was not the man’s name, it’s a description.

So, who were the Samaritans? To answer this we have to go way back hundreds of years before Jesus when the Hebrews, God’s chosen people, had their northern kingdom of Israel captured by the Assyrians. This was a devastating blow to the Israelites. Some of them were taken into captivity and some were left behind. Some of those that were left behind intermarried with the Assyrians. This was forbidden by God, not to mention the perceived act of betrayal it was to enter into marriage with those that conquered your own land and people. These unfaithful and treasonous Hebrews and their children were Samaritans.

The Samaritans were marked people—marked for their failure to be good and faithful. Jews and Samaritans, as a rule, didn’t even talk to each other. This is why in the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well,

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when Jesus asks the woman to give him a drink of water, it’s not a small thing. Jesus not only spoke to a Samaritan (not to mention a woman, which would have also broken social taboos), but actually puts himself in a place of needing something from her. The audacity of Jesus’ request is exposed when she responds, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?

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The next question we should ask about the story of the Good Samaritan is: Who was Jesus talking to? The answer is given in verse 25, a lawyer, or as the New International Version puts it an expert in the law,

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in this case Jewish law. The expert would have been surrounded by other experts or at least other Jewish people. This is important because Jesus would have been talking to the very people that would have seen Samaritans as their enemy.

It may be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of Jesus’ original audience, but to make it easier, reread the parable but insert the name of a group that you see as an enemy or at least find it difficult to love. The group will be different for different people, but will probably stand for a cause you find abhorrent: gun control, gun rights, pro-life, pro-choice, environmentalists, lobbyists, Democrats, Republicans, the Taliban, Isis, or people who wear cargo shorts. Take your pick. Now, reread the story, making your worst enemy the hero. It reads differently, doesn’t it? Now, you have an idea of how this story landed for those in Jesus’ audience that day.

Another important component of the story is that Jesus didn’t initially tell it at all. Jesus seems to have been happy just to tell his audience to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

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Often our response is like the response of the lawyer, You’re telling me to love my neighbor? Okay then, who exactly is my neighbor? And what we’re really asking is Who exactly am I required to love and who can I get by with not loving? The story of the Good Samaritan is an answer to a question in the classic style of a Jewish rabbi, not content to just give a straight answer but to instead tell a story that allows the hearer to engage and come to the answer on a deeper level. By the end of it, Jesus is directing the question to the lawyer, and this Jewish lawyer has to admit that the Samaritan, his enemy, was the real neighbor.

In effect, the answer to the lawyer’s question And who is my neighbor?

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is Your enemy, the person you like the least, the person you hate, and everyone!

The story of the Good Samaritan is instructive to us in many ways, not least of which in the way that the Samaritan was not passive. We tend to think of peacemaking as a passive endeavor. Not rocking the boat, not causing waves. We shrink back, we withhold ourselves for the sake of peace. These actions are of course not real peacemaking, they’re a false peace and a false unity. Real peacemaking is risky, dangerous, and costly.

The Life of John Perkins

John and I (Shane) spent some two years sitting down with each other, from our respective homes in different parts of the country, having conversations about John’s life. After those two years (plus a few additional later conversations) we identified nine key aspects of his story that we felt were crucial and instrumental in building a life and lifestyle of peacemaking and transformation, both deeply important and often overlooked components of loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, mind, and loving our neighbor as ourself. It’s our hope that John’s life can be your guide as you figure out what living this Jesus-life means to you in your context.

1

. Luke

10

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25

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37.

2

. John

4

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1

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42.

3

. John

4

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9.

4

. Luke

10

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25.

5

. Luke

10

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27

b.

6

. Luke

10

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29

b.

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