More from Philip Yancey

This really shook me up last night. I read the passage below and have had to ask myself if I have become like this to those that that have not had the grace of God revealed yet.

 

"Coles tells of an imprompru sermon Martin Luther King Jr gave one day to 'brothers and sisters in the movement' at the SNCC office. The volunteers were growing tired of relentless opposition, and had few victories to show for all their efforts at registering voters and dismantling integration laws. King senses the student' temptation to become bitter, and then to turn on opponents in the same spirit of hostility they had been receiving - to become the enemy, in other words.

 

A big danger for us is the temptation to follow the people we are opposing. They call us names, so we call them names. Our names may not be 'redneck' or 'cracker'; they may be names that have a sociological or psychological veneer to them, a gloss; but they are names, nonetheless - 'ignorant', or 'brainwashed', or 'duped' or 'hysterical' or 'poor white' or 'consumed by hate'. I know you will give me plenty of evidence in support of those categories. But I urge you to think of them as that - as categories; and I remind you that in many people, in many people called segregationists, there are other things going on in their lives: this person or that person, standing here or there may be other things - kind to neighbors and family; helpful and good-spirited at work.

    You know, I think, what I'm trying to say - that we must try not to end up with stereotypes of those we oppose.

Even as they slip all of us into their stereotypes. And who are we? Let us not do to ourselves as others (as our opponents) do to us: try to put ourselves into one all-inclusive category - the virtuous ones as against the evil ones, or the decent ones as against the ignorant. You can see that I can go on and on - and there is a danger: the 'us' or 'them' mentality takes hold, and we do, actually, begin to run the risk of joining ranks with the very people we are opposing. I worry about this a lot these days.

                                                                                                                                                    (From The Call of Service)

 

Reading King's words, and Coles's response, I realised that Coles himself had, for me, turned the spotlight on that very temptation.

I had become the enlightened, right-thinking, educated cultural observer - the perilous stance that Coles had batled all his life, the perilous stance of the Pharisee. I need to rediscover the levelling truth of Jesus' gospel, which has more appeal to the prodigal son than to his responsible and successful brother. I needed a change in heart as much as a change in thought. Just as King sought to forgive those who had wounded him, I needed to forgive the church that had wounded me, or I would be left with a gospel of law and not grace, of division and not reconciliation. In his field work, Coles had unwittingly uncovered a radical Jesus who exposed my own masked needs."

 

From "Soul Survivor" by Philip Yancey (Hodder & Stoughton 2001),