John M. Perkins > Quotes

“Love Is The Final Fight”
― John M. Perkins

“You have to be a bit of a dreamer to imagine a world where love trumps hate--but I don't think being a dreamer is all that bad. Joel prophesied that God would "pour out [His] Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" (Joel 2:28). I'm an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“I am all for churches being a part of the nonviolent marches and protests that have happened in the wake of violent killings, but these protests happen only after a tragic event has taken place. I want the church to be what prevents these acts from ever happening. I want the church to be the community that is so dedicated to loving our neighbors, to caring for the poor and neglected, and to living out true reconciliation that these killings do not even take place.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“God has always wanted the vulnerable in society to be cared for. He never intended for them to languish in poverty, abuse, slavery, homelessness, or other types of devastation. When we care for individuals who are trapped in these ways, when we show them love and help them move toward freedom and wholeness, we participate in bringing a little part of God's Kingdom back into alignment with His greater plan. We do justice and God smiles.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. We only need to examine what happened when the Church was birthed to see exactly how God intends for this issue of reconciliation within the body of Christ to fall out (p. 33).”
― John M. Perkins, One Blood: A Parting Word to the Church on Race

“Yielding to God's will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace.”
― John M. Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down

“In America, education and quality of life are directly related. Lacking a good education means lacking, among other things, access to the very doorway that leads to a wholesome life-style. Education is not a luxury in modern American society—it is essential for survival.”
― John M. Perkins, Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development

“Justice is a process, and change takes time, but I believe we ought to dream big dreams and make big statements as we pursue those dreams. Amos didn't tell the people that God wants justice to trickle through their society. The New Living Translation uses the phrase "mighty flood of justice" (Amos 5:24) to describe what God wants to see. One thing we learned in Mendenhall is that once flood waters start rushing through a place, there's no turning them back with human strength.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“justice is something for which every generation has to strive.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“William Pannell said in one of his sermons that the ugliest four-letter word in the English vocabulary is "them". It's a word that separates and divides. It's important that we know their names. It's really hard to dislike someone you pray for regularly. One of the most important things we can do to move the cause of reconciliation forward is to pray for the brothers and sisters who we have been separate from.”
― John M Perkins

“The reason we haven’t solved the race problem in America after hundreds of years is that people apart from God are trying to create unity, while people under God who already have unity are not living out the unity we possess. The result of both of these conditions is disastrous for America. Our failure to find cultural unity as a nation is directly related to the church’s failure to preserve our spiritual unity. The church has already been given unity because we’ve been made part of the same family. An interesting point to note about family is that you don’t have to get family to be family. A family already is a family. But sometimes you do have to get family to act like family. In the family of God, this is done through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. A perfect example of spiritual unity came on the Day of Pentecost when God’s people spoke with other tongues (Acts 2:4). When the Holy Spirit showed up, people spoke in languages they didn’t know so that people from a variety of backgrounds could unite under the cross of Jesus Christ. The people who heard the apostles speak on the Day of Pentecost were from all over the world, representing at least sixteen different geographical areas, racial categories, or ethnic groups (Acts 2:8–11). But in spite of the great diversity, they found true oneness in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual oneness always and only comes to those who are under God’s authority because in that reality He enables them with the power of His Spirit.”
― John M. Perkins, One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love

“Right before Jesus went to the cross, He prayed that all believers, past, present, and future "may be one, as You, Father are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me" (John 17:21 NKJV). This was Jesus's prayer for us all, yet more often than not, I fear we have not lived up to it. Instead, we fight for our own way, for our selfish desires, for our right to be superior. We build churches centered on our own cultural ideas of God, rather than on seeking to bring us back to Him. And then we fight with other churches and religions about who is serving their personal culture god the best.

Come dream with me. Dream of a fight for something bigger, something more important and worthwhile. We need to fight for justice and peace, for the walls between us to come crashing down.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“The difference between relocation and gentrification is motive, plain and simple. When we decide to move into an inner-city neighborhood we should always ask ourselves the question, Is this good for my new neighbors? Moving into inner-city neighborhoods for merely selfish reasons with no regard as to how it will affect the community residents will probably eventually do harm to your neighbors.”
― John M. Perkins, Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development

“If the church took up the responsibility of caring for the poor, of living incarnationally, of participating in the unspeakable gift of giving, our world would look much different from the way it does today. Justice is a stewardship issue, caring for the poor is a stewardship issue, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is a stewardship issue. We have the resources, but our priorities aren’t there yet.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“And it requires that we make some uncomfortable confessions. G.K. Chesterton said, "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." I believe this statement can be applied to the lack of reconciliation within the Church today. We've not been able to arrive at the solution because we haven't seen or acknowledged the problem.
The problem is that there is a gaping hole in our gospel. We have preached a gospel that leaves us believing that we can be reconciled to God but not reconciled to our Christian brothers and sisters who don't look like us - brothers and sisters with whom we are, in fact, one blood.”
― John M Perkins

“We've been looking in all of the wrong places for help in fighting this battle for reconciliation. We've sought help from social service agencies and government programs. But this is something that requires divine power.”
― John M Perkins

“True Christian change works more like an old oak tree in the spring, when the new life inside pushes off the old dead leaves that still hang on.”
― John M. Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down

“If we have been silent and have chosen to ignore the mistreatment of others in the past, we should begin to speak up and challenge injustices. If we were racist and bigoted in our speech and actions, there should be a radical change that is observable. If we have been angry and spiteful toward the other, there should be a radical change that is observable. And, yes, if we have an abundance of wealth and we have the opportunity to use this blessing to encourage those we have previously been prejudiced against, we should open our hands in Christian love and brotherhood. We should tear down the walls that have separated us for so long.”
― John M Perkins

“Perhaps the strongest indictment against us as the Church is that we have settled for an Americanized version of the Church that mirrors whatever culture says, and there is no collective sense of loss, no sense of remorse. We have sinned deeply. The problem is that we haven’t got a taste of the sinfulness of racism... We don’t see the wickedness of profiling God’s people that He has created to be one and that He has created in His image (p. 75).”
― John M. Perkins, One Blood: A Parting Word to the Church on Race

“Jesus intentionally brought together disciples who were very different - fishermen, tax collectors - not people who would naturally love one another. But he did this to show us what love looks like in practice. We have the privilege of putting this same kind of love on display as we love those in the body of Christ who don't look like us.”
― John M Perkins

“Love. No matter where I start, I always end up here.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“We need to get beyond our ignorance of the other. We need to move beyond the thinking that white privilege means that all whites live a privileged life. This perspective ignores the reality of class in this country. The plight of poor whites was largely ignored until the last presidential election. According to the 2013 data from the US Department of Agriculture, 40.2 percent of food stamp recipients were white; 25.7 percent, black.4 What’s Their Story? We would do well to hear and learn from the stories of whites, especially those who share the common struggle of poverty and marginalization. In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance shares his story of growing up poor: “To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.”5 When we understand the details of the other’s story we realize that we have much more in common than we ever imagined.”
― John M. Perkins, One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love

“When you live a lie it destroys everyone involved. For the slave master, his conscience was seared as the love of money, and economic gain overruled his concern for his fellow man. And for the slave, his sense of dignity and personhood was assaulted without recourse.”
― John M Perkins

“The psalmists came to God with pure, raw emotion...He wants us to empty our hearts of this heaviness...I know that without his Spirit moving on all of our hearts, nothing will happen for good.”
― John M Perkins

“Justice is any act of reconciliation that restores any part of God's creation back to its original intent, purpose or image. When I think about justice that way, it doesn't surprise me at all that God loves it. It includes both the acts of social justice and the restorative justice found on the cross.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“Injustice is an evil in society that must be fought.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“Throughout Scripture we read about God's concern for people who are vulnerable or suffering - the poor, the widows and orphans, the foreigners in the land, and so on. All Christians should feel a sense of calling to where there is pain in our society.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“In the midst of all the pain, oppression, and lack of meaning in life, the Church must proclaim the answer that is provided to us so clearly in Scripture. It is simple. We must be loving like Jesus in this fractured world.”
― John M. Perkins, One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love

“But why is it then that some Christians get all hot under the collar when an organization like ours gets out and helps the whole community? I see economic education as a total responsibility to all people. And that responsibility is not lessened if some of those helped do not respond to our preaching of the gospel.”
― John M. Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down

“I believe in the inherent dignity of all human beings. The Bible states clearly that God created men and women in His image from the very beginning. (see Genesis 1:27) No matter how damaged people become, they still bear that image. No matter how much people have been oppressed or how much they have oppressed others, the part of them made in His image is worth rescuing and restoring.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win