Everyone Has His Reasons

A year ago, in Sojourners magazine, I read an article by Danny Duncan Collum on the late civil rights activist and author Will Campbell. I saved that article and went looking for it as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ferguson unfolded. Collum, a Southerner like Campbell, wrote this: “Will Campbell gave me a grasp not only of the Southern tragedy and my people’s place in it, but of the larger human tragedy. Once I accepted the fact that even the vicious racists all around me didn’t make themselves and were not ‘the enemy,’ it was a pretty short step to the insight of the filmmaker Jean Renoir: ‘The really terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons.’ And once you know that, it gets really hard to hate and judge anyone.”

Go in peace to love and serve The Lord!
Josh