Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love

by Thomas A. Tarrants

Not long after that, Leighton called again. Billy was wondering if I might be open to having my story turned into a movie through his World Wide Pictures production company. This caught me by surprise, and I asked for time to pray about it. As I did, God impressed his answer on my mind very clearly. The answer was “No. If you try to build yourself up, I will tear you back down.” This seemed strange to me, since a movie could reach many more people than I ever could by just speaking to groups. Logically, it didn’t make sense. Plus, I didn’t think I had a problem with pride (though, like most people who struggle with pride, I did but was unaware of it). I continued praying and got the same answer: no. I called Leighton and declined.

  The Lord also had much more to teach me about race, and it started at Ole Miss. One of the students I met through a campus ministry event was S. T., a quiet, somewhat reserved African American. He and I became good friends and found each other’s company mutually encouraging. Another friend was Eddie, an engineering student from Africa. But the most unusual friendship of all was the one that developed with Nadim, an engineering student from the Middle East who spent most of his time with a couple of other engineering students from the Middle East. Nadim and I enjoyed each other, and he soon introduced me to his friends, who wanted to know more about America and Americans. I found them to be nice guys who were serious about their studies, and I invited them to attend church with me, which they did.

  I learned a bit more about Jewish people, too, through Al Binder. Our relationship continued after I left prison, mainly through occasional phone calls. An interesting and humorous exception was a chance encounter at the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Jackson, Mississippi. I had been invited and was in a small gathering the night before with Dr. Tom Skinner, an African American leader whose friendship and wisdom would later have a significant impact on me. For some reason, Al happened into the meeting. When he saw me, he got excited and starting telling everybody how I had become a real Christian. It was amazing, gratifying, and humorous all at the same time!

  During this period, I also got to know Frank and Joyce Watts better, making several trips to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to visit them in Gulfport, where they now lived. Frank had been one of the first law enforcement officers to question me in jail after my arrest in Meridian. Our friendship, which started after he was born again, had grown deeper as time went on. My visits gave opportunities to get acquainted with his sons, meet some of their church friends, and speak to their congregation. Good food, rich conversations, and attempted waterskiing were also part of our times together.

  On my first trip to visit Frank and Joyce, I also met with my dad, who had moved to Gulfport a couple of years earlier. We went out to dinner, and I told him how sorry I was for my hateful, rebellious ways and all the trouble I had caused him and the family. I asked him to forgive me, and he did without hesitation and never mentioned it again. This marked a turning point in our relationship, and things improved between us in the years that followed.

  Surprisingly, he and my mother later remarried, and he turned out to be a very good grandfather. A few years before he died in 1998, he came to faith in Jesus through the ministry of a faithful Baptist pastor, who took the time to make a home visit and share the gospel with him. This was a wonderful answer to decades of prayer by his mother and his wife and children. On his deathbed, his last request of me was to take care of my mother after he died, which I assured him I would do.

  After I had been at Ole Miss for a while, a friend at church, who was a gifted writer, persuaded me that my story could glorify God and help many people. I agreed, believing that it could help people see the dangers of nominal Christianity, how political ideology distorts biblical faith, and the fallacies of racism and anti-Semitism. We collaborated on a book titled The Conversion of a Klansman. We knew that this could be dangerous if it aroused the anger of the Klan, but we decided to trust God and do it anyway.

  I loved Ole Miss. I was thriving in its halls and classrooms. The academic environment suited me. But once my book manuscript was turned over to the publisher, I began to think more about possible consequences of its publication. The book wasn’t exactly the kind of publicity the Ku Klux Klan appreciated. It was sure to enrage them. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that they would likely attempt reprisals against me. The Klan had already tried to have me murdered in prison, and I was a far more accessible target at Ole Miss. Perhaps I would be better off moving elsewhere, to a place like Washington, DC, where I had some friends.

  While I was pondering this, an acquaintance gave me some of the most important advice of my life, saying I had to choose between two options: I could get on the evangelical speaker circuit and probably become a sensation, or I could keep a low profile and focus on learning the Bible, growing as a disciple of Jesus, and helping others grow as his disciples. The first option would be dazzling for a short time but ultimately would produce little of lasting spiritual value. The second would keep me relatively unknown but over time would produce much fruit in people’s lives.

  I had a strong desire to help others grow into disciples of Jesus who would know, trust, love, and obey him. I also knew that getting on the speaker circuit and becoming a celebrity would only feed pride, compromising my own discipleship. My passion was to be useful, not conspicuous; the right decision was obvious.

  I didn’t like the idea of leaving Ole Miss without having completed my degree, but it was clear that I should trust God for what he had in store for me in Washington, DC. This was a big step of faith for me. As an ex-convict and former terrorist from Mississippi, thirty-one years old, and without a college degree, how would I fit into the nation’s capital, a city filled with smart, powerful, important people? In many ways it did not make sense, yet a few days before I was to leave, God gave me a confirmation that I was making the right decision. Frank and Joyce Watts called me to say that God had told them to give me a car. It was a late-model Audi that one of their sons decided he didn’t want, and it would be a great replacement for my tiny old Volkswagen Beetle. This completely unexpected and totally undeserved gift was a great encouragement to my faith as I ventured into the unknown world of the nation’s capital.

  19

  A NEW DIRECTION

  I left the University of Mississippi for Washington, DC, with the intention of working in a ministry of discipleship while completing my undergraduate degree in classics at the George Washington University. Beyond that I had few details. But I was confident that God was leading me and would take care of me and work out his plans for my life.

  Little did I know that his plans included exposure to a wide range of peoples and places that would expand my perspective on life and change me in significant ways. Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s life.”1 That was certainly true for me.

  I now believe this is one of the reasons why God led me to relocate to Washington, DC, with its very diverse population. I would meet people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some of them would become friends, and those friendships would grow deeper and enrich me personally. My understanding of people, life, and the world would grow and many stereotypes would be shattered. Through the friendships that would develop, I would gain deeper understanding and insight into what life is like for people who are very different from me.

  This began soon after I arrived, when I reestablished contact with Dr. John Staggers, whom I had met when in Washington for Chuck Colson’s prison discipleship program. John was working at the all-black Third Street Church of God, just a few blocks from the Capitol. Among other things, he was helping lead Urban Breakfast, a ministry for the homeless that brought together the well-off and the down-and-out. John was a heavy, jovial man and welcomed me with a warm (and loud) “Hey mate!” and gave me a big bear hug. He took an interest
in me and gave me good advice in my early days in DC. I remember him cautioning me one day that Washington is filled with people who have agendas and that I needed to be alert to people who might want to use me for their own ends. It was good advice. Our relationship would deepen in the years ahead and he would introduce me to others over time.

  My first experience in full-time ministry was at a local university in the suburbs. Teaching and discipling students filled my days, and I loved it. It was an exciting, energizing, and fruitful period of ministry. But in time I came to see my need for more training, so I began to look into the possibility of attending seminary. Even though I had yet not completed my undergraduate degree, I was admitted to seminary as a special student. After demonstrating academic competency for a couple of semesters, I was allowed to transition into the master of divinity track, an option for people over thirty years of age.

  During my time in seminary, I learned a lot more about the nature of true discipleship; the church; the importance of community, humility, and servanthood; and much more. And just as important, I saw it lived in daily life. I also learned about the importance of cultural analysis and of discovering the unacknowledged assumptions that influence our thinking and behavior and the church. My eyes were opened as never before, and my sense of mission grew. After all that Christ had done for me, what would I do for him?

  After seminary, God renewed my call to the Washington area to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7), though in what capacity I did not yet know. Dr. Richard Halverson, who I had first met at Chuck Colson’s prisoners’ discipleship program, advised me to start at the bottom and let God take me wherever he wanted me to go. So at his suggestion, I began attending a weekly prayer meeting held in the basement of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and led by John Staggers and Congressman Tony Hall. The meeting drew an eclectic assortment of about twenty to forty people from around Washington: men and women, black and white, pastors, ministry leaders, businesspeople, congressional staff, government workers, prayer warriors, a few homeless people, and occasional visitors from other cities. This further expanded my horizons and kept me from vegetating “in one little corner of the earth.”2

  I attended almost every week for about five years, praying for the needs of the city’s people, including food for the hungry, housing for the homeless, deliverance from drugs and violence, racial harmony, issues in government, and revival in the churches. I got to know people who were directly involved in trying to address these problems. Being part of this group opened my eyes even more to the needs of the city’s poor and needy. And one of the pastors I met there would later play a significant role in my life by inviting me to co-pastor with him in a city church.

  Before I took that step, however, some friends and I helped start and lead the School for Urban Missions. This was an accredited, semester-long, off-campus study program for college students who were interested in missions in the urban world. The inner city of Washington, DC, was our base, learning laboratory, and place of service. The curriculum was focused on missions, discipleship, spiritual formation, and hands-on learning. Students loved it.

  While on a recruiting trip to Geneva College in Pennsylvania, I met Dr. John Perkins, who invited me to speak to a group of black students that he was due to address that afternoon. As I shared my story with the group, we transitioned to an open, honest conversation on race and grace that led to a warm friendship with John.

  John had been active in the civil rights struggle in Mississippi, fighting for what I had been fighting against. His brother had been murdered by a white policeman. When he tried to investigate, white officers had beaten him nearly to death. All of this had provoked him to anger and hatred. But by God’s grace, John survived and had been enabled to forgive his enemies and come to a place of loving white people.

  John and I eventually coauthored a book telling our stories in alternating chapters and concluding with a section on racial reconciliation. The book grew out of a mutual desire to address the widespread prejudice in the church. John and I hoped to show that the gospel of Christ could indeed overcome the barriers of race, economics, and class that divide us. And through John’s work and that of a number of business, political, and church leaders in Mississippi who share this vision, change has been quietly progressing in the state—notably so among churches composed of millennials.

  After a year and a half of directing the School for Urban Missions, I was called to serve as co-pastor of a church in Washington, DC.3 Predominantly white but with a mix of black and Hispanic believers as well, the congregation reflected the culture of the city, with people from the worlds of government and business mingling with the poor and even a few homeless folks. This experience continued to stretch me and move me out of my comfort zone. Preaching, teaching, and helping people with their problems was a joy, helping offset the stress and pressure I lived with in such a role.

  Opportunities to be involved in encouraging racial reconciliation in DC continued to arise. I was able to bring together a group of Washington pastors to hear John Perkins speak on the topic. I was also able to bring John’s son Spencer and his friend Chris Rice to speak at the church about their work on reconciliation across racial lines in their own church in Mississippi. Their book, More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel, had made a powerful impact on me, and I was eager for others to learn from them.

  Then one day, in the midst of busy pastoral ministry, I received a phone call from an acquaintance in Mississippi, who forwarded an email from Officer Tom Tucker, the driver of the police cruiser that chased me down in Meridian. Our first meeting had been in the middle of a furious hail of gunfire.

  His email began, “Dear Brother Tom.” What followed was an amazing testimony of God’s grace. Tom had gone on to become assistant chief of police in Meridian and retired after twenty years of service. He had been very skeptical when he heard about my conversion and subsequent call to ministry. As he put it, “For years I heard ‘Tarrants is a preacher now.’ Myself, being a play-like Christian at this time and not believing a person can change his life in this magnitude, could only say, ‘Yeah, right, I’m sure he is.’”

  But Tom’s skepticism had faded. He wrote, “I spent the first forty-five years or so of my life playing at being a good Baptist. Then, some sixteen years ago I met and married my wife, Bonnie, not knowing that her background as a Pentecostal preacher’s kid would persuade her to attempt to insure that this ole Baptist boy was saved.” He concluded, saying he’d like to “meet for a cup of coffee and a long talk” and hoped I could come speak at his church someday.

  A couple of emails and a few weeks later, Assistant Chief Tom Tucker and I met for that cup of coffee and long talk. It was quite a reunion, considering that the last time we had seen each other, we were locked in a blazing gun battle. Now there was no animosity or tension between us, just a comfortable friendliness.

  We talked about where we were in life. We talked openly about how profoundly grateful we were that God had miraculously spared us from killing each other on that fateful night in Meridian. Neither of us could explain it any other way. We acknowledged how grateful we were to be alive and in a better place. When we parted, it was as two brothers grateful to have been given new lives through Jesus Christ and now to be friends by God’s amazing, reconciling grace. And we are still in communication today.

  I enjoyed the years I spent serving at the church and working with the other co-pastor, the elders, and the rest of the team there. And I had seen encouraging growth in many lives, including my own. But after passing the age of fifty, I began to think more about the future. The road ahead of me was going to be a lot shorter than the one behind. How could I give God my best in the time I had left? For years, I had wanted to do further study that could help me grow deeper in my own spiritual life and equip me to be more effective in helping people mature in theirs. If I was going to do that, it would be now or never. I began to pray and seek counsel and came to bel
ieve that I should move forward. After more prayer and investigation, I applied for and was accepted into a doctoral program in Christian spirituality. In order to give myself fully to my studies, I stepped down from my role at the church and became a full-time student.

  20

  MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

  At this point in life, I had experienced more than my share of surprises from God. His plan had taken me in directions I had never dreamed of. And he wasn’t finished. The greatest and most rewarding surprise was yet to come.

  My doctoral studies did not take all of my time, so I prayed and asked the Lord if he had anything else he wanted me to do. Immediately, the thought came into my mind to contact Art Lindsey, president of the C. S. Lewis Institute in Washington, founded in 1976 by James Hiskey and Dr. James Houston. The institute’s mission focused on equipping lay-people to live and share their faith in Christ in public and personal life as C. S. Lewis had done. This took the form of discipleship of heart and mind. The institute was nondenominational and committed to biblical orthodoxy. The ethos was “Unity in the essentials, liberty in the nonessentials, and love in all things.” The inaugural lecturers were John R. W. Stott, J. I. Packer, and James Montgomery Boice, and leaders of their stature had been regular lecturers ever since. I met with Art for lunch a couple of times, and out of our conversations he suggested that I consider doing some volunteer work with the institute in the area of discipleship. I agreed.

  Several months later, however, in September 1998, amid a worsening financial situation, the board of directors of the institute was considering closing their doors. But the ministry had been fruitful and seemed more needed than ever. Much to my surprise, Art proposed that they keep the doors open and call me to take over as president. Amazingly, the board unanimously agreed to take a step of faith and invite me to become president. They asked me to strengthen the institute’s focus on discipleship and to make a commitment to remain in the position long enough for that goal to become a reality. This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting as I happily worked on my doctoral studies. But after much prayer and counsel from family and friends close to me, it seemed clear that God was calling me to it. I accepted the mission and committed to stay for at least ten years.