Volume 30, No. 46                                              
November 20, 2005

The Rejection Injection

   John Howard Griffin put a whole new complexion on racial injustice and it really got under the skin of his many critics.

   The story of this controversial man started when the Texan went to boarding school in France at age 15. After graduation, he worked in an insane asylum to pay for further studies.

   When World War 2 broke out, Griffin joined the French Resistance as a medic. He helped countless Jews escape the Nazis by disguising them as asylum patients. Then, when America joined the war, the young man went home to enlist and was sent to the South Pacific.

   During a ferocious battle, Griffin was seriously wounded in an explosion and left for dead.  But someone in the burial crew noticed he was still breathing and got him help just in time. Eventually, Griffin’s head injuries turned him blind.

   Finding solace in writing, he penned five books, starting with The Devil Rides Outside, a 1952 novel about a man who resists worldliness and tries to live a spiritual life.  Then, after 12 years, Griffin’s eyesight mysteriously returned.  So did his moral determination.

   Having seen the Nazi persecution of Jews, he was appalled by racial discrimination.  So with the backing of Sepia — a  magazine devoted to black culture — he had himself injected with a chemical that turned his skin brown when exposed to the sun. After shaving his head, Griffin spent six weeks in the South, experiencing the hate and indignities heaped upon blacks.  He wrote about bus drivers who wouldn’t let him off at his stop, stores and restaurants that wouldn’t serve him, and how he was threatened, harassed and kicked out of a public park.

   In 1961 the Sepia articles were published as Black Like Me, which became a bestseller in some parts of the country.  But in his Texashometown, Griffin was burned in effigy, so he moved his family to Mexico until tempers cooled. Returning nine months later, Griffin was diagnosed with bone disease, which eventually led to 70 operations. He died in 1980 from diabetes complications, amid false rumours his illness was caused by his skin-darkening experiment.

   The most obvious parallel in this story is with Jesus.  “Though he was God, he didn’t demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing;  he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form.  And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:6:8.)  

   Leaving the glory of heaven to share our humanity, he was “just like us in every way.” (Heb. 2:17)  He “understands our weaknesses for he faced all the same temptations we do, yet he didn’t sin.  So let’s come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.  There we’ll receive his mercy and find grace to help us when we need it.” (4:15,16)

   We can never say to God, “You just don’t know what it’s like!”   Jesus not only understands, He uses his power to change our lives.  Sometimes He changes our situations.  Sometimes He changes our ability to deal with them.  Either way, He makes all the difference.

   When the Great Physician helps us escape the judgment and condemnation of the world, many assume we’re crazy.  But we’re escaping to reality, not from it.  And that demands a response. So, on another level, we’re the ones who resemble John Griffin.  

   In the battle between good and evil, we’ve got to sign up and step up, knowing the fight will be fierce.  At some point, you may even find yourself on the verge of emotional destruction, barely hanging on. But it’s often in those times of pain and psychic blindness that we most clearly see the stark choice between worldliness and living a spiritual life. When we get back our vision, it should make us even more determined to help those who are victims of pride and prejudice.

   When our hearts are injected with God’s love and exposed to the Son, we become better able to empathize with the struggles of the despised and discarded.  Make no mistake, we’ll be hailed by some and hated by others, but God says there’s no room in a Christian’s life for discrimination or recrimination.  We’re either people of love and light, or we’re not.  It doesn’t get any more black and white than that.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the followers of Christ nondenominational congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To get on a weekly mailing list for free Cross Current articles, send an email to sgamble@bfree.on.ca