Book Review: Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited

These are posts I made on Facebook this week but wanted to preserve them here as well.
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On Monday I took Howard Thurman's 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited and read the preface. This sentence stood out to me: "Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion, and national origin?"

Chapter 1
"The masses of men [sic] live with their backs constantly against the wall."

In the first chapter of his 1949 book, Howard Thurman gives a brilliant typology of the different reactions those with their "backs against the wall," like first century Jews under Roman oppression, can have.

1. You can assimilate, like the Sadducees or Herod.
2. You can isolate, like the Pharisees. These are both non-resistant approaches.
3. You can resist violently, like the Zealots, and die trying.
4. You can have the Kingdom of God within you, like Jesus, and resist non-violently.

"Anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny."

Chapter 2: Fear
"The threat of violence... is a weapon by which the weak are held in check... Every member of the controller's group is in a sense a special deputy, authorized to enforce the pattern."

"The awareness that a man is a child of the God... who is at one and the same time the God of life, creates a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy."

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 is on Deception.
"Throughout the ages... the weak have survived by fooling the strong." If you speak the truth to those with overwhelming power over you, your life can be in danger. He believes that the prophecy against Tyre in Ezekiel 27 is really code for his captors in Babylon.

The disinherited then have three options:

1. Is to see no choice. You must accept that all of life is a lie. Honesty is not a choice if you are to survive.

2. A second is to compartmentalize and compromise as necessary. Be truthful in those areas you can and live the lie when you have to.

He considers both of these alternatives detrimental to the soul. "If a man continues to call a good thing bad, he will eventually lose his sense of moral distinctions." "The penalty of deception is to become a deception."

3. He advocates "complete and devastating sincerity," for this puts the powerful and the weak on equal terms. He believes Jesus modeled this approach. "The insistence of Jesus on genuineness is absolute." "A man is a man, no more, no less." [sic]
"I can sympathize only when I see myself in another's place."

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of Howard Thurman's book is on hate. While it starts off talking about the hate the strong can have toward the weak, he spends most of the chapter warning about hatred from the weak toward the strong.

"Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater." "Hatred cannot be controlled once set in motion." "Jesus rejected hatred... not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father."

Chapter 5
The last chapter is on love, loving our enemies in particular. He mentions three levels of such love: 1) toward our peers, 2) toward those in our community with whom it is not going to be popular to befriend (e.g., tax collectors), 3) toward dominating, oppressive powers (e.g., Rome).

A first step is to undermine the enemy status of the other. Find a space where you are just one human in relation to another human. Love will also require forgiveness for injury perpetuated by another group.

One might object, "Can the mouse forgive the cat for eating him?" It is not easy. Perhaps it is impossible in our own power. But "it is clear that before love can operate, there is the necessity for forgiveness."

Forgiveness is necessary 1) because God forgives us again and again, 2) because no evil deed represents the full intent of the doer, and 3) no evildoer ultimately goes unpunished.

Finished Saturday morning