Howard Thurman was an African-American theologian who was extremely popular and influential in the Black community until his death in 1981. He led the first delegation of Blacks to meet with Mahatma Gandhi, was a classmate and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father, and advised Dr. King throughout his life. Reportedly, Dr. King carried Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited with him when he traveled.
In 1944, the year I was born, Thurman co-founded the first multiracial church in the United States, the Church for the Fellowship of all Peoples in San Francisco, where I'm a member. The head minister is Rev. Dorsey Blake, a former classmate of mine. Though the congregation is now small, the spirit is strong and we are exploring possible new, groundbreaking projects.
Published in 1949, Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited is basically a self-help manual for activists. Thurman understood that deep nonviolence requires constant striving to develop the emotional and spiritual abilities that are needed to resist injustice. The book has had a profound impact on me, helping me in particular to better understand the need for reconciliation.
In the introductory chapter, “Jesus—An Interpretation,” Thurman addressed how dualistic Greek philosophy threatened holistic Judaism and states, “The crucial problem of Judaism was to exist as an isolated, autonomous, cultural, religious and political unit in the midst of the hostile Hellenic world” while at the same time trying to give to all basic security, both economic and spiritual.
Thurman wrote, “The urgent question was what must be the attitude toward Rome…. This is the position of the disinherited in every age. What must be the attitude toward the rulers, the controllers of political, social, and economic life?” Jesus responded to this issue with a message that “focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people…. [H]e placed his finger on the ‘inward center’ as the crucial arena….”
We face a similar dilemma today: How can we maintain alternative communities rooted in a holistic worldview within our fragmented, modernized world, while we establish economic justice and nurture equality (what Thurman called “the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life”), in a society that denies full citizenship and claims that someone must always be in charge, that one must either dominate or submit? What must be our attitude toward “the system,” our global social system composed of our major social institutions, our culture, and ourselves that work together to concentrate wealth and power? There is no enemy we can demonize, for our main problem is the system itself and each of us is complicit.
As was the case with the Jewish minority when Jesus lived, we have two alternatives: “resist or not resist.” If we choose not to resist, we can imitate, assimilate, capitulate, or “reduce contact with the enemy to a minimum” while keeping “one’s resentment under rigid control [with] a terrible contempt.”
The other alternative, resistance, involves “the physical, overt expression of an inner attitude.” When this resistance is violent, driven by “a great and awful assurance that because the cause is just it cannot fail,” it “is apt to be a tragic last resort.”
Jesus instead preached nonviolence and assured us that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within.” He
recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under his control…. [Jesus] announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them….
He projected a dream, the logic of which would give to all the needful security. There would be room for all, and no man would be a threat to his brother…. The basic principles of his way of life cut straight through to the despair of his fellows and found it groundless. By inference, he says, “You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God. You must not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives….”
The next three chapters, “Fear,” “Deception,” and “Hate” elaborate on these key themes – overcoming fear, hypocrisy, and hatred – by offering incisive guidance.
Concerning fear, Thurman states:
Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself….
The ever-present fear that beset the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has it roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it.
When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness…. [I]t is not the fear of death that is most often at work; it is the deep humiliation arising from dying without benefit or purpose.
Fear…among the weak in turn breeds fear among the strong and dominant. This fear insulates the conscience against a sense of wrongdoing…..
The result is the dodging of all encounters….
[T]his fear which served originally as a safety device…becomes death for the self.
Jesus responded to these realities by dedicating himself to “set at liberty them that are bruised” and by preaching, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow” in order to foster a “sense of belonging, of counting” that establishes “the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction…. He senses the confirmation of his roots, and even death becomes a little thing.”
These words apply as well to those who are economically secure. Lack of self-confidence, for example, leaves us afraid of what others think of us. Fear of failure paralyzes. Concern that our lives may ultimately be meaningless or at least ineffective leads us into a downward spiral. We fail to speak our truth, leading to more self-doubt that undermines our effectiveness. But if we dedicate our lives to doing serving others as well as we can, we can find a rock-solid foundation and let the chips fall where they may.
We can truly trust ourselves and stop placing others on a pedestal. Thurman said, “One of the practical results following this new orientation is the ability to make an objective, detached appraisal of other people… In a conversation with me Lincoln Steffins once said that he was sure he could rear a child who was…a habitué of a ghetto so as to immunize him against the corroding effects of [idolizing others]. He said: “I would teach him that he must never call another man ‘great’; but that he must always qualify the term with the limiting phrase ‘as to’…”
“[I]f a man’s ego has been stabilized,” and he humbly sees himself as a child of God, Thurman wrote, “he is in a position to appraise his own intrinsic powers, gifts, talents, and abilities” and experience “a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy…. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene…. Here are the faith and the awareness that overcome fear and transform it into the power to strive, to achieve, and not to yield.”
In the chapter on deception, Thurman articulates themes that are seen today in the call for greater openness and transparency in all relations. “Deception is perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves,” Thurman declared. “The weak have survived by fooling the strong.”
But we pay a price. “The penalty of deception is to become a deception…. Life is only a tale told by a fool, having no meaning because deception has wiped out all moral distinctions” and life is cheapened by an “artificial and exaggerated emphasis upon not being killed.”
Thurman recommends instead “a complete and devastating sincerity” as recommend by Gandhi in a letter to Muriel Lester where he stated, “Speak the truth, without fear and without exception,… You are in God’s work, so you need not fear man’s scorn.” Inspired by Gandhi, Thurman wrote:
Be simply, directly truthful, whatever may be the cost in life, limb, or security. For the individual who accepts this, there may be quick and speedy judgment with attendant loss. But if the number increases and the movement spreads, the vindication of the truth would follow in the wake. There must always be the confidence that the effect of truthfulness can be realized in the mind of the oppressor as well as the oppressed.
Dr. King surely bore those words in mind throughout his life.
By refusing to be dishonest with and thereby give status to those who are more powerful than us, we can relate as one human being to another. “A man is a man, nor more, no less,” Thurman insisted. “The awareness of this fact marks the supreme moment of human dignity.”
In his chapter on hate, Thurman analyzed the origins of hate (which it seems to me is anger that persists and calcifies) as a defense mechanism that “distills an essence of vitality [that provides a] basis for self-realization…. Hatred becomes for you a source of validation for your personality [and] gives you a sense of significance…. [T]hey declare their right to exist, despite the judgment of the environment.” Hatred provides a “tremendous source of dynamic energy [as] a strange, new cunning possesses the mind, and every opportunity for taking advantage, for defeating the enemy, is revealed in clear perspective.” When this dynamic flourishes, “the illusion of righteousness is easy to create…[and] all moral judgments of behavior [is] out of bounds… It is open season all the time… eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.”
Once again, however, though “hatred seems to serve a creative purpose,” we pay a price. Thurman wrote:
Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater…. At last it turns to ash…. It blinds the individual to all values of worth…. Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit. It is blind and nondiscriminating…. Once hatred is released, it cannot be confined to the offenders alone…. Hatred cannot be controlled once it is set in motion….
Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death.
But it is the final chapter, “Love,” which moved me most and helped me better understand the focus on reconciliation advocated by Gandhi and King. Along with Adam Kahane’s Power and Love, this chapter motivates my interest in problem-solving dialogues that involve all stakeholders, including corporate CEOs.
Thurman wrote:
You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God. You must not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives…. The religion of Jesus says to the disinherited: ‘Love your enemy. Take the initiative in seeking ways by which you can have the experience of a common sharing of mutual worth and value. It may be hazardous, but you must do it.
Thurman declared that both privileged and underprivileged persons must liberate themselves from their assigned role in society, because “love is possible only between two freed spirits.” They must undo their conditioning, remove barriers, and create “real, natural, free” social situations that enable them to be “status free” and experience their common humanity.
Thurman said, “We are here dealing with a discipline, a method, …an over-all technique for loving one’s enemy.” He called for those in need to cry out, “The [human being] in me appeals to the [human being] in you.”
Whenever a need is “laid bare,” Thurman wrote, “those who stand in the presence of it can be confronted with the experience of universality that makes all class and race distinctions [irrelevant].” He insisted that this “personality confirmation” is essential for “lasting health” in a democracy.
Applying these principles to our current situation will be one of our greatest challenges. How can we create social situations that enable wealthy individuals and low- and moderate-income individuals to deeply encounter one another, witness their needs laid bare, and consider how they can work together to define fair and practical solutions?
But as Thurman said, “Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred…need have no dominion over them…. You must abandon your fear of each other… You must not indulge in any deception or dishonesty…. Love your enemy.”
If we practice those principles, the future may hold unknown miracles.
No comments:
Post a Comment