Author: Howard Thurman
Info: Copyright 1949. Beacon Press.
Rating (on a scale of 1-4 stars): ✮✮✮✮
Category (ies) - This book was a rrecommended read from my pastor.
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What does it look like to walk in the shoes of the disinherited: the excluded, the marginalized, the underprivileged? Is it possible for such persons to escape fear, hatred, and hypocrisy (what the author calls the three "hounds of hell"), or are they doomed to perpetuate it while being victimized by it? Theologian and Civil Rights leader Howard Thurman attempts to answer those questions. In answer to Vladimir Simkhovitch's treatise Toward the Understanding of Jesus, Thurman expounds on his thesis that Jesus not only ministered to the disinherited, but as a working-class Jew in a Roman-occupied Israel, he experienced their plight first hand. Thurman explores Jesus' response to the governmental and religious sanctioned dehumanization of the people of his time and His instructions to the disinherited of both Thurman's time and ours.
I approached this work with much trepidation, and nearly stopped reading before I had even gotten to the first chapter. In the introduction to the 2022 edition of this book, Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas states:
For some, Thurman’s book perhaps represents one mystic’s attempt to capture the inner spiritual strivings of Jesus. For others, it may exemplify theological liberalism’s overemphasis on the historical Jesus as a great exemplar and role model for humans to follow. And for still others, Thurman’s book is a precursor to twentieth-century Black theologians’ declaration that Jesus was Black. (p. ix).
Now you see why I almost didn't bother reading the rest. However, I did complete the volume and would like to address Dr. Douglas' points.
First, Thurman's words vividly capture the spiritual strivings of Jesus, if by that Douglas is referring to not only how Jesus worked in His earthly ministry to relieve the burdens of the oppressed (see Luke 4:18-19), but also how Christ's ultimate sacrifice purchased those same freedoms for all who call Him Savior and Lord (see Psalm 34:19). He says (first quoting Simkhovitch):
Jesus had to resent deeply the loss of Jewish national independence and the aggression of Rome…. Natural humiliation was hurting and burning. The balm for that burning humiliation was humility. For humility cannot be humiliated…. Thus he asked his people to learn from him, “For I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (p. 17)
Then he goes on to say:
He [Jesus] 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 subjection. It is a man’s reaction to things that determines their ability to exercise power over him. It seems clear that Jesus understood the anatomy of the relationship between his people and the Romans, and he interpreted that relationship against the background of the profoundest ethical insight of his own religious faith as he had found it in the heart of the prophets of Israel. (pp. 17-18)
Douglas' second point about seeing Christ as a mere exemplar portrays Him a one-dimensional character and Thurman does not present Him in that manner. Jesus is no simple template from which we can extract the favorable parts, dispose of the unfavorable parts, and add our own spin on. He is not a generic essay or a Mad Libs story we can fill in as we please. Jesus Christ is the story already begun and finished. Our job is to find our place in the narrative and live it through to the end. Or as the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 (English Standard Version), "You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." He writes upon our hearts and we dare not try to change the story.
Her third statement was a complete turn off that nearly had me press the "return early" button on my Libby app. If you've read my previous book review, you know how much I loathe those who use Scripture and/or God for race baiting. Admittedly, I also struggle with how to successfully study theology through the lens of different cultures without that lens magnifying the culture (the created) over the Creator (see Romans 1:18-25). Also, how would anyone who gave the work a serious read ever come to Douglas' conclusion? Thurman himself puts that notion to rest at the close of the book by saying:
For such his answer becomes humanity’s answer and his life the common claim. In him the miracle of the working paper is writ large, for what he did all men may do. Thus interpreted, he belongs to no age, no race, no creed. When men look into his face, they see etched the glory of their own possibilities, and their hearts whisper, “Thank you and thank God!” (pp. 101-102).
It reminds me of the Joan Osborne song from the mid-90s that laments "What if God was one of us?" Well, He was. Was Jesus "us" as it relates to race, gender, or other demographics? Only if "us" is a Jewish male. But was He "us" in the more universally recognized aspects of being human? Absolutely. Hebrews 4:15 (New International Version) says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin." Even if Jesus did not look on the outside like whatever our "us" is, He experienced and completely understood all of the "us" that is on the inside.
So, why is this book still relevant more than 75 years after its publication? To me its relevance lies both in its history and theology. Today, government-backed segregation and slavery have been abolished as part of the laws of the United States. However, the mindset that perpetuates oppression has not. Yes, ignorance will always exist and along with it hatred and vitriol. If those individuals reject truth and refuse to change, God help them as they rot in their own ignorance. But what of the hatred, fear, and hypocrisy experienced by those of the disinherited class? Since this is no longer a legislated preloaded lot in life, why do so many still live back there as if it was? I'm not talking about those who remember history (they should--we all should) but those who remember and repeat it as a given. Why do so many of us in the black community perpetuate our own oppression by refusing to educate ourselves and work so hard to oppress and ostracize others who choose education and job training over the status quo? Why do we still have so many homes where children are raised without a father because of poor choices or apathy on the part of both parents? Why are the privileges for which many marched, fought, and died (like education, the right to vote, freedom of religion, and the chance at upward mobility) relegated to "white only." Why are we creating our own version of Jim Crow? Thurman laments this very point:
The implications of such a view are simply fantastic in the intensity of their tragedy. Doomed on earth to a fixed and unremitting status of inferiority, of which segregation is symbolic, and at the same time cut off from the hope that the Creator intended it otherwise, those who are thus victimized are stripped of all social protection. It is vicious and thoroughly despicable to rationalize this position, the product of a fear that is as sordid as it is unscrupulous, into acceptance. Under such circumstances there is but a step from being despised to despising oneself. (p. 33)
Thurman's understanding that Jesus is not just an example of the answer, but is THE answer to hatred, fear, and hypocrisy is another reason why this book is still relevant. His words cut to the quick of any person's oppression regardless of race, creed, or gender. For example, he says, "There are few things more devastating than to have it burned into you that you do not count and that no provisions are made for the literal protection of your person." (p. 29) Statements like those go straight to the heart of anyone's pain. He comforts with the words in Luke 4:18-21 where Jesus both acknowledges and presents Himself as the embodiment of freedom and comfort for the oppressed and hurting.
Another big part of the book's power is that unlike much of the literature of this type I have attempted to read, Thurman's book does not incite one to hatred. Yes, he talks about what "they" did to "us," but more importantly, he addresses what "we" did (and still do) to "us." His goal is to teach us to receive God's love so that we can truly love Him, love others, and love ourselves. That is the love that disempowers fear, hatred, and hypocrisy and breaks the chains of oppression.
This book impacted me so deeply that I purchased a copy of it and intend to add it to my rotation of books that I reread on a regular basis. I'm sure I could add more, but I recommend reading Thurman's words that most powerfully speak for themselves.
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