Lent Week 4: Hate

We are in the fourth week of the Lenten season. Start at Easter, back up six Sundays, then back up to the Wednesday before, and you get to Ash Wednesday. That’s actually forty-six days, but you knew that already if you’re any good at math. Back out the six Sundays, which are treated as “free days” and not counted as part of the Lenten season (they are and they aren’t; it’s complicated), and you get to forty days.

Lent is a season of preparation for Easter. We prepare by focusing on Christ and his journey to the Cross, which lies squarely across our path and looms ever larger the deeper we get into the Lenten season. The 40 days of Lent tie in directly with the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness prior to the start of his public ministry, and indirectly with the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness prior to entering the Promised Land. Not all of us can go out into the wilderness for 40 days, but we can all place ourselves in a posture of humility and choose practices consistent with a lifestyle of repentance.

What we typically do around here during the Lenten season is pick a Lenten-related topic and talk about it for the next five to six weeks. This year we will be looking at Jesus and the Disinherited, one of the seminal writings of Howard Thurman.

Howard Thurman, a preacher and professor of religion, was one of the leading preachers and thinkers of his age. A defining moment in Thurman’s life and faith journey came during his childhood when his father died and the minister at his funeral preached a fire-and-brimstone sermon about the graphic terror that awaits all who die outside of Christ. Thurman lost all taste for the ministry because of this experience. He did eventually go into the ministry when he grew up, but he preached a very different kind of Jesus. The Jesus Thurman preached was radically identified with the oppressed and marginalized peoples of the world, people who, in his words, have “their backs up against the wall”.

Jesus and the Disinherited seems like it ought to be a manifesto of liberation theology. While there are strong elements of liberation theology in this book, the main message is a challenge to marginalized people to not give in to the forces and temptations that are unique to their position in the world, and thereby lose their humanity and become just like their oppressors. Thurman refers to “fear, hypocrisy and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited”. In the coming chapters Thurman unpacks each of these. This week we will look at hatred.

Hatred is almost universally recognized as something to be ashamed of, except in exceptional circumstances when it is able to masquerade under cover of other, nobler sentiments, such as wartime when it is able to be disguised as patriotism. Christianity, says Thurman, has been overly sentimental in its handling of hatred, dealing with it only by moralizing and pious platitudes but with no attempt to examine the root causes of hatred in the lives of those who feel it most strongly.

This reluctance to examine hatred has taken on the character of a superstition. It is a subject that is taboo unless there is some extraordinary social crisis–such as war–involving the mobilization of all the national resources of the common life to meet it. There is a conspiracy of silence about hatred, its function and its meaning.

Thurman goes on to sketch out the process by which hatred comes to be. The first stage is contact without fellowship. Of course it is easily possible to delude oneself into believing that fellowship is present when it is really just sentimentality disguised as fellowship, or when it is fellowship on one’s own terms only. For instance, there is a sort of fellowship between whites and blacks in the South of Thurman’s day, and in America today, which exists only to the extent that blacks are able to conform themselves to the expectations of white society. Giving the concept a wider application, modern life in Thurman’s day, and much more so in our present age of social media, is so impersonal that ample opportunity exists for the contact devoid of genuine fellowship that is the first stage in the development of hatred.

The next stage is understanding without sympathy. It is natural to assume that any understanding of another must be sympathetic but that would be a mistake. It is possible to understand an enemy, or a superior force which has ample capacity to cause harm, without feeling any sympathy. Generally, any understanding which exists outside of genuine fellowship is likely to be unsympathetic. This unsympathetic understanding is at the heart of relations between the privileged and the marginalized in any society. All kinds of aid may be rendered to marginalized people, but such aid is entirely contingent upon the marginalized people recognizing their place of dependence upon the privileged people who are providing the aid. This dynamic lies at the heart of much Christian missionary activity.

The next stage is when unsympathetic understanding expresses itself via active demonstrations of ill will. Finally, ill will manifested in an actual human being becomes hatred walking on the earth.

It is customary to believe that hatred is a one-way street flowing from the privileged to the marginalized, and that the marginalized are merely victims. But this is a mistake.

Hatred, in the mind and spirit of the disinherited, is born out of great bitterness–a bitterness that is made possible by sustained resentment which is bottled up until it distills an essence of vitality, giving to the individual in whom this is happening a radical and fundamental basis for self-realization.

Hatred develops in marginalized people as they look out on their world and see themselves denied basic rights and protections which ought to be theirs by virtue of their status as human beings and as citizens. Hatred is a means of pushing back against this injustice, of holding on to some semblance of personal dignity and worth, and flinging it in the face of one’s oppressors. All manner of injustice can be excused by the marginalized when it is seen merely as a matter of settling accounts with one’s oppressors.

It is clear, then, that for the weak, hatred seems to serve a creative purpose. It may be judged harshly by impersonal ethical standards, but as long as the weak see it as being inextricably involved in the complicated technique of survival with dignity, it cannot easily be dislodged. Jesus understood this. …In the face of the obvious facts of his environment he counseled against hatred, and his word is, “Love your enemies, …that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” Why?
Despite all the positive psychological attributes of hatred we have outlined, hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater.

Just as deception causes all who practice it to ultimately become a deception, incapable of discerning between truth and falsehood, or any other moral discernment for that matter; in the same way hatred, once released into the world, becomes a blinding passion that consumes all and does not discriminate.

Hatred…does not know anything about the pressures exerted upon the weak by the strong. It knows nothing about the extenuating circumstances growing out of a period of national crisis, making it seemingly necessary to discipline men in hatred of other human beings. The terrible truth remains. The logic of the development of hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral values.
…Jesus rejected hatred. It was not because he lacked the vitality or the strength. It was 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. He affirmed life, and hatred was the great denial. To him it was clear
Thou must not make division.
Thy mind, heart, soul and strength must ever search
To find the way by which the road
To all men’s need of thee must go.
This is the Highway of the Lord.

Lent Week 3: Deception

We are in the third week of the Lenten season. Start at Easter, back up six Sundays, then back up to the Wednesday before, and you get to Ash Wednesday. That’s actually forty-six days, but you knew that already if you’re any good at math. Back out the six Sundays, which are treated as “free days” and not counted as part of the Lenten season (they are and they aren’t; it’s complicated), and you get to forty days.

Thurman is simple in his definition of deception. He lays it out thusly:

Deception is perhaps the oldest of the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves against the strong. Through the ages, at all stages of sentient activity, the weak have survived by fooling the strong.

Deception is all over the place in nature; all animals have evolved some means or other by which to protect themselves by fooling would-be predators. Children know how to use the concepts of deception to manipulate their parents into doing their will as if it were the parents’ own. Students in school know how to bend their teachers to their will until the teachers catch on.

Deception has been practiced frequently throughout history. The prophet Ezekiel could not give words of comfort directly to the Israelite people in Babylon; if he had spoken directly their Babylonian captors would have caught on and made life even more miserable for Israel than it already was. Much of the book of Revelation is written in code for similar reasons; the author referred to people, places, and events in the ancient Roman empire in code because it was unsafe to name them directly. Many of the old Negro slave spirituals were not just songs of faith and encouragement but also encoded with concrete information about plans for possible escape or revolt.

Instances could be multiplied from all over the world, and from as far back in human history as records have been kept. It is an old, old defense of the weak against the strong. The question of deception is not academic, but profoundly ethical and spiritual, going to the heart of all human relations. For it raises the issue of honesty, integrity, and the consequences thereof over against duplicity and deception and the attendant consequences. Does the fact that a particular course of action jeopardizes a man’s life relieve him of the necessity for following that course of action? Are there circumstances under which the ethical question is irrelevant, beside the point? If so, where does one draw the line? Is there a fine distinction between literal honesty and honesty in spirit and intent? Or is truthtelling largely a matter of timing? Are there times when to tell the truth is to be false to the truth that is in you? These questions and many related ones will not be downed. For the disinherited they have to do with the very heart of survival.

There are three possible alternatives to the question of deception. The first is to accept that, given one’s current position, no sensible choice is being offered and thus deception is absolutely necessary for survival. The disinherited are not on an equal playing field with the privileged classes. They cannot meet on equal terms. In any conflict they are defeated before they even start. Thus deception is a necessity for survival, and any moral or ethical considerations around it become merely academic. The tragic consequence of this alternative is that it destroys one’s sense of moral and ethical values. If one persists in calling a lie the truth, or to call a good thing bad, one will eventually lose all of one’s sense of moral distinction.

The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie, and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not. In other words, the moral mercury of life is reduced to zero. …Life is only a tale told by a fool, having no meaning because deception has wiped out all moral distinctions.

The second alternative is similar to and possibly derived from the first: Not to straight-out deceive but instead to juggle all the possible areas of compromise in life on a sort of sliding scale. Not all issues are equal in significance or in consequence; thus it is possible and even inevitable to compromise on some issues. In other words, choose your battles. Don’t do battle unless you find yourself in a situation where not to do battle means that you are beaten without the recognition that comes from doing battle.

The privileged in any society are counting on this. They count on the disinherited wanting to live above all else, and being willing to compromise on the terms and conditions under which they live. Consequently they create societies and social structures in which, for the disinherited, it feels like a huge blessing just to be allowed to live. Such was the approach of the Nazis, of whites in South Africa under apartheid, and of whites here in America during Jim Crow.

Jesus has much to say about this, but his words make no sense when the goal of life is to survive above all else. Consequently, the moral center of life must be shifted and this requires radical surgery upon the souls and psyches of the disinherited:

A profound piece of surgery has to take place in the very psyche of the disinherited before the great claim of the religion of Jesus can be presented. The great stretches of barren places in the soul must be revitalized, brought to life, before they can be challenged. Tremendous skill and power must be exercised to show to the disinherited the awful results of the role of negative deception into which their lives have been cast….
Mere preaching is not enough. What are words, however sacred and powerful, in the presence of the grim facts of the daily struggle to survive? Any attempt to deal with this situation on a basis of values that disregard the struggle for survival appears to be in itself a compromise with life. It is only when people live in an environment in which they are not required to exert supreme effort into just keeping alive that they seem to be able to select ends besides those of mere physical survival. On the subsistence level, values are interpreted in terms of their bearing upon the one major concern of all activity–not being killed. This is really the form that the dilemma takes. It is not solely a question of keeping the body alive; it is rather how not to be killed. Not to be killed becomes the great end, and morality takes its meaning from that center. Until that center is shifted, nothing can be accomplished.

This brings us to the third alternative: complete sincerity. Tell the truth, regardless of the consequences. You may lose your life, but if enough people see your truth and take it up, then eventually everyone, including the privileged classes in society, will be forced to sit up and take notice. Jesus says “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, …but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.” Either this is sheer craziness, treating survival as if it is of no consequence, or else Jesus is being more realistic here than we dare to imagine. Jesus lived as a marginalized Jew, facing the exact same social and cultural pressures that his hearers faced, so he must know at least a little something of what he is talking about and we cannot easily disregard what he has to say. In a later teaching Jesus addresses the climax of human history, the great judgment at which the sheep are separated from the goats (Matthew 25:31-46). Here Jesus renders the climax of human history as a time when people’s deeds will stand exposed for all to see. But he introduces something new: Sincerity in human relationships is equal to sincerity with God. You cannot claim to be in right relationship with God if you are not in right relationship with your fellow human beings. Thus Jesus’ insistence upon sincerity is absolute, as one’s relationship with God and one’s relationship with other people are equivalent.

A death blow is struck to hypocrisy. One of the major defense mechanisms of the disinherited is taken away from them. What does Jesus give them in its place? What does he substitute for hypocrisy? Sincerity. But is sincerity a mechanism of defense against the strong? The answer is No. Something more significant takes place. In the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense, with the edge taken away from the sense of prerogative and from the status upon which the impregnability of their position rests. They are thrown back upon themselves for their rating. The experience of power has no meaning aside from the other-than-self reference which sustains it. If the position of ascendancy is not acknowledged tacitly and actively by those over whom the ascendancy is exercised, then it falls flat. Hypocrisy on the part of the disinherited in dealing with the dominant group is a tribute yielded by those who are weak. But if this attitude is lacking, or is supplanted by a simple sincerity and genuineness, then it follows that advantage due to the accident of birth or position is reduced to zero. Instead of relation between the weak and the strong there is merely a relationship between human beings. A man is a man, no more, no less. The awareness of this fact marks the supreme moment of human dignity.

Thabiti Anyabwile on Deconstruction

Today I give you a piece by Thabiti Anyabwile.

Anyabwile made my shit list a few years back with an anti-gay piece he did for The Gospel Coalition, in which he stated that the primary consideration in the debate around gay marriage ought to be an emotional and visceral gag reflex.

So I leaned in when I saw his name on this piece. I wanted to see if his thinking had evolved since then. Much has happened in the years since he wrote the earlier piece, and goodness knows my thinking has changed on many things since then. Anyabwile is a black pastor, and as a white person who has seen shit over the past two years that he just can’t unsee, I felt it incumbent upon myself to lean in. White people are notorious for seeing themselves as the final authority on what gets to call itself sound doctrine and orthodox Christianity (heads up: they’re not), so in order to rebel against that, I felt it incumbent upon myself to lean in.

But enough about me. Us white people are notorious for making everything all about ourselves and not knowing when to shut the fuck up.

Anyabwile is writing about deconstruction. Spiritual deconstruction has become something of a cultural buzzword lately. But much that is said and/or written in evangelical spaces about spiritual deconstruction (or the “post-evangelical wilderness”, as I refer to it around here) completely and totally misses the point. And the point is that this “post-evangelical wilderness” is not some made-up fairyland created by young punk bloggers living in their parents’ basements who sit all day in front of their computer screens and write about whatever strikes their fancy. This post-evangelical wilderness is a real place, inhabited by real people with real stories. Many of these people are carrying unimaginable grief, hurt, pain, and trauma, brought on by their time in evangelicalism and/or the experiences which forced them to leave, though some are attempting to stay in evangelicalism and make the best of things.

Anyabwile brings up a few points to consider around deconstruction, such as:

–Is it deconstruction or simply “negative learning”? Calling it deconstruction assumes that you actually took shit on board, that it actually took root inside of you, and you are now having to pull it up by the roots and toss it out. Negative learning, on the other hand, is simply picking up objections and complaints that are floating in the air culturally (and passing them off as your own) to things you never believed or internalized in the first place.

–Are your beliefs actually rooted in the Bible? Much of what people thought was scriptural was actually cultural or political, and coming to this realization can trigger a deconstruction process.

–What specifically are you deconstructing? Is it the whole of Christianity or just some specific teaching?

–Where are you trying to go? Can you identify specific issues that need to be reexamined in light of scripture, history, etc.?

–Are you being honest about your own motives, sin issues, and/or temptations?

–Is your deconstruction driven by hurt or disappointment?

–Are you in a rush?

It is true that a searching and fearless moral inventory, being ruthlessly honest with oneself about one’s motives for going through a process of spiritual deconstruction, is a necessary part of the process. But, as noted above, the post-evangelical wilderness is not some fairyland inhabited by young punk bloggers with nothing better to do with their lives than to sit around all day writing whatever strikes their fancy. This is a real place, inhabited by real people with real stories, real pain, real grief, and real trauma. Much that is said in evangelicalism around spiritual deconstruction completely and totally misses the point on this.

The vast majority of people out here in the post-evangelical wilderness are not here because they wanted to jump on board the latest big cultural/spiritual zeitgeisty thing. Must of us are here not because we wanted to be here, but because we felt we had no other choice. For my part, I found myself in the post-evangelical wilderness after a series of professional and relational challenges and coming to terms with some developmental issues in my life over the past decade plus, as well as noticing that I have changed from who I was back when I was a young hot-blooded evangelical and that the evangelicalism which formed me spiritually through my collegiate and young adult years–and had been very good to me through that time–has now morphed into something completely unrecognizable. I then watched my faith sell its very soul right out from under me as 81 percent of my fellow American evangelicals gave their wholehearted and enthusiastic support–which continues to this very day–to a political leader whose life and message are the exact opposite of anything even remotely connected to Jesus Christ. That dumped several truckloads of nitroglycerine on this fire.

So yeah, I get a little hot when some evangelical writer misses the point on the whole deconstruction thing.

But there is a complicating factor in play here: The vast majority of post-evangelical, exvangelical, deconstructionist (or whatever you care to call it) spaces are overwhelmingly white. And overwhelmingly male. Black people, women, and many other marginalized peoples in American society have been deconstructing for ages, long before spiritual deconstruction/the post-evangelical wilderness was ever a thing. American evangelicalism at its root is a religious way of looking at things that is ultimately built on justifying white supremacy and the marginalization of all who are not white. Example: Biblical inerrancy is a doctrine that is near and dear to the heart of almost all evangelicals on the planet. But inerrancy did not originate in a vacuum. Inerrancy came about as a tool to provide biblical sanction for American chattel slavery (“Servants, obey your masters” is part of the ostensibly inerrant Word of God). Another example: The deep-throated evangelical opposition to abortion, which is ostensibly rooted in God’s care and concern for all human life including the unborn, is in fact excruciatingly racist. The Religious Right, which championed the anti-abortion cause from the 1980s when it began to be a thing in evangelicalism down to today, did not get its start with abortion but rather segregation. The Religious Right was initially founded as a vehicle to enable ostensibly Christian colleges receiving government funding to continue to practice racial segregation which (back then) was part and parcel of the evangelical faith and message. (Not that it isn’t anymore; evangelicals these days just aren’t quite as up-front about it.) The shift to abortion came about because political and religious leaders figured out that abortion was an issue that would gain traction with rank-and-file evangelical believers. And they were right about that. Boy were they ever.

Thus, those who are on the wrong side of the white supremacy prized by American evangelicalism have been deconstructing that shit for ages. I would be willing to bet that black people have been deconstructing white Christianity ever since the first white European missionaries set foot on African shores to shove their brand of Christianity down the throats of African people.

And that brings us back full circle (sort of). It is important for us as white people on the path of spiritual deconstruction to recognize that we are not the end-all, be-all on what gets to call itself truth, orthodoxy, sound doctrine, or whatever. It is incumbent upon us as white people to seek out the voices of those who are different from us who have been doing this deconstruction thing since long before it was ever a thing, and then just shut the fuck up and listen.

Lent Week 2: Fear

We are in the second week of the Lenten season. Start at Easter, back up six Sundays, then back up to the Wednesday before, and you get to Ash Wednesday. That’s actually forty-six days, but you knew that already if you’re any good at math. Back out the six Sundays, which are treated as “free days” and not counted as part of the Lenten season (they are and they aren’t; it’s complicated), and you get to forty days.

The disinherited live with fear, which comes as a result of the threat of violence against which they have no recourse:

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. The threat of violence us ever present, and there is no way to determine precisely when it may come crushing down on you. In modern power politics this is called a war of nerves. The underprivileged in any society are the victims of a perpetual war of nerves. The logic of the state of affairs is physical violence, but it need not fulfill itself in order to work its perfect havoc in the souls of the poor.

Fear is the defense mechanism which averts total nervous collapse. Under its influence, marginalized peoples commit to memory and teach their children patterns of behavior that will limit their potential exposure to violence and safeguard their lives, to the extent that is possible in any given society. Thurman gives the example of Bambi, whom the old stag taught to recognize human scent, the kinds or exposure that might be deadly, and other means to keep himself safe in the woods. Another example is the talk which every black parent must have with his/her child(ren) on how to be safe (to the extent that is possible) in the event of an encounter with the police.

But this fear has a deadly effect, as it leads the marginalized to accept a constriction of life:

The threat of violence within a framework of well-nigh limitless power us a weapon by which the weak are held in check. Artificial restrictions are placed upon them, restricting freedom of movement, of employment, and of participation in the common life. These limitations are given formal or informal expression in general or specific policies of separateness or segregation. These policies tend to freeze the social status of the insecure. The threat of violence may be implemented not only by constituted authority but also by anyone acting in behalf of the established order. Every member of the controllers’ group is in a sense a special deputy, authorized by the mores to enforce the pattern. This fact tends to create fear, which works on behalf of the proscriptions and guarantees them. The anticipation of possible violence makes it very difficult for any escape from the pattern to be effective.

Thurman then analyzes segregation. Segregation is not merely a separation of two equal groups in a given society; it is a special form of separation between a dominant group and a marginalized group. The dominant group has complete freedom of movement, even into and through those spaces that are prescribed for the marginalized group, while the marginalized group has no freedom whatsoever to leave the spaces that are prescribed for them. All the forces of the cultural environment: norms, morals, and even religion, are brought to bear in order to enforce this artificial order of things.

This state of affairs leads to fear among the marginalized, which keeps them frozen in their place within a segregated society. But there is also fear among the dominant group:

The fear that segregation inspires among the weak in turn breeds fear among the strong and the dominant. This fear insulates the conscience against a sense of wrongdoing in carrying out a policy of segregation. For it counsels that if there were no segregation, there would be no protection against invasion of the home, the church, the school. This fear perpetuates the Jewish ghettos in Western civilization, the restrictive covenants in California and other states, the Chinatowns, the Little Tokyos, and the Street of the Untouchables in Hindu lands.

We see this fear among white Americans today, for whom the face of crime is invariably that of a black man. Earlier this year, “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler was detained by police while attempting to discreetly withdraw money from his bank account. Bank employees mistook him for a would-be bank robber.

The crucial question concerning all of this, for Thurman, is this: Does the religion of Jesus Christ have anything to say that can be of value to marginalized people in attempting to deal with fear?

The core of the analysis of Jesus is that man is a child of God, the God of life that sustains all of nature and guarantees all the intricacies of the life-process itself. Jesus suggests that it is quite unreasonable to assume that God, whose creative activity is expressed even in such details as the hairs of a man’s head, would exclude from his concern the life, the vital spirit, of the man himself. This idea–that God is mindful of the individual–is of tremendous import in dealing with fear as a disease. In this world the socially disadvantaged man is constantly given a negative answer to the most important personal questions upon which mental health depends: “Who am I? What am I?”
The first question has to do with a basic self-estimate, a profound sense of belonging, of counting. If a man feels that he does not belong in the way in which it is perfectly normal for other people to belong, then he develops a deep sense of insecurity. …The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness, and power. I have seen it happen again and again.

The conviction that one is a child of God becomes a basis for personal dignity and worth, which counteract the worst effects of fear.

A man’s conviction that he is God’s child automatically tends to shift the basis of his relationship with all his fellows. He recognizes at once that to fear a man, whatever may be that man’s power over him, is a basic denial of the integrity of his very life. It lifts that mere man to a place of pre-eminence that belongs to God and to God alone. He who fears is literally delivered to destruction. To the child of God, a scale of values becomes available by which men are measured and their true significance determined. Even the threat of violence, with the possibility of death that it carries, is recognized for what it is–merely the threat of violence with a death potential. Such a man recognizes that death cannot possibly be the worst thing in the world. There are some things that are worse than death. To deny one’s own integrity of personality in the presence of the human challenge is one of those things. “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do,” says Jesus.

The next basic question to answer is “What am I?”. This question does not have to do with basic belonging, but instead with personal achievement and capacity. Once one is settled in the knowledge that one is a child of God, then one is in a good position to realistically assess one’s own intrinsic gifts, talents, and abilities. One is free to take stock and come to conclusions that are not tainted by the judgments and limitations prescribed by the dominant class in society, and then press forward with an integrity of character which defies those limitations.

Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly survive. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene. Here we reach the high-water mark of prophetic religion, and it is of the essence of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course God cares for the grass of the field, which lives a day and is no more, or the sparrow that falls by the wayside. He also holds the stars in their appointed places, leaves his mark in every living thing. And he cares for me! To be assured of this becomes the answer to the threat of violence–yea, to violence itself. To the degree to which a man knows this, he is unconquerable from within and without.

Lent Week 1: Jesus – An Interpretation

We are in the first week of the Lenten season. Start at Easter, back up six Sundays, then back up to the Wednesday before, and you get to Ash Wednesday. That’s actually forty-six days, but you knew that already if you’re any good at math. Back out the six Sundays, which are treated as “free days” and not counted as part of the Lenten season (they are and they aren’t; it’s complicated), and you get to forty days.

This week we are looking at Thurman’s interpretation of the person and message of Jesus and what it has to say to the marginalized peoples of the world. Thurman’s leading observation is that the Christian message has often been of little to no avail to marginalized people:

Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and of nations whose very position in modern life has too often been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to weak and defenseless peoples.

Thurman begins his analysis of Jesus with the simple fact that Jesus was a Jew.

The miracle of the Jewish people is almost as breathtaking as the miracle of Jesus. Is there something unique, some special increment of vitality in the womb of the people out of whose loins he came, that made of him a logical flowering of a long development of racial experience, ethical in quality and Godlike in tone? It is impossible for Jesus to be understood outside of the sense of community which Israel held with God. This does not take anything away from him; rather does it heighten the challenge which his life presents, for such reflection reveals him as the product of the constant working of the creative mind of God upon the life, thought, and character of a race of men.

The next point of importance is that Jesus was a poor Jew. This is readily deduced, Thurman notes, from Luke’s account of Jesus’ dedication at the temple. According to Leviticus, the required sacrifice for this occasion was a lamb, but if a family could not afford a lamb then two turtledoves were allowed instead. When Mary brought Jesus to the temple she brought the two turtledoves.

The economic predicament with which he was identified in birth placed him initially with the great mass of men on the earth. The masses of the people are poor. If we dare take the position that in Jesus there was at work some radical destiny, it would be safe to say that in his poverty he was more truly Son of man than he would have been if the incident of family or birth had made him a rich son of Israel.

The next point is that Jesus was a member of a minority group living among a larger and more powerful population. In 63 BC Palestine fell under Roman control and the years that followed were excruciating for all devout Jews who lived there.

It is utterly fantastic to assume that Jesus grew to manhood untouched by the surging currents of the common life that made up the climate of Palestine. Not only must he have been aware of them; that he was affected by them is a most natural observation.

Thurman cautions that this is not the whole story with respect to Jesus. For though Jesus was clearly a product of his time, there were many other Jews alive at the same time who did not grow up to be anything like Jesus.

It was in this historical/cultural situation that Jesus began and completed his ministry. But his message was one of inner transformation:

His words were directed to the House of Israel, a minority within the Greco-Roman world, smarting under the loss of status, freedom, and autonomy, haunted by the dream of the restoration of a lost glory and a former greatness. His message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them. “To revile because one has been reviled–that is the real evil because it is the evil of the soul itself.” Jesus saw this with almighty clarity. Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual. With increasing insight and startling accuracy he placed his finger on the “inward center” as the crucial arena where the issues would determine the destiny of his people.

Ultimately this applies to marginalized peoples of every age. The burning question is what must be one’s relation to the powers-that-be in the world in which one finds oneself? There are two possible attitudes: resistance and nonresistance. Under nonresistance, there are two possible paths: imitation/assimilation, and isolation/withdrawal. The Sadducees and Herod were examples of the path of assimilation. The Essenes and other marginalized sects exemplified the path of isolation by isolating themselves physically. The Pharisees exemplified it by living visibly and peacefully (on the surface) in the heart of Roman-dominated culture yet secretly harboring a scathing contempt for the Roman overlords. The other alternative is resistance, specifically armed resistance. The Zealots exemplified this.

Jesus rejects both of these alternatives and offers a third instead, which can be summed up thusly: “The kingdom of heaven is in us”. In the face of humiliation we choose humility. If we voluntarily reduce ourselves, then we leave our oppressors nothing to take from us, and ultimately we undercut their power.

Thurman then considers how Paul relates to the message of Jesus. He sets this up with the example of his grandmother who grew up in slavery. He would routinely read to her from the Bible, but at her request, never anything from Paul’s epistles. Later he learned that this was because when she was a slave, the white minister would routinely preach to the slaves from Paul’s letters, especially his exhortation for servants to obey their masters.

Thurman notes that there was a qualitative difference between Paul and Jesus, rooted in the fact that Paul was a Roman citizen. As such he had the legal protections of the empire at his disposal, and thus had a vested interest in the preservation of the status quo of Roman power. Thus in Paul’s writings there are elements available to those who wish to use Christianity as a tool to sanction oppressive systems. Jesus was not a Roman citizen and had none of the legal protections of the empire at his disposal. Any Roman soldier could mistreat him in any way at any time without facing any accountability or adverse consequence.

Such is the lot of black Americans, even today:

The striking similarity between the social position of Jesus in Palestine and that of the vast majority of American Negroes is obvious to anyone who tarries long over the facts.

In the face of this, Jesus offers his alternative way of life, which Thurman will unpack in the chapters to come.

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. Your words must be Yea–Nay; anything else is evil. Hatred is destructive to hated and hater alike. Love your enemy, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven.”

There’s A Dark Side To The Ukraine Tragedy

War is a very complex, convoluted thing. Very rarely is it black and white, with one side clearly in the right and the other clearly in the wrong. While Putin has shown himself to be clearly in the wrong, and while we must stand with the people of the Ukraine as they face this unjust onslaught, there is a seamy underbelly here. It shows itself in the coverage from European and American news outlets, and in the experience of nonwhite Ukrainians attempting to flee the conflict.

I give you a Twitter thread showing examples of racist news coverage from European and American outlets. Note the common themes here: This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. These are prosperous middle-class people, not Syrian refugees. This means more because these are blonde-haired, blue-eyed people. These themes have underlied much Western news coverage over the years, yet no one has ever expressed these sentiments openly. Until now. Here is a Washington Post op-ed which addresses this issue.

Essentially the world was fine with letting Putin do whatever the fuck he wanted in Syria, thereby creating a refugee crisis for the better part of the past decade, because hey, it’s Syria, that’s how they roll. Now that Putin is coming for the Ukraine, the world is like “No you don’t”. White people: Ask yourself if that is OK. If so, why?

The Ukraine has a sizeable population of university students from Africa, India, and other such places. As these students have attempted to flee the conflict, they have experienced segregation and even outright violence from Ukrainian border guards at checkpoints along the way, while white Ukrainian citizens were given every accommodation. Here is video from The Guardian and an article from CNN which detail this experience.

Ash Wednesday: Jesus and the Disinherited

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season. Start at Easter, back up six Sundays, then back up to the Wednesday before, and you get to Ash Wednesday. That’s actually forty-six days, but you knew that already if you’re any good at math. Back out the six Sundays, which are treated as “free days” and not counted as part of the Lenten season (they are and they aren’t; it’s complicated), and you get to forty days.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of this journey. Many churches have Ash Wednesday services where you receive ashes on your forehead. Ashes symbolize repentance from sin; to go around in sackcloth and ashes was a classic Old Testament expression of grief and repentance. Ashes also symbolize mortality; we are but dust and unto dust we shall return. We die to ourselves and all that we are in this world in order that we may rise to life in Christ.

Given this emphasis of Thurman’s preaching and career, one might expect Jesus and the Disinherited to be a manifesto of liberation theology. While themes of liberation theology are present in the background, the work is instead a challenge to oppressed peoples, and ultimately to all of us, to not give in to the dehumanizing influences of oppression but instead live lives of courageous, creative integrity.

In the weeks to come we will unpack what Thurman has to say on the person and message of Jesus and its meaning for marginalized peoples, on how not to give in to the temptations toward fear, deception, and hatred that are part and parcel of life under oppression, and how to respond instead with love. It is by following this path that one finds true freedom, even in the face of the most horrific and dehumanizing oppression.

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