Whether it was desperate asylum seekers drowning by the boat load or a On a more personal level, I’ve walked with dear friends through some of the toughest situations I could imagine last year. Heard stories I’ll never forget. Thurman was caught between the cross winds of culturally dominant Christianity and the push-back from people of color.In the first few pages Mr. Thurman recounts his conversation with a baffled Sri Lankan law college principal. The American South was at once the epicenter of slavery and the most “Christian” region of the country – a fact which should continue to horrify us today.Mr. As a Hindu, he couldn’t fathom how a black man could subscribe to a religion whose white adherents became slave traders – where there were incidents of Sunday worship being put on pause to form a lynch mob and murder a black man, after which the congregation came back to continue worship.“I do not wish to seem rude to you. It was not because he lacked the incentive. “During times of war hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism” (p64). Thurman argues that understanding Jesus’ background as a poor Jew living within a minority group under dominant control is central to understanding the revolutionary character of Jesus’ insights.“[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” (p18).Somewhat controversially, depending on your view of how … His place in the world shaped the emphasis of his writings.“It would be grossly misleading and inaccurate to say that there are not to be found in the Pauline letters utterances of a deeply different quality – utterances which reveal how his conception transcended all barriers of race and class and condition. Thurman wrote from a time where Jim Crow laws institutionalized segregation, long after the official end of legalized slavery. I look forward to reading more of your posts. But this other side is there, always available to those who wish to use the weight of the Christian message to oppress and humiliate their fellows” (p22).This isn’t pure theory to Mr. Thurman. Thanks so much for this. […] In Jesus’ insistence that we should forgive seventy times seven, there seems to be the assumption that forgiveness is mandatory for three reasons. Justice for black victims was slow or nonexistent.One of the greatest indictments of this era was the way in which Christianity was used as a tool for white oppressors. First, God forgives us again and again for what we do… Second, no evil deed represents the full intent of the doer. He explains fear, deception and hate as natural outcomes, while simultaneously pastoring his disinherited readers into freedom.“It makes sense that fear becomes a way of life”, I can almost hear him saying, “that deception becomes a defense mechanism, and hate rises up. He recounts Paul’s letters being regularly preached to his own enslaved grandmother, with a repeated emphasis on “slaves, obey your masters,” such that this devout woman never allowed Thurman to read Paul’s letters to her.“Unless one actually lives day by day without a sense of security, he cannot understand what worlds separated Jesus from Paul at this point” (p23).Thurman brilliantly speaks to both oppressor and oppressed through the central sections of his book. To be assured of this becomes the answer to the threat of violence – yea, to violence itself. Such moving thoughts in such controversial times. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father” (p78).“It is clear that before love can operate, there is the necessity for forgiveness of injury perpetuated against a person by a group. But, sir, I think you are a traitor to all the darker peoples of the earth” (p5).Thurman wrote, “I belong to a generation that finds very little that is meaningful or intelligent in the teachings of the Church concerning Jesus Christ. […] Much of the constant agitation for an equal-rights amendment to the Constitution grows out of recognition of the morally degrading aspects of deception and dishonesty that enter into the relationship between men and women” (p49).“Unwavering sincerity says that man should always recognize the fact that he lives always in the presence of God, always under the divine scrutiny, and that there is no really significant living for a man, whatever may be his status, until he has turned and faced the divine scrutiny” (p61).“In the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense […] They are thrown back upon themselves for their rating” (p62). Pleaded for Him to intervene.Thurman wrote his book 68 years ago, but it felt incredibly relevant this year to read his words written to “those who stand with their backs against the wall.”Mr. Third, the evildoer does not go unpunished” (p98).Wow. I held in my mind There are too many insights for me to do them justice, so let me leave you with several quotes from Mr. Thurman, with a few of my thoughts thrown in.“When the power and the tools of violence are on one side, the fact that there is no available and recognized protection from violence makes the resulting fear deeply terrifying” (p27).“It ill behooves the man who is not forced to live in a ghetto to tell those who must how to transcend its limitations” (p45).“Of course God cares for the grass of the field, which lives a day and is no more, or the sparrow that falls unnoticed by the wayside. Lynchings were still commonplace. It was not because he lacked the vitality or the strength. But I plead with you to throw them off – they’ll eat away your soul!”As I read and re-read these chapters, I thought of friends who are Kurds – members of a homeless nation.
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