Quotes from Howard Thurman

Again the crucial question: Is there any help to be found for the disinherited in the religion of Jesus?

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 subjection. It is a man's reaction to things that determines their ability to exercise power over him.

THE significance of the religion of Jesus to people who stand with their backs against the wall has always seemed to me to be crucial.

MANY and varied are the interpretations dealing with the teachings and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But few of these interpretations deal with what the teachings and the life of Jesus have to say to those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall.

It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other.

Today, at the close of Thurman's century, those people who live most obviously with their backs against the wall—for instance, the homeless, the working and jobless poor, the substance abused and abusers, the alienated, misguided, and essentially abandoned young people—are rarely within hearing or seeing range of the company of Jesus' proclaimed followers.

The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague.

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.

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. It

There is one overmastering problem that the socially and politically disinherited always face: Under what terms is survival possible?

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.

The quiet, even the danger, of the woods provided my rather lonely spirit with a sense of belonging that did not depend on human relationships.

To revile because one has been reviled—this 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.

It is a grievous blunder to assume that understanding is always sympathetic. Very often we use the phrase "I understand" to mean something kindly, warm, and gracious. But there is an understanding that is hard, cold, minute, and deadly. It is the kind of understanding that one gives to the enemy, or that is derived from an accurate knowledge of another's power to injure. There is an

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

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? This is the question of the Negro in American life. Until he has faced and settled that question, he cannot inform his environment with reference to his own life, whatever may be his preparation or his pretensions.

Jesus and the Disinherited represents nothing less than those conversations Black parents must have with their children in a world that denies the created sacredness of their Black humanity.

Thurman proclaims that Jesus, a poor non-Roman Jew, knew intimately what it meant to be "a member of a minority group in the midst of a larger dominant and controlling group." Therefore, Thurman declares, "the teachings and the life of Jesus" have something special "to say to those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall.

Even as Thurman recognizes that Christianity has been used throughout history as "an instrument of oppression," he makes clear "that Christianity as it was born in the mind of [Jesus] appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed.

Unless one actually lives day by day without a sense of security, he cannot understand what worlds separated Jesus from Paul at this point. 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.

The sense of fancy growing out of the sense of fact—which makes all healthy personalities and gives a touch of romance and glory to all of life—first appears as the unrestrained imaginings of youth.

Thurman goes on to provide a theological testimony of faith concerning the one who "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 [those with their backs against the wall].

If a man is convinced that he is safe only as long as he uses his power to give others a sense of insecurity, then the measure of their security is in his hands. If security or insecurity is at the mercy of a single individual or group, then control of behavior becomes routine. All imperialism functions in this way. Subject peoples are held under control by this device.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back against the wall. It is urgent that my meaning be crystal clear. The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion say to them?