The book Jesus and the Disinherited was published by Howard Thurman in 1949. Thurman was a theologian and civil rights leader, and his work had a strong influence on Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. Despite the title of this book, it is not so much an analysis of Christianity, but rather an examination of the psychological struggles Americans of African heritage faced from a lifetime of oppression and disempowerment from society. (Most of Thurman's insights remain relevant today, sadly.) The book's thesis is that--even if the teachings of the present-day Church offer little to raise the morale of the oppressed--if examined, the teachings of Jesus can give strength and meaning to the lives of the oppressed. And, further, that it is only through finding a higher purpose and different foundation than simple survival that the oppressed can begin to free themselves from the psychological and material enslavement the oppressors enforce upon society.
Chapter 4 and 5 contain some great insights, and therefore these passages deserve to be added to the Reading List with quotes from the other chapters. However, I cannot do this without being compelled to add some commentary and critique, as I feel Thurman has not fully pried apart different aspects of what he labels as "hate," and because the present-day pacifist philosophies influenced by Thurman's work too often disregard the firm dichotomy between good and evil--which frequently leads to toleration or even misguided "love" of evil and evil-doers.
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Chapter 4: Hate
The following passage is Thurman's description of "hate." More precisely, he is actually describing the in-group/out-group dynamics which are characteristic of tribalism. Tribalism is ultimately rooted in selfishness and utter lack of empathy and sympathy for the arbitrarily-defined out-group. Thurman believes that this process will always result in hatred (which in his words is active ill will) against the "other." Yet, this is not always an inevitable result of tribalism, nor does tribalism require active ill will to create victims. Consider--did the Spanish cause the collapse of the Incan Empire and plunder their gold out of pure hatred? Did Westerners necessarily need to hate the African strangers they were enslaving? Do cattle and hog ranchers who keep their animals in tiny cages without sunlight "hate" these animals? (To take this point to absurdity, does an individual who eats a hamburger from said cow ever hold active ill will or hatred against that cow?)
All that is necessary for the process Thurman is describing to function is complete lack of empathy for the "other" and complete inability to treat individuals according to the Golden Rule--active ill will is not a requisite of tribalism. The active ill will which forms when tensions between groups are too high will inevitably lead to gratuitous violence, but it is critical not to overlook tribalist acts of exploitation and overt violence which happen out of mere instinct or habit, where conscious ill will plays no part.
"Hatred cannot be defined. It can only be described. If I were to project a simple diagram of hatred, revealing the anatomy of its development, the idea would break down as follows.
In the first place, hatred often begins in a situation in which there is contact without fellowship, contact that is devoid of any of the primary overtures of warmth and fellow-feeling and genuineness. Of course, it must be borne in mind that there can be an abundance of sentimentality masquerading under the cloak of fellowship. It is easy to have fellowship on your own terms and to repudiate it if your terms are not acceptable. It is this kind of fellowship that one finds often in the South between whites and Negroes. As long as the Negro is called John or Mary and accepts the profoundly humiliating position of an inferior status, fellowship is quite possible. Great sacrifices are even made for him, and all the weight of position and power are at the disposal of the weaker person. It is precisely because of this false basis of fellowship so often found that in the section of the country where there is the greatest contact between Negro and white there is the least real fellowship, and the first step along the road of bitterness and hatred is assured.
When we give to the concept a wider application, it is clear that much of modern life is so impersonal that there is always opportunity for the seeds of hatred to grow unmolested. Where there are contacts devoid of genuine fellowship, such contacts stand in immediate candidacy for hatred.
In the second place, contacts without fellowship tend to express themselves in the kind of understanding that is strikingly unsympathetic. There is understanding of a kind, but it is without the healing and reinforcement of personality. Rather, it is like the experience of going into a man’s office and, in that moment before being seated, when the full gaze of the other is focused upon you, suddenly wondering whether the top button of your vest is in place, but not daring to look. In a penetrating, incisive, cold understanding there is no cushion to absorb limitations or to provide extenuating circumstances for protection.
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 understanding of another’s weakness, which may be used as a weapon of offense or defense. Understanding that is not the outgrowth of an essential fellow-feeling is likely to be unsympathetic. Of course, there may be pity in it—even compassion, sometimes—but sympathy, almost never. I can sympathize only when I see myself in another’s place.
Unsympathetic understanding is the characteristic attitude governing the relation between the weak and the strong. All kinds of first aid may be rendered to the weak; they may be protected so long as there is the abject acknowledgment of their utter dependence upon the strong. When the Southern white person says, “I understand the Negro,” what he really means is that he has a knowledge of the Negro within the limitations of the boundaries which the white man has set up. The kind of Negro he understands has no existence except in his own mind.
In the third place, an unsympathetic understanding tends to express itself in the active functioning of ill will. A few years ago I was going from Chicago to Memphis, Tennessee. I found a seat across from an elderly lady, who took immediate cognizance of my presence. When the conductor came along for the tickets, she said to him, pointing in my direction, “What is that doing in this car?”
The conductor answered, with a touch of creative humor, "That has a ticket."
For the next fifty miles this lady talked for five or ten or fifteen minutes with each person who was seated alone in that coach, setting forth her philosophy of human relationships and the basis of her objection to my presence in the car. I was able to see the atmosphere in the entire car shift from common indifference to active recognition of and, to some extent, positive resentment of my presence; an ill will spreading its virus by contagion.
In the fourth place, ill will, when dramatized in a human being, becomes hatred walking on the earth. The outline is now complete and simple—contacts without fellowship developing hatred and expressing themselves in unsympathetic understanding; an unsympathetic understanding tending to express itself in the exercise of ill will; and ill will, dramatized in a man or woman, becoming hatred walking on the earth."[1]
Thurman then goes on to give a further example of how empathy has been destroyed by inter-ethnic tensions, showing us the very type of hatred and ill will he wants to prevent from spreading:
"In many analyses of hatred it is customary to apply it only to the attitude of the strong towards the weak. The general impression is that many white people hate Negroes and that Negroes are merely the victims. Such an assumption is quire ridiculous. I was once seated in a Jim Crow car which extended across the highway at a railway station in Texas. Two Negro girls of about fourteen or fifteen sat behind me. One of them looked out of the window and said, “Look at those kids.” She referred to two little white girls, who were skating towards the train. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they fell and spattered their brains all over the pavement!” I looked at them. Through what torture chambers had they come—torture chambers that had so attacked the grounds of humaneness in them that there was nothing capable of calling forth any appreciation or understanding of white persons? There was something that made me shiver.
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."[2]
He then gives another example where he believes he sees hatred growing:
"Let me illustrate this. Suppose you are one of five children in a family and it happened, again and again, that if there was just enough for four children in any given circumstance, you were the child who had to do without. If there was money for four pairs of shoes and five pairs were needed, it was you who did without shoes. If there were five pieces of cake on the plate, four healthy slices and one small piece, you were given the small slice. At first, when this happened, you overlooked it, because you thought that your sisters and brothers, each in his turn, would have the same experience; but they did not. Then you complained quietly to the brother who was closest to you in understanding, and he thought that you were being disloyal to your mother and father to say such a thing. In a moment of self-righteousness you spoke to your father about it. Your father put you on the carpet so severely that you decided not to mention it again, but you kept on watching. The discrimination continued.
At night, when the lights were out and you were safely tucked away in bed, you reached down into the quiet places of your little heart and lifted out your bundle of hates and resentments growing out of the family situation, and you fingered them gently, one by one. In the darkness you muttered to yourself, “They can keep me from talking about it to them, but they can’t keep me from resenting it. I hate them for what they are doing to me. No one can prevent me there.” Hatred becomes for you a source of validation for your personality. As you consider the family and their attitude toward you, your hatred gives you a sense of significance which you fling defiantly into the teeth of their estimate of you.
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick there is an expression of this attitude. You will doubtless recall the story. Ahab has had his leg bitten off in an encounter with the white whale. He collects a motley crew, and they sail into the northern seas to find and conquer the whale. A storm comes up at sea, and Ahab stands on deck with his ivory leg fastened to the floor. He leans against the railing in utter defiance of the storm. His hair is disheveled, his face is furrowed, and there is a fever in his blood that only the conquest of the white whale can cure. In effect, he says to the lightning, “You may destroy this vessel, you may dry up the bowels of the sea, you may consume me; but I can still be ashes.”
It is this kind of attitude that is developed in the mind and soul of the weak and the disinherited. As they look out upon their world, they recognize at once that they are the victims of a systematic denial of the rights and privileges that are theirs, by virtue both of their being human and of their citizenship. Their acute problem is to deal with the estimate that their environment places upon them; for the environment, through its power-controlling and prestige-bearing representatives, has announced to them that they do not rate anything other than that which is being visited upon them. If they accept this judgment, then the grounds of their self-estimate is destroyed, and their acquiescence becomes an endorsement of the judgment of the environment. Because they are despised, they despise themselves. If they reject the judgment, hatred may serve as a device for rebuilding, step by perilous step, the foundation for individual significance; so that from within the intensity of their necessity they declare their right to exist, despite the judgment of the environment.
...I have already pointed out that the relationship between the strong and the weak is characterized often by its amoral aspect. When hatred senses as a dimension of self-realization, the illusion of righteousness is easy to create. Often there are but thin lines between bitterness, hatred, self-realization, defiance, and righteous indignation. The logic of the strong-weak relationship is to place all moral judgment of behavior out of bounds. A type of behavior that, under normal circumstances, would call for self-condemnation can very easily, under these special circumstances, be regarded as necessary and therefore defensible. To take advantage of the strong is regarded merely as settling an account. It is open season all the time, without the operation of normal moral inhibitions. It is a form of the old lex talionis—eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
Thus hatred becomes a device by which an individual seeks to protect himself against moral disintegration. He does to other human beings what he could not ordinarily do to them without losing his self-respect."[3]
I agree with Thurman that constantly dwelling on the injustices without having recourse to challenge them will indeed eat you up. However, there is a critical asymmetry between the above passage about the child who is forced to do without and the passage on the two "black" girls whose empathy for "whites" has been eroded.
In this passage, the child has faced an actual, tangible, injustice to him individually. Therefore he is totally just in feeling righteous indignation towards his parents and siblings who have inflicted this injustice upon him, and totally just in his desire to defy or avenge these wrongs. He does not necessarily desire for any gratuitous suffering or ruthless revenge that would require him to lose his dignity and self-respect.
In the passage with the girls, they as individuals have not faced any injustice from the individual girls they are brooding over. They have succumbed to the distrust and erosion of empathy that ethno-tribalism has so often inflicted upon society. Their ill will is arbitrary--they have ill will for the other girls simply because of their skin color, rather than knowledge that they have committed any actual injustices. The Golden Rule has been destroyed--not only are the "white" girls guilty until proven innocent, they have been banished to the realm of "other", where their suffering matters not. Hence, it is only in this passage that the so-called haters are engaging in thoughts which strip them of self-respect.
While the "black" girls are psychological victims of a society which is racist against them, by turning to ill will and directing it towards other individuals in an arbitrary manner, they are increasing the amount of misery in society. As a counterproductive consequence of accepting the temptation to harbor arbitrary ill will, "blacks" and "whites" are being driven further apart, making it more difficult for society to ever come together to remove oppressors and begin the healing process.
In contrast, should the wrongfully-deprived child ever find justice for the wrongs he has faced at the hands of his family, society will not be worse off. Every time a rapist is executed, a thief captured, or even a parking ticket paid, steps have been taken to avenge injustices and punish oppressors and individuals who initiate violence, thereby improving the condition of society. Violence perpetrated by the family is often one of the most cruel, yet most overlooked, forms of violence in our society.
Brooding over these injustices with no hope for recourse will likely lead to cynicism and turn the child's heart to stone eventually. This is all the more reason why society has a duty to punish oppressors and avenge injustices. We must not forget the injustices committed against us, lest we become passive and tolerate them when they occur to others. We must not become intoxicated on a desire for revenge, but punishing oppressors is a requirement for a functioning system of justice.
I do not think Thurman would disagree that the best way for society to effectively avenge these injustices is by raising the spiritual quality of society so that our communities, laws, and leaders are capable of recognizing more forms of injustice and ignobility, and are willing to stand up to and punish oppressors--not only to avenge past victims, but to ensure there are no future victims.
Only those who hate the qualities of injustice and ignobility with all their soul will ever have a chance to vanquish them and avenge all the innocents who have been wronged. Only those who hate the attitudes of racism and all other forms of tribalism with all their heart have a chance at ending these evils once and for all.
If misplaced hatred leads to arbitrary ill will, empathy between individuals and between groups will be destroyed. But if we do not have the fury and the hatred to condemn tangible and real evil, injustice will continue.
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Thurman is concerned that those who are 'disinherited' (i.e. those who are oppressed and as a result of this condition unable to effectively enact change in society) often bottle up their (justified) anger of being mistreated by dwelling the wrongs committed against them. Ruminating on these injustices with no hope or chance to correct them leads to a certain unhealthy bitterness, which eventually leads to active ill will. Such an active ill will leads to a breakdown of any hope of positive communication or reconciliation between two parties, to increasingly unempathetic interactions, and eventually to gratuitous violence.
To Thurman, the ultimate result of directing the emotions to "hate" is complete erosion of empathy and an increase of misery and suffering in the world. At first, hatred gives a defiant energy to those who wield it, but in the end the hater's life--focused entirely on the negative aspects of others--becomes equally depressing and pathetic. In order to truly heal the world, one must be focused on positive and uplifting emotions.
Thurman believed hatred is too volatile and uncontrollable to ever be rhetorically wielded for good. Undiluted hatred, just like pessimism and cynicism, leads to the destruction of idealism and anything which can possibly uplift an individual's spirit or the condition of society.
"The logic of the development of hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral values."[4]
But is it not possible to hate the principle of evil while at the same time offering a positive, uplifting message to society (and hence avoiding ill will towards undeserving individuals)? Thurman mentions that the relationship between the weak and strong is often amoral, and hence the tendency of individuals to eventually develop ill will does not stem from any deep moral or rational considerations. For the weak, this misplaced hatred is often a defense strategy, and for both the weak and strong descent into ill will is a natural consequence of rising inter-group tensions.
So he does leave open the possibility of hating that which is fundamentally evil and immoral. It is the counterproductive and destructive tendency to hate others for arbitrary reasons that erodes the spirit, and prevents individuals and society from moving forward with reconciliation over actual wrongs that have been committed.
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In my opinion, Thurman seems too cautious to condemn evil with the full ferocity of Jesus--the man who whipped the ignoble money changers in righteous fury. Throughout the book, although it is written very much in a Jim Crow era American context, Thurman refers to the power dynamic of the weak vs the strong in general terms.
Although it is true that any group can end up becoming oppressors when they have the power to do so (unless they consciously reject and guard against the temptation), Thurman's treatment of the weak vs strong dynamic and his discussion of hatred makes me think he has fallen into the False Leftist trap of believing that proclivity towards oppression is primarily a learned behavioral trait. In this view, evil does not necessarily stem from a quality of character, but a matter of circumstance. Anyone can "learn" to be good if they try hard enough and anyone can "learn" to be evil through unchecked bad habits.
Perhaps this is so, but this ignores why some individuals--such as Jesus--were such a wellspring of positivity and light, while others spontaneously turn to evil--having no empathy and even enjoying exploiting others for personal or tribal gain (without ever having been taught or influenced to do so). The truth is that some individuals are innately inclined towards good and even the weight of the world cannot force their soul to do evil, while others are innately inclined towards evil and require nothing short of a miracle to change. These individuals of principle often emerge as passive role models or active leaders, and influence others towards good or evil.
Contrary to prevailing academic attitudes, not everyone is born a "blank slate", and good and evil are not relative. We must justly offer unrestrained criticism and hatred against the immoral quality of evil where it is due. But as Thurman warns, we must not let ourselves be consumed by hatred, lest we lose the light and positivity within ourselves. Our focus must always be focused on spreading the light.
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Throughout the book, Thurman only rarely quotes from scripture, and admirably invites us to think of the personality and character of Jesus instead. (Disappointingly, Thurman never strays beyond orthodox Judeo-Christianity, although he is willing to consider his grandmother's criticism of Saul of Tarsus in chapter 1.) Chapter 4 concludes with a poem written by Thurman regarding his interpretation of Jesus's message:
"Thou must not make division.
They 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."[5]
There is no doubt that the message of Jesus is one of uplifting the spirit, healing the world, and using empathy to overcome the arbitrary lines which have divided individuals. But upon reading Thurman's poem, my mind immediately jumps to this passage from the Bible:
"Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." -Matthew 10:32-39
This same passage can be found with stronger wording in the Apocryphal Gospels, here suggesting the gulf between the just and unjust is of a more firm and unbridgeable quality:
"Verily I have come to send peace upon earth. But when I speak, notice a sword follows. I have come to unite, but notice, a man will be at variance with his father, the daughter with her mother, and the daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. And a man's foes will be those of his own household. For the unjust cannot mate with those who are just.
They who don't take their cross and follow after me, are not worthy of me. He that finds his life will lose it; and he that loses his life for my sake, will find it." -Gospel of the Nazarenes 17:14-15
Jesus encouraged individuals to transcend all arbitrary dividing lines and gave us hope to overcome any personal ethical shortcomings. He came to unite arbitrarily-divided groups, not needlessly divide us into more; and he came to uplift the spirit, not to depress it by sowing cynicism and unnecessary hatred. But a firm line is drawn between the innately just and the innately unjust.
Jesus was a moral absolutist. Proclivity towards evil is not simply matter of circumstance--a mere matter of who possesses the temptations of power in a given time--but often an unchangeable character trait. Christian theologians have frequently believed it is possible to wield hatred of evil, so long as we are mindful of precisely what it is we are hating--the actual acts and quality of evil--so that we do not stray into arbitrary ill will. Gandhi, a fellow pacifist who corresponded with Thurman, echoed this Christian sentiment in his 1929 autobiography:
"'Hate the sin and not the sinner' is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world."[6]
It is possible to have a righteous fury against evil. Indeed, it is necessary to hate evil in order to fully destroy it. However, as Thurman so passionately understood, evil can only be destroyed by methods compatible with empathy and under a psychological and spiritual condition of the highest idealism and positivity. If our methods or way of thinking are no different from the oppressors who commit evil acts, we truly are no different. The depressing and heart-hardening effects of ill will can only be counteracted by a message which uplifts the spirit, not one which encourages more negativity.
We can heal society by extending empathy and love to those who we have been tempted to view as the "other", but if we are ever convinced that we can love the devil, evil can never be destroyed.
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Chapter 5: Love
This chapter further reveals that Thurman's warning against hatred is really a warning against falling into ethno-centrism and tribalism and losing empathy for others due to arbitrary dividing lines.
Continuing on his Judeo-Christian framework, Thurman praises Jesus for not treating the Romans and non-Jewish groups as "enemies," even though the Israelites Jesus preached to were rabidly ethno-centric and viewed members of the out-group as enemies by default. (As an aside, in my opinion this Judeo-Christian interpretation that Jesus was simply an above-average Jew who managed to overcome ethno-centrism drastically dulls the heroic radical anti-tribalism and individualizing message found in Jesus's life and teachings).
"But Rome was the political enemy. To love the Roman meant first to lift him out of the general classification of enemy. The Roman had to emerge as a person."[7]
No one has committed any evil simply for being born to a certain ethnicity, skin color, or class. So it is perfectly reasonable that Jesus would preach hating others for such an arbitrary reason is wrong.
And here we see "love" does not mean loving or tolerating the act, attitude, or principle of evil (e.g. the existence of segregation or racism), but having the willingness to break down the artificial social barriers between groups. In this context, "enemies" are those who we unfairly perceive as enemies, not individuals who are truly evil and thus actual enemies of good.
"Love of the enemy means that a fundamental attack must first be made on the enemy status. How can this be done? Does it mean merely ignoring the fact that he belongs to the enemy class? Hardly. For lack of a better term, an "unscrambling" process is required.
...It is necessary, therefore, for the privileged and the underprivileged to work on the common environment for the purpose of providing normal experiences of fellowship. This is one very important reason for the insistence that segregation is a complete ethical and moral evil. Whatever it may do for those who dwell on either side of the wall, one thing is certain: it poisons all normal contacts of those persons involved. The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value. This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships. It has to be a real situation, natural, free.
The experience of the common worship of God is such a moment. It is in this connection that American Christianity has betrayed the religion of Jesus almost beyond redemption. Churches have been established for the underprivileged, for the weak, for the poor, on the theory that they prefer to be among themselves.
...The enormity of this sin cannot be easily grasped. The situation is so tragic that men of good will in all the specious classifications within our society find more cause for hope in the secular relation of life than in religion."[8]
"The religion of Jesus says to the disinherited: "Love your enemy.["] ...For the Negro it means that he must see the individual white man in the context of a common humanity. The fact that a particular individual is white, and therefore may be regarded in some over-all sense as the racial enemy, must be faced; and the opportunity must be provided, found, or created for freeing such an individual from his "white necessity." From this point on, the relationship becomes like any other primary one.
Once an attack is made on the enemy status and the individual has emerged, the underprivileged man must himself be status free. It may be argued that his sense of freedom must come first. Here I think the answer may be determined by the one who initiates the activity. But in either case love is possible only between two freed spirits."[9]
Further, Jesus invites us to "turn the other cheek" and attempt to abandon grudges and mend relations with individuals when possible.
""The enemy" can very easily be divided into three groups. There is first the personal enemy, one who is in some sense a part of one's primary-group life. The relationship with such a person is grounded in more or less intimate, personal associations into which has entered conflict. Such conflict may have resulted from misunderstanding or from harsh words growing out of a hot temper and too much pride on either side to make amends. It may have come about because of an old family feud by which those who were never a part of the original rift are victimized. The strained relationship may have been due to the evil work of a vicious tongue. The point is that the enemy in this sense is one who at some time was a rather intimate part of one's world and was close enough to be taken into account in terms of intimacy.
To love such an enemy requires reconciliation, the will to re-establish friendship. It involves confession of error and a seeking to be restored to one's former place."[10]
By spiritual idealism and seeking to better ourselves, we and others can overcome such mistakes and shortcomings that have led to the above situation. Indeed, harboring hatred will preclude such a reconciliation. But having regretted mistakes or mendable spats are not the same as attempting to reconcile with someone who has a fundamentally evil character. In this latter case, reconciliation is impossible, short of shaking the devil's hand.
"The second kind of enemy comprises those persons who, by their activities, make it difficult for the group to live without shame and humiliation. It does not require much imagination to assume that to the sensitive son of Israel the taxgatherers were in that class. It was they who became the grasping hand of Roman authority, filching from Israel the taxes which helped to keep alive the oppression of the gentile ruler. They were Israelites who understood the psychology of the people, and therefore were always able to function with the kind of spiritual ruthlessness that would have been impossible for those who did not know the people intimately. They were despised; they were outcasts, because from the inside they had unlocked the door to the enemy. The situation was all the more difficult to bear because the tax collectors tended to be prosperous in contrast with the rest of the people. To be required to love such a person was the final insult. How could such a demand be made? One did not even associate with such creatures. To be seen in their company meant a complete loss of status and respect in the community. The taxgatherer had no soul; he had long since lost it. When Jesus became a friend to the tax collectors and secured one as his intimate companion, it was a spiritual triumph of such staggering proportions that after nineteen hundred years it defies rational explanation."[11]
Jesus, due to his extraordinary ability, was able to see and cultivate the good present in individuals who had allowed their spirits to become degraded. But if such a tax gatherer had only evil in his heart, would he have been able to hear the message of Jesus to begin with? Those who are good at heart may become corrupted or mislead, but be returned to a path of righteousness and attempt to atone for their past ignobility. Those who are evil at heart cannot ever walk on the path of light, and will be judged for their refusal to embrace the light.
"Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
He answered, "The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear."" -Matthew 13:36-43
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Thurman spells out the full significance and power behind his strategy of love:
"What one discovers in even a single experience in which barriers have been removed may become useful in building an over-all technique for loving one's enemy. There cannot be too great insistence on the point that we are here dealing with a discipline, a method, a technique, as over against some form of wishful thinking or simple desiring.
Once the mutual discovery is made that the privileged is a man and the underprivileged is a man, or that the Negro is a man and the white man is a man, then the normal desire to make this discovery inclusive of all brings one to grips with the necessity for working out a technique of implementation. The underprivileged man cannot get to know many people as he knows one individual, and yet he is in constant contact with many, in ways that deepen the conflict. Is there some skill which may be applied at a moment's notice that will make a difference even in the most casual relationships? Such a technique may be found in the attitude of respect for personality."[12]
Herein is revealed the major error committed by the False Left's interpretation of the "love, not hate" message. Avoiding the ill will and cynicism caused by misplaced hatred is a matter of strategy. In order to heal society and mend the wounds dealt from centuries of tribalism (e.g. racism, classism, sexism, and so forth), an individual must not give in to the temptation of feeling ill will for those across the arbitrary dividing line. Individuals must be willing to extend their hands across those lines in order to unite society.
This exact same sentiment was reiterated by Martin Luther King, Jr.:
"And I would like to mention finally that we are challenged to go into the New Age which is emerging, with understanding, creative, redemptive good-will in our hearts. Oh how important this is. And here again this means that everybody must do this, those who have been on the oppressive end -- oppressor end of the old order, so to speak, must do this. This means that in every instance we must get rid of every doctrine of white supremacy, and every white person of good will must search his heart and go into the new order which is emerging with a deep sense of penitence, go into the new order which is emerging with a determination to look within and see that all prejudices have been removed, but as I have tried to say over our nation and all over the world, it also means, that those of us who have been on the oppressed end of the old order must also go into the New Age which is emerging with understanding goodwill in our hearts. And I know how easy it is for us who have been oppressed to become bitter and go into the New Age which is emerging with a desire to retaliate and to seek revenge.
Somewhere along the way we must be willing to meet hate with love, and to meet physical force with soul force, recognizing that an old "eye for an eye" philosophy ultimately ends up leaving everybody blind.
[...]Now when I talk about love here I am not talking about some sentimental emotion, I am not talking about emotional bosh, I am not talking about what so often comes out when we talk about love, I am talking about something profoundly meaningful, and I know so often when I talk about love people say to me: "Well, explain what you mean, because it is pretty difficult to love these people who are bombing our homes, and bombing our churches and killing our brothers and our sisters. What do you mean by love?" And I always have to stop to try to explain the meaning of love in this context because it is nonsense to urge oppressed people to love their violent oppressors in an affectionate sense."[13]
This strategy of avoiding "hatred" is not about loving or "tolerating" those who are fundamentally evil, or being too indecisive to hate that which is evil, as a firm and absolute principle in every single case imaginable. It is about following the Golden Rule explained to us by Jesus and realizing that just because an individual is different than us or is an unwitting beneficiary of an unfair system does not automatically make them evil or an enemy. This strategy is about avoiding adding unnecessary animosity and restoring empathy and positivity to society. The love is about being willing to sympathize with other individuals irrespective of skin color or other arbitrary traits, to forgive and offer a second chance to those who are capable of regretting wronging us, and moving forward together for a new tomorrow. It is about loving those capable of impartially loving others, and manifesting the conditions necessary to make hardened hearts soft once again.
"This mood of exception operates in still another way. A whole group may be regarded as an exception, and thus one is relieved of any necessity to regard them as human beings. A Negro may say: "If a man is white, he may be automatically classified as one incapable of dealing with me as if he were a rational human being." Or it may be just the reverse. Such a mood, the mood of exception, operates in all sorts of ways. A Republican may say the same thing about a Socialist. The deadly consequences of this attitude are evident.
...The attitude of respect for personality presupposes that all the individuals involved are within what may be called the ethical field. The privileged man must be regarded as being within the area in which ethical considerations are mandatory."[14]
"The concept of reverence for personality, then, is applicable between persons from whom, in the initial instance, the heavy weight of status has been sloughed off. Then what? Each person meets the other where he is and there treats him as if he were where he ought to be. Here we emerge into an area where love operates, revealing a universal characteristic unbounded by special or limited circumstances."[15]
"He finds it well-night impossible to forgive, because his injury is often gratuitous. It is not for something that he has done, an action resulting from a deliberate violation of another. He is penalized for what he is in the eyes and the standards of another. Somehow he must free himself of the will to retaliation that keeps alive this hatred.
...It is clear that before love can operate, there is the necessity for forgiveness of injury perpetuated against a person by a group. This is the issue for the disinherited. Once again the answer is not simple. Perhaps there is no answer that is completely satisfying from the point of view of rational reflection."[16]
***
We must never lose sight of the fact that, in principle, the act of exploiting and oppressing others on the simple basis that they belong to an arbitrary out-group is evil (and Thurman even says it's imperative to be clear that segregation is "a complete ethical and moral evil"). Those individuals who are unrepentant leaders of tribalist movements which call for ethnic cleansing, segregation, sexism, religious bigotry, class warfare, and so forth are agents who are "possessed" by this evil. Perhaps some of us may choose to believe that even the most thoroughly ignoble individuals have a glimmer of hope left in them and can be uncorrupted; yet, so long as such wicked individuals operate, they do unspeakable harm to innocents in our society. In principle, one must hate that which is evil in order to truly love the good.
"The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work." -1 John 3:8
Those who are receptive to the message of light and of love can join hands in their common detestation of all that is evil, and move forward together to remove oppressors from society. In this struggle, the American mission of E Pluribus Unum (from many: one) is of the utmost significance. And, too, a deeper meaning of "God Bless America" becomes revealed: God blesses the mission of uniting all that is good in the world and removing the arbitrary walls that have been erected to prevent E Pluribus Unum.
References
1. Page 75-78.2. Page 78-79.
3. Page 79-83.
4. Page 87-88.
5. Page 88.
6. Mohandas Gandhi. (1929). The Story of my Experiments with Truth Chapter 86, A Tussle with Power.
7. Page 95.
8. Page 97-100.
9. Page 100-101.
10. Page 91-92.
11. Page 93-94.
12. Page 101.
13. Martin Luther King, Jr. (June 20, 1965). Address at the Valedictory Service, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. (Facing the Challenge of a New Age).
14. Page 102.
15. Page 104-105.
16. Page 107.
