Howard Thurman wrote the book Jesus and the Disinherited in 1949, just as the soldiers were settling back into life after World War II. It was a groundbreaking book that I cannot do complete justice to, but I will attempt to summarize.
Thurman's primary premise is that Jesus spoke the gospel to "people with their backs against the wall." He goes on that too often we assume that we are reading the Bible just as it is, but we can easily read it from a position of power and dominance in the world, and when we do such we miss the primary message of the gospels.
Thurman goes on to talk about how Jesus taught people that are being put down, oppressed, or at the end of their rope to deal with their life situation. In the book he chronicles three temptations and how the gospel teaches how to deal with them. Specifically, these are the teachings that speak to people who may be a minority or in some other way oppressed. Basically what he says is that when we get concerned with surviving at any cost we become less human, and the oppressive situation not only hurts our pocketbook but our hearts.
There are three controllers are:
Fear
Deception
and Hate.
Fear robs us of our dignity
Deception robs us of our integrity
Hate robs us of our our joy.
We overcome fear when we claim our place as the King's children, and live in the confidence of who God made us to be.
We overcome deception by choosing to be so honest and forthright that our sincerity becomes disarming to those near us.
We overcome hate by choosing love and the passion for the good.
Like I said, I do not do the greatest job explaining it, but I recommend this short book to anyone and everyone who wants to see their faith in a new way. And anyone who wants to reconcile spirituality and an active faith while following Jesus.
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