Yet another blue book test from History of Religion in America. This one is based off an excellent book called "Jesus and the Disinherited" by Howard Thurman, a mystic, prophet, and African-American clergyman.

This short essay is intended to be an attempt at condensing the general ideas discussed in the book. However, Thurman has a way with words I can not even approach, and I highly recommend finding the actual book and reading it for yourself.

It could well be said that Love and Fear are the two most powerful forces in the universe. Fear being a survival technique, while its opposite, Love, leads to true life. This in the end, is why Fear and love are placed at the beginning and end of Thurman's book, for while Fear is a corrosive force that leads to Deception and Hate, Love purifies, such that Fear cannot survive where Love is present.

Near the beginning of Thurman's chapter on fear, he relates a story of a dog who had been constantly abused by children in its neighborhood. Walking down the street it would growl at any child playing outside. The child, in turn, would cock their arm as if to throw a stone at the dog. Both reactions derive from fear. The dog's fear of being struck, and the child's fear of being bitten. Whether or not either has abused the other is irrelevant, only the knowledge of the possibility.

Deception in turn grows out of this as a defense mechanism. Whether or not the child holds a stone in its hand is a none issue, after a time the cocked arm only is necessary. The dog has come to learn that its Fear will produce a certain response, the flinging no longer necessary only the threat.

Hate is the end product of both Fear and Deception. hate comes when the concrete reasons for the previous two are no longer there. Hate is the original dog's puppies and the original children's children carrying on the growling and arm cocking. Whether or not there was any actual abuse in the past is now irrelevant.

However these cannot survive where Love appears. Love is the child who, having conquered his Hate, goes out unafraid, to pet the dog instead of threatening. I am here reminded of Nelson Mandela, who, after Apartheid, which in many ways made Jim Crow look like a fist fight compared to gang warfare, founded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose job it was to begin working to help both sides see the other as human again, instead of oppressor and oppressed. For you cannot Hate what you know to be human, and no more or less perfect than yourself.