Trump, Trump Voters, and the Parable of the Snake

 

Vincent van Gogh's The Good Samaritan 

It is hard not to respond to every outrage that we are experiencing now in the United States because of Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators, but the damage being done to the United States (e.g., masked, heavily-armed agents kidnapping human beings off the street, the Republican budget bill that will decimate the lives of millions of people and benefit the ultra rich, and so much more) and the world (e.g., the bombing of Iran) is impossible to describe, a damage that will last at least decades.

For those who were deluded into voting for Trump this second time after seeing all he had done during his last term (including fomenting an armed insurrection), I think of one of Trump's favorite stories, the parable of The Snake.

The fable of The Snake is about a "tender-hearted woman" who finds a wounded snake on the road. She takes it home and nurses it back to health, but when the snake recovers, it bites her. As the woman is dying from the bite, she asks the snake why it had bit her after all she had done for it. The snake replies, "You knew full well I was a snake before you helped me." 

Trump has used that fable numerous times, and after all he has done--and all we have seen from him--Trump personifies the snake of that parable (e.g., think of Rick Wilson's "Everything Trump Touches Dies").

In contrast, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told the parable of the Compassionate (good) Samaritan after a lawyer “tested” Jesus by asking what the lawyer had to do to inherit eternal life. The lawyer already knew the answer when Jesus asked him what the law had to say: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” After the lawyer gave that answer, Jesus responded by saying: “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live” (10:25–28). 

The lawyer then asked Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” (10:29), and Jesus replied with a parable that describes the extraordinary actions of a man, a despised-by-many Samaritan, who assisted another human being in need, a man half dead by the side of the road who had already been ignored by two religious people who had “passed by on the other side.” The Samaritan, in contrast, had compassion for the man, demonstrated that compassion in concrete ways, and “took care of him” (10:34). 

As always, Jesus expects a response from his audience concerning his parables, a response that involves both understanding and action, because Luke tells us this is what happened after Jesus finished the parable: 

[Jesus asked,] “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” [The expert in the law] said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (10:36–37) 

The current president of the United States has replaced the parable of the Good Samaritan with the fable of The Snake. If Trump truly believed, as he said last night, "we love you God," he would not act in the ways he does or speak the hateful words he does.

And many of those in the United States who call themselves Christians have joined a man who acts just like the snake in that parable, and they reject the parable that Jesus told as an example of how human beings should treat each other, with compassion and mercy. 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Chapter 3 study guide, part 1)

 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

How Howard Thurman's insights benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today: highlighting parts of my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans.

Today's post focuses on chapter 3, "How do Parables Work?" in which I use Rembrandt's The Money Changer (Der Geldwechsler) or The Rich Fool to illustrate how parables and visual art can function in similar ways

Details about how this happens can be found in my National Catholic Review article,  “Rembrandt ’s Technique Sheds Light on How Parables Work”, that summarizes the arguments in chapter 3 and connects them to how Rembrandt’s painting “works.” For an academic article making a similar case, see also David B. Gowler, “The Enthymematic Nature of Parables: A Dialogic Reading of the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12: 16–20),” for more information about Rembrandt’s painting and the parable’s first-century context.

I also include an audio to Thurman's sermon “Possessions” on the rich fool parable (October 28, 1951). This sermon outlines the negative effects wealth, property, and greed have on human beings and their relationships.

This quote from chapter 3 states this about one aspect of how to approach Jesus's parables

Jesus was a pious first-century Jew who led a renewal movement within Judaism and debated with other first-century Jews how best to follow God, determine God’s will, and observe God’s Law.…Parables were part of his teaching repertoire, and to understand better their use and function as well as the creative understanding involved in their construction, we must look at first-century cultural contexts in which these parables were spoken and heard.”

The next post will include more quotes from chapter 3 and some "digging deeper" insights about Thurman and the parables. 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Summary, of part 2, chapters 3 & 4)

 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

Previous posts noted how Howard Thurman's insights could benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today. The depth of community, the rejection of hatred and violence, and the dedication to making "Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble," in what Thurman called a (peaceful) "shock to the system, are among the things we should embrace.

So here's the next section of the brief summary of the parts/chapters in my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans:

I have already talked about how Part I of the book (chapters 1 and 2) begins with chapter 1’s examination of Thurman’s life and career and an exploration of Thurman’s classic book, Jesus and the Disinherited, which bridges the gap between Jesus’s proclamation to those with their “backs against the wall” in the first century CE to Thurman’s era spanning most of the twentieth century and now to the twenty-first century. Chapter 2 discusses Thurman’s mysticism, its relationship with social change, and his practice of using the fine arts to raise one’s spiritual consciousness, encourage a “sympathetic understanding” of other human beings, and deepen the sense of community. 

Today I'll begin by summarizing Part II (chapters 3 and 4), which builds on the foundation of Thurman’s use of the fine arts by focusing on the parable of the Rich Fool and a painting by Rembrandt to illustrate the ways in which we should envision how parables “work” (chapter 3) and what parables “want” (chapter 4). 

Parables and visual art, for example, can illuminate some things brilliantly, but because of their inherent nature can leave other aspects in the shadows, and by doing so engage the hearts, minds, and imaginations of their hearers/viewers/readers in ways that result in a multiplicity of diverse interpretations, responses, and dialogues. 

The parable of the Rich Fool also makes clear that Thurman was correct in the way he framed Jesus’s message: Jesus spoke his parables in his own historical context as a poor, disinherited, oppressed, first-century Jew, including a powerful critique of the wealthy and powerful, and the Rich Fool parable prepares the way for Jesus’s answer to the disinherited and to the privileged: the Jewish love-ethic of loving God and one’s neighbor—including the restoration of broken community—that are illustrated so powerfully by the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.

Next up: parts of the study guide for chapter 3, including audio clips of Thurman, etc.

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Quotes from chapter 2)

  

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

To repeat: Howard Thurman's insights could benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today. The depth of community, the rejection of hatred and violence, and the dedication to making "Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble," in what Thurman called a (peaceful) "shock to the system, are among the things we should embrace.

So here are some quotes from the book that are found in the study guide for chapter 2 of the book (Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans):

One thing I always encourage is for people to listen to Thurman himself, so I'll begin with some links to some of Thurman's recordings as context for this chapter.

Thurman’s sermon “On Forgiveness” (September 30, 1951) uses stories about the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2–12) and the “sinful” woman who anointed Jesus’s feet (Luke 7:36–50). Thurman also cites John 8:2–12 in the second part of his lecture, “The Search for Meaning in the Experience of Love” (November 5, 1975). For background on the “Mysticism, Social Change, and Civil Rights” section, see the 1978 “Mysticism and Social Change”: Part 1; Part 2. For context on the “Role of the Fine Arts in Building Community,” see Fra Angelico in the 1953 “Men Who’ve Walked with God” series. For background on the spirituals, from “We Believe” (1958): “Deep River, My Home is over Jordan”; “Deep River; Nature of Life”; “Balm in Gilead”; “The Blind Man; Heaven, Heaven.”

Thurman also used the fine arts to deepen understanding, community, and spiritual consciousness. So as preparation for this chapter, I recommend the brief essay, David B. Gowler, “Painting Urges Viewers to Speak and Act as Jesus Did in an Inhumane World” about a Max Beckmann painting. It portrays a story to which Thurman refers many times (about “the woman caught in adultery,” John 8:2–12) as a model for how human beings should treat each other in an often-inhumane world.

Some quotes from chapter 2:

Thurman claims that ‘the underlying unity of life seems to be established beyond doubt.’…This sense of Oneness—the underlying unity of reality—is what God desires for all of creation. Human beings should live their lives in accord with such unity, and this unity—true community—is the end purpose of life.

The child of God realizes others as children of God and seeks to cultivate relatedness with others; out of that sense of relatedness emerges community. 

True integration developed from unifying experiences that were multiplied over extended periods of time. Integration could begin to create a beloved community, defined by ‘the quality of the human relations experienced by the people who live within it.…It cannot be brought into being by fiat or by order; it is an achievement of the human spirit as men seek to fulfill their high destiny as children of God.’ 

Luther Smith observes that the aims of Thurman’s innovations involving art and meditation were twofold. They were designed (a) to help evoke religious experiences that ‘magnified the essence of religion’ as opposed to dogma and (b) to affirm and facilitate unity within a religiously, socially, and philosophically diverse congregation. 

[William] Blake’s argument that what is not too explicit ‘rouzes the faculties to act’ is a key component of this book’s arguments: parables as works of art function in the same way that Blake envisioned visual art should ‘work’: They ‘rouze the faculties to act.’

Some additional information that didn't make it into the book because of some final cuts that had to be made: 

• As Luther Smith notes (2007, 50–51), the love-ethic extends to all of God’s creation, including plants and animals. All life is related; all exist in an underlying unity. See especially Thurman’s discussions of a common consciousness that all humans share and how this consciousness extends to communication between those of different languages as well as with animals and even plants (e.g., Thurman 1986, 56–75).
• In their 1936 meeting, Gandhi requested that the delegation headed by Thurman sing a few spirituals. Led by Sue Bailey Thurman, they sang “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” (which Gandhi’s personal secretary Mahadev Desai said represented every disinherited community’s hope and aspiration “to climb higher and higher until the goal was won”) and “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” (which Gandhi said expressed “the root experience of the entire human race under the spread of the healing wings of suffering”): AHH, 7.
• Amanda Brown cites the pragmatist John Dewey’s ideas about art as influencing Thurman in the sense of art being able to dislodge people from old habits of thought and feeling and connect them on a new level: “Art intensifies the feeling of living, and the process of experiencing art can have a lasting effect on one’s life.…Artistic expression, performance, and observation were means to attain new and elevated consciousness—a sensibility in accord with mystical experience” (2021, 149–50).
• Thurman argues that “the genius of the slave songs is their unyielding affirmation of life defying the judgment of the denigrating environment that spawned them” (WHAH, 216–17). The spirituals are works of art of great depth that can comfort and inspire others who are oppressed and disinherited. They are realistic about that which is not under their control but insist on their common humanity with their enslavers as equal children of God. Cf. Eisenstadt 2023, 149, 155.
• The Khyber Pass is significant historically because of its vital role as part of the trade route between central Asia and the Indian subcontinent (e.g., the Silk Road) and as a gateway for military invasions (e.g., Alexander the Great). For Thurman, however, his “vision” experience at Khyber Pass confirmed the possibility of true human community.
• The program for the April 11–15, 1956, Festival of Religion and the Arts at Marsh Chapel at Boston University noted that religion is a “total response” to our Creator that “finds unique expression through the arts.” Whenever art reflects the ultimate concern of human beings, it is religious art, whether or not it appears as what is deemed “traditionally religious.” Humans need the witness of religion in art as a declaration of human worth and dignity, since humans are created in God’s image, as a response to the “contemporary culture of alienation, anonymity, and materialism”: HTC: Box 62, Folder 51, xxi.

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Quotes from chapter 1)

 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

As noted yesterday, Howard Thurman's insights could benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today. The depth of community, the rejection of hatred and violence, and the dedication to making "Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble," in what Thurman called a (peaceful) "shock to the system, are among the things we should embrace.

So here are some quotes from the book that are found in the study guide for chapter 1 of the book (Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans):

I'll start with direct quotes from Thurman:

In a religion such as Christianity, the image of God in the mind of many Christians is that of a kindly, benevolent, bewhiskered white man, seated on a white throne, surrounded by blond and brunette angels who stand ready to serve Him in praises or as messengers. The Devil, on the other hand, is the Prince of Darkness while the imps of the Devil are black.…Now this is strong medicine even for the pure in heart. What a vote of confidence it must have been to a white person to feel that the Creator of the Universe was made in his image. Of course, there is nothing unusual about the notion that God is imaged in accordance with the ideal of the beholder. The advantage is obvious (The Luminous Darkness, 60). 

If a Roman soldier kicked Jesus into a Galilean ravine, he was merely a poor Jew in a ravine. In that context, Jesus offers to other poor disinherited Jews ‘a technique of survival for a disinherited minority.’ Jesus’s message assures the disinherited that they are children of God and therefore they should believe in their inherent worth and that of all other human beings, who are also children of God (JATD)

Here are some quotes from my book that I offer up for discussion in the study guide: 

“The teachings of Jesus, Thurman argues, provide a creative solution to a disinherited minority struggling to survive, but Christianity became an imperial world religion much different from the religion of Jesus, the Galilean teacher and prophet. As a result, the disinherited minority in the United States of which Thurman was a member should be dedicated to the teachings of Jesus, which are ‘on the side of freedom, liberty, and justice for all people.’” 

“Thurman argues that the logic behind Jesus’s love-ethic is that hatred ‘destroys finally the core of the life of the hater. While it lasts, burning in white heat, its effect seems positive and dynamic. But at last it turns to ash, for it guarantees a final isolation from one’s fellows. It blinds the individual to all values of worth, even as they apply to himself and his fellows. Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit.’” 

“The religion of Jesus…centralizes the love-ethic in Jewish law: The love of God and the love of neighbor as oneself are the two greatest commandments. This love-ethic extends to all people by responding ‘directly to human need across the barriers of class, race, and condition.’ Jesus thus stood firmly within Judaism and envisioned himself a ‘creative vehicle’ for its ‘authentic genius.’” 

To make the book more affordable, I had to cut tons of material. Some of that information I included in the study guide as context for the leaders of any discussion about the book. Here are a few from chapter 1's study guide:

• Thurman continually challenged himself to succeed. While a student at Morehouse College, for example, Thurman claimed that he and his friend James Nabrit Jr. read every book in the Morehouse library. 
• When Thurman lived in Rochester, a member of the Ku Klux Klan showed him a notebook in which the man had recorded almost all the places Thurman had spoken, the subjects of his talks, and the number of people who attended.
• Thurman joined Boston University when Martin Luther King Jr. was finishing his doctoral course work. King attended some chapel services that year—his last year at Boston—and was deeply impressed by Thurman’s sermons.
• Thurman wrote, “The core of my preaching has always concerned itself with the development of inner resources needed for the creation of a friendly world of friendly men.…It was my conviction and determination that the church would be a resource for activists.…To me it was important that individuals who were in the thick of the struggle for social change would be able to find renewal and fresh courage in the spiritual resources of the church” (WHAH, 160). 
• One example of Thurman’s experiences with possible violence took place in 1947 at State College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Thurman arrived late on the day before he was to give the commencement address. For two days the threat of a violent, white mob had caused men with rifles to guard the campus, including Thurman’s host in the house in which he stayed. The man asked Thurman to relieve him on the armed vigil, and later that night Thurman, a lifelong pacifist, found himself for the first time since he was a boy holding a gun. He sat at a window, deliberating over what he would do if an armed mob attacked: he would either (a) return their fire or (b) lay down the gun, walk outside, and be willing to sacrifice his life. That moment never came, but, as Thurman noted in 1978, the “ultimate logic of social action may be some form of martyrdom.” See “Mysticism and Social Action,” HTC Box 8, Folder 39, pp. 22–23. 
• Some of Thurman’s descriptions of first-century Jewish groups (e.g., Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots; JATD, 1–25) are outdated because of advances in scholarship (e.g., the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947), but his study of such works as Louis Finkelstein’s The Pharisees led him to reject uninformed (Christian) scholarship about Judaism. Note his comments about “the genius of the Pharisaic movement in Israel” and rejecting the “judgmental attitude” and “prejudice” against them in his 1951 sermon, “On Forgiveness” (see chapter 2 below).

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Intro, part 1)

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

I participated in a "No Kings" protest last Saturday, and the community among the people there led me to reflect further on how Howard Thurman's insights could benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today. The depth of community, the rejection of hatred and violence, and the dedication to making "Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble," in what Thurman called a (peaceful) "shock to the system, are among the things we should embrace.

In that light, I will be posting a brief summary of the parts/chapters in my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans, This summary is found in the Introduction to the book, and I'll post it in "bite-sized pieces."

The Plan of the Book 

The thesis of this book is that Howard Thurman’s interpretations of the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan parables illustrate his understanding of how to (re)establish community with God (Prodigal Son) and therefore with other human beings (Good Samaritan). The book itself and the free online chapter study guides weave together major aspects of both my own and Thurman’s interests that integrate responses to what these parables “mean,” how they “work,” and what they “want” from us in response: (1) in-depth exegesis of the parables themselves; (2) Thurman’s insights into these parables and their implications; (3) the intersecting ways in which parables and visual art work, create a dialogue about their meaning, and encourage an ethical response; and (4) the ways in which parables and visual art can heighten spiritual consciousness and be used to create and deepen community:

New Review of Gowler/Jensen's Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables

 

I just received a message about a new review of Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables, that Kipton Jensen and I put together and edited. It's by Wendy L. Pohlhaus in The Journal of Social Encounters 8:2 (2024) 358–362.

I will excerpt its introduction and conclusion only:

Sermons on the Parables of Jesus by American Civil Rights Icon Howard Thurman

Sermons on the Parables. Howard Thurman. David B. Gowler and Kipton E. Jensen (eds.). Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 2018, paper, L+157 pages. ISBN 978-1-62698-283-3. 

How can a group of sermons written well over 60 years ago about the parables crafted by Jesus, an itinerant Jewish rabbi in the 1st Century, be relevant to the present world in which we live? These parables are relevant because when Howard Thurman -- mystic, preacher, mastermind of the non-violence resistance strategy employed during the American Civil Rights Movement and theological savant -- wrote these sermons the American social, political, and economic landscape was like what we are experiencing today (Gowler and Jensen, 2018, xvi). First, Jesus’ world, like present-day America, was marked by an extreme form of Roman nationalism which required its conquered people, especially the Jewish population, to yield to their imperial rule and accept their cultural and religious norms (Powell, 2018, pp. 34,50; Thurman,1996, p.8). Second, the conquered and marginalized Jewish population resisted this Roman oppression and threat to their identity (Thurman, 1996, p.8). Finally, Roman territorial conquest through war was normative, and there was a stark economic inequality between the Roman and Jewish elite and the majority of the oppressed and impoverished Jews (Powell, 2018, p. 31; Thurman 1996, p.8). 

Moreover, akin to first century Palestine, the world in which Thurman wrote these sermons during the 1950s was still reeling from the atrocities of World War II, watching Senator McCarthy’s brand of nationalism which propagated an American fear that Communism would rule the world, and in which American violent racism subjugated African Americans in all aspects of American life and attempted to diminish their humanity. African Americans during the fifties were in the same position as marginalized Jews in the first century (Cone, 2010, p. 120; Thurman 1996, p. 6). 

Today’s world is marked by wars in Palestine and Ukraine and numerous armed conflicts in Africa in which our children are being killed. There is a rise of a nationalism which taps into the American ruling class’ fear of losing their social, economic, and political control and seeks to “Make America Great Again.” Moreover, despite various civil and equality rights movements, other groups such as the LGBTQIA community, Muslim and immigrant groups are joining Jews and African Americans as the American disenfranchised. Thus, as Thurman’s sermons challenged the faithful in the 1950s, he is challenging the faithful today to meet our modern-day violence and oppressive socio-economic and political conditions by accepting our responsibility to build the Kingdom of God, which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would later refer to as the Beloved Community (Hunt, 2018, pp. 35-37). 

In Sermons on the Parables, Thurman delineates a kingdom-building blueprint for the modern world. First, we who accept the role of kingdom builders must develop the necessary skill set by ascertaining who we are to God. Thurman describes this process as finding your “core” (Thurman, 2018, p. 34- 35). Second, to live into this core, we must ascertain and consent to God’s will for our lives. Third, this consent will create an internal wholeness which facilitates our relationship with our neighbor and our participation in the continued creation of the Kingdom of God. 

[Deleted pages of detailed summary/analysis of the sermons.]

Thus, as Thurman’s sermons challenged the faithful in the 1950’s, he is challenging the faithful today to stop, listen, pray, and find God within our core. When we connect with this core we will be empowered and have the responsibility to overturn modern-day violence and oppressive socioeconomic and political conditions and build the Beloved Community.