Jesus and the Disinherited

Thurman explores the history and functionality of deception as a tool used by oppressed people to survive in the absence of physical might. He begins with examples from the animal kingdom: Cuttlefish release ink to blind predators and escape, while other animals play dead or use camouflage to avoid detection.

Thurman proceeds with numerous other examples. Children in class often use deceptive techniques to divert their teachers’ attention. Women, Thurman says, have often been forced to deceive men to survive in a “man-dominated social order,” and he argues that equal rights for women are an important step toward rectifying the “morally degrading aspects of deception and dishonesty that enter into the relationship between men and women” (59). The prophet Ezekiel communicated to his people in code through Nebuchadnezzar. Thurman tells the story of a minister delivering a prayer at the funeral service of a Black man killed by police in the South. The minister’s prayer was pointed and political but ostensibly delivered to God, so white officers at the service could not accuse him of inciting political violence.

Deception has moral implications, and Thurman explores rhetorical arguments for its rationalization: “Is there a fine distinction between literal honesty and honesty in spirit and intent? […] Are there times when to tell the truth is to be false to the truth that is in you?” (62). He considers whether honesty is really an applicable measure of morality when there are extreme imbalances of power and whether deception is always bound to happen. Furthermore, he asks whether the disinherited might quarantine dishonesty, use it sparingly for survival, and keep their righteousness and Godliness intact.

Again, Thurman raises these academic questions in order to argue against them. He claims that “the penalty of deception is to become a deception” (65), and he argues that any pandering to moral relativism is just dishonest rationalization. He cites the characters of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, overcome by guilt, as examples of the folly of rationalization.

Thurman presents “compromise” as another form of deception, wherein the disinherited lives in a constant state of moral concession, dictated by survival behavior. Again, he argues that compromise is a losing game in which “whatever moral sensitiveness to the situation was present at some stage in the life of the individual has long since been atrophied, due to betrayal, suffering, or frustration” (68).

Jesus, again, is the alternative, and, again, the path is difficult. To Thurman, “mere preaching is not enough” (69), as it fails to contend with the grim reality of survival. Subsistence morality is based only on not getting killed and thus has no grounding in honesty or integrity. The disinherited are forced by the powerful into deception and into a lack of moral agency, just as they force the disinherited out of society.

Thurman believes that the center of moral evaluation must shift for progress to be made. He invokes Gandhi and promotes “the third alternative—a complete and devastating sincerity” (70). This sincerity depends on the faith that, regardless of short-term personal risk, it will, if practiced by many, facilitate a shift in power relations, wherein “the effect of truthfulness can be realized in the mind of the oppressor as well as the oppressed” (70). To Thurman, this appeal to complete sincerity has two advantages. First, it is in line with God’s will, and if nothing is hidden from God, it helps secure one’s place in the kingdom of heaven. Second, it offers an existential offense against the oppressors, who theoretically are left with “the edge taken away from the sense of prerogative and from the status upon which the impregnability of their position rests” (73). Honesty allows the individual to retain human dignity. It disarms the oppressor in a way deception never can and is therefore preferable, despite short-term risk and threat of violence.