He was an African American man writing in the United States of America in 1949. Pastor and theologian Howard Thurman wrote a book called “Jesus and the Disinherited.” Published in 1949, it asks a perhaps uncomfortable question: Why does Christianity - a religion that started under intense persecution, whose central figure was executed by a colonial power, a religion that follows someone who said, “Blessed are the meek,” and, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” - why does that religion often seem to side with the powerful over the weak?įor Thurman that was not an academic question. “Do you believe people exist?” does not divide people - it is never even asked because the answer is so obvious.Īs you think about Jesus this Easter, put the totally God part aside for a moment. “Do you believe God exists?” is a question that divides people. And for good reason: We meet people all the time, but encountering God is far less common. Too often we get hung up on the totally God part of the equation. But no matter where you’re coming from, give Jesus some thought today, even if you don’t any other day of the year. As you can probably tell from my usage of capital letters so far in this article, I believe that He is. You might hold a different belief, or perhaps you just haven’t thought about it all that much. You might not hold the strange belief that He is totally God and totally man. Suffice it to say, Christ being totally God and totally man is part of the Christian faith, and it’s not called “faith” for nothing. That question is too big for this article (and this entire newspaper, and all the newspapers, magazines, journals and books in the whole world). How can someone be totally God and totally man? At first glance - and even at second, third or four-hundredth glance - that is a strange belief. 451, is that He is totally God and totally man. The orthodox Christian understanding of Christ, since at least the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. Today is Easter, the day that Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
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