Thurman writes about fear in chapter 2, a fear that is different in its oppressive, relentless pursuit to dispossess and marginalize. The fear Thurman talks about is the concrete, real presence of political and religious powers who use their powers and religion to crush the spirits of people. He writes: “Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited… When the power and the tools of violence are on one side, the fact that there is no available and recognized protection from violence makes the resulting fear deeply terrifying.” (36-37) And: “There are few things more devastating than to have it burned into you that you do not count and that no provisions are made for the literal protection of your person.” …show more content…
We know that Jesus himself was familiar with fear. Jesus came into a fear-filled world of opporessed and captive peoples. He quoted from the book of Isaiah, and implied that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and had anointed him to do such things. Later we see that Jesus then tells us who to fear and who not to fear, in Matthew 10: “Don’t fear those who can kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.”In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us to not worry about our lives, since God cares for us. These words of Jesus become crucial for Thurman, who says that the “core of the analysis of Jesus is that man is a child of God, the God of life that sustains all of