In the vast repertoire of sermon illustrations and stories can be found the following parable. The essential truth differentiating heaven and hell was revealed to a man through a vision. Both heaven and hell contained banquet tables in beautifully decorated settings. The tables overflowed with the most delicious and desirable foods imaginable. Candelabra cast a heavenly glow in the banquet halls. The most relaxing music enhanced the possibility of peace and serenity.
However, everyone in heaven and hell were encased in casts which immobilized their elbows and which would not allow them to bend at the waist. In heaven, everyone experienced exquisite joy and happiness as they feasted on both the food and fellowship of their companions. There was laughter, deep sharing of love and dreams, and genuine expressions of community. However, in hell under the same conditions, there was cursing, weeping, desperation, depression, rage, and violence as some persons took swings at others with their encased arms.
The man immediately saw the difference between heaven and hell. In heaven, people served each other. They couldn’t bend their elbows to feed themselves. They couldn’t even bend their waists to eat like animals from a trough. But they could take turns feeding each other. They had learned the secret, necessity, and joy of community. Those in hell would rather starve than feed each other. They dared not share what was in front of them with others. They chose hell over heaven and were too proud and selfish to change and discover their common humanity.
Those in hell would rather starve than feed each other.
Although this is a well-known parable, I suggest that its radical message is not often appreciated or understood at the deepest levels. Of course, as a parable, it is only a metaphor and must not be taken literally. But metaphors point to deeper truths which we often cannot see when we are encased in the expectations, experiences, and restrictions of our status quo world. As was said so well in the Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We in our pride, selfishness, and prejudice are most often our own worst enemies.
There are many applications of this parable in our world today. In this article, I want to focus on its relevance for the continuing and lethal legacy of America’s Original Sin of racism. One of the most perplexing aspects of our nation’s politics is why working-class and middle-class whites continue to vote for Republican politicians who have never made and never will make the hopes, dreams, and needs of these constituents a primary concern in their legislative and governing agendas. The concerns of these politicians are focused like a laser beam on the economic success and advantages of the wealthiest members in our society and of large corporations. In the 2016 election, how could the majority of whites (most of whom were working and middle class citizens) vote for a man with no experience and no qualifications; who regularly shafted working class people by refusing to pay for their work; who boasted of being a sexual predator; who disparaged war heroes and the parents of American soldiers killed in battle; who had never done anything in his life to benefit anyone but himself; who would not disclose his tax returns; who was racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and just plain crooked and mean? Isabel Wilkerson, in her timely and insightful book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, provides a credible and disturbing answer to this mystery. She writes. “Many voters, in fact, made an assessment of their circumstances and looked beyond immediate short-term benefits and toward, from their perspective, the larger goals of maintaining the dominant-caste and their survival in the long term. They were willing to lose health insurance now, risk White House instability and government shutdowns, external threats from faraway lands, in order to preserve what their actions say they value most—the benefits they had grown accustomed to as members of the historically ruling caste in America.” Wilkerson quotes political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck who wrote, “White voters’ preference for Donald Trump was weakly related to their own job security but strongly related to concerns that minorities were taking jobs away from whites. . . No other factor predicted changes in white partisanship during Obama’s presidency as powerfully and consistently as racial attitudes.” The researchers labelled this kind of group fear “racialized economics: the belief that undeserving groups are getting ahead while your group is left behind.” (p.325)
Wilkerson explains what I have never been able to understand about poor, working-class, and middle-class whites. Why do they consistently vote for politicians who pursue economic and political objectives which benefit only the wealthiest in our society? They do so because they incorrectly believe that they are threatened when minorities are given fair advantage in our society. As long as they can feel they are superior to people of other races and can see evidence that these minorities have less than they do (less rights, opportunities, income, wealth, prestige), they are willing to deny themselves economic opportunities which could be possible if 40% of the wealth in this country were not controlled by 1-2% of the population. They would rather deny themselves and their children advantages than allow all people to share in the abundance of our society. They do not realize that they themselves are suffering from their racist tendencies. (Statistics show that in the last fifty years the poor are getting poorer while the working and middle-class are making less in real buying power when inflation is considered. Meanwhile, the wealthy are becoming wealthier at unconscionable rates.)
In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (p. 321), we find a most telling example of the obstinate refusal to make the vital changes necessary for one’s own healing and future. During the presidential campaign of 2012, Henry Hamilton of Key West, Florida told his friends, “If Barack gets reelected, I’m not going to be around.” A day and a half after President Obama was reelected, Hamilton’s body was found in his condo along with two empty prescription bottles. His suicide note demanded that he not be revived and cursed Obama. This sixty-four-year-old white man chose to die rather than to accept the reelection of a Black man to the highest office in the United States. He chose to “starve to death” (according to the parable of heaven and hell) rather than embrace the beloved community willed by his Creator. Like so many others who make similar choices, he “cut off his nose to spite his face.” “To disadvantage yourself in the course of trying to disadvantage others” is dictionary definition of this familiar idiom. Such a definition unmasks the sheer lunacy of racism.
(If you have not read Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, I plead with you to read this remarkable book. I grew up in the Deep South and thought I understood racism. However, Wilkerson’s book, which expresses the reality and dynamics of America’s Original Sin of racism, opened my eyes, mind, and heart to the deeper truths, manifestations, causes, and pain of racism. Her book will break your heart and allow you to have a glimpse into some of the suffering and pathos of hundreds of millions of people. It will make you angry as well as force you to reevaluate your own life and attitudes. But it is the “bitter pill” we must take and absorb if our nation can heal from this deeply rooted sin and save its democracy. Without that “repentance,” there is no hope for our nation, our children’s future, or the redemption of our own souls. In the final analysis, we must discover that my well-being and the well-being of all my fellow humans are inextricably intertwined. As I used to tell my daughter, “There are two ways to learn in this life: the easy way and the hard way. And you choose.” The parable of heaven and hell reveals how critical our choice is.)
