Critical Reflection

on
“The Creative Encounter”, by Howard Thurman
Evidencing its meaning and implications for both the private and the corporate Christian Worship1

Presented to

Lisa M. Allen, Ph.D

By

Alcenir Oliveira

For

Christian Worship
ICAM 866

Interdenominational Theological Center

Atlanta, October 18, 2006

• Introduction
• The inwardness of Religion
 • The individual’s self understanding, the search,
encounter and understanding of God
• This self realization and encounter with God and its
meaning and implication with private and public
worship
• The outwardness of Religion
• The perspective of the whole community where the
individuals are in search of God
• The community encounter with God and its meaning and
implication with private and public worship
• The inner need for love
• What the inner need for love has to do with God
• What the inner need for love has to do with private and
public worship
• The outer necessity for love
• What the outer necessity for love has to do with God
• What the outer necessity for love has to do with private
and public worship
• Conclusion

Introduction
The human being life comprises a two side perspective, very clearly stated by
Thurman. First, there is the private side of the individual’s life. It involves his whole
idiosyncrasies and needs. Second, there is the interaction of the individual with others in
the community and the way they interfere with his life and how he influences their world.
In this direction, Thurman develops a great reflection about the individual’s need for
love, as well as the whole community necessity of being cared for.

The inwardness of Religion: The individual’s self under-

standing, the search, encounter and understanding of God.
The self awareness is very important in our understanding of self relationship with
God and with the world. In Luke 10:27-29, Jesus not only says that it is important to love
God and neighbor, but when we read the text carefully we notice that he points to the
importance of self love, as he commands to love our neighbor the way we love ourselves.
It means that we should love the neighbor with the same intensity which we love
ourselves. It is implied that we love ourselves naturally, so it does not require a
commandment. The command of Jesus has two assumptions. The first is that we love
ourselves. If we love ourselves, we’ve got to love our neighbors in the same way. The
second is that the statement implies the possibility that some people could not love
themselves. In this case, you should not love your neighbor the same way you love
yourselves.
One important principle we have to be aware of when we reflect about love is that
to love anyone or anything we shall know, understand, the object of love. It applies to
self also. It is in this direction that Thurman leads us in his discussion of the inwardness
of religion. He calls it a “private life”, where “the great issues of our lives are
determined”, he says. He also says that “it is cut off from immediate involvement in what
surrounds us”. This inner formation is going to determine how one “interprets the
significance … of his religious experience”, Thurman says.
The encounter with God in his/her search depends upon the individual realization
of self identification or of self awareness, as well as understanding the existence of God.
This experience then involves two persons or two parties: self and God.
The experience of God by the individual, according to Thurman, happens when
God meets his/her needs, as though as at the level of his understanding of God’s
meaning. I allow myself not exactly to disagree with Thurman but to point that God’s
meaning should come first in this “inward encounter”, then it regards to the matter of
God’s meeting self needs. It takes the individual to become self conscious first; from
there he/she achieves what we could call God consciousness. Thurman calls this “residue
of God-meaning”.
When this relationship between self understanding and God consciousness
(Thurman residue of God-meaning) is achieved, it is pretty much clear in mind that “God
is the Creator of life itself” and there is a “living quality present in all living things”,
what in our consciousness points to a sense that “distinguishes a dead thing from a living
thing”.
One of the most important point that Thurman makes clear here is that this
awareness, which is of utmost importance, is the self visualization by the individual as “a
living object in the world of living objects”.
Besides being aware of self and of God, the individual needs to view God as “all
inclusive, all comprehending and in a profound sense universal”, what means that he/she
is included, belongs in, is not ignored. Put in other way, it is a “need for recognition,
from being personally regarded that persists and permits no substitute”.
Wrapping up his approach, Thurman says that we learn two things here. The first
is that the experience is not casual, that there is a volitional element in it, and that the self
is active in it. We could interpret the experience as the encounter of self action with
God’s action, as far as the creature is acting in the universe of the creator. The second is
revelation. Thurman calls this “an awareness of literal truth directly perceived”. He
develops a comparative consideration between revelation and intuition that may be
misunderstood, but that somehow makes sense, as far as intuition, he explains, is
connected with the whole background or experience of the individual; revelation is
likewise related to this experience.

This self realization and encounter with God: Its meaning

and implication with private and public worship.
 The private and public worship is profoundly connected with the individual’s self
acknowledgement of his/her inner being, his/her private life, in relation to his/her
acknowledgement of God. In private worship self enters in communication with God,
whereas the self consciousness of creature and creator being is the way to allow this
exchange. According to Thurman, this religious experience comes to reality through
prayer, which means “the method by which the individual makes his way to the temple of
quiet within his own spirit and the activity of his spirit within its walls”. He gives a two
steps concept of prayer. First, that it is a communication with God and second, that it is
the readying of the spirit for such communication.
In terms of public worship, I believe that the argument of Thurman about the inner
experience is that the “inwardness” is a “sine qua non” condition to enter the first
moments of public worship. Without the “inwardness” may be impossible to open
communication with God. It will happen at the very moment that the inner reality
becomes open to the reality of God. The human being story, says Wimberly in “African
American Pastoral Care”, is God’s unfolding story. In fact I believe that in worship there
is an intersection of human being story and God’s story. Thurman seems to come close to
Wimberley’s statement when he makes it clear that in worship the person opens up
his/her inner being towards God’s care. He uses an example of a woman that used to fall
asleep during worship and apologized to him, but he found out that the only place in the
world she would have peace enough to fall asleep was during worship.
A clear description of the grounds where and how the encounter happens is, in his
words, “if man is emptied of creatureliness, then God has no alternative but to fill him up
– if He does that, there is no difference then between God and man except in the rather
tenuous boundaries of the self”.

The outwardness of Religion: The perspective of the whole

community where the individuals are in search of God.
The inner encounter, the realization of self, the understanding of private life is very
important in experiencing God. Nevertheless, human being is social and is completed
with others. We see it happening since Eden, as God creates the woman because the man
should not be alone. Therefore, the experience of God shall happen inwardly and
outwardly.
In research there are two methods of observation and Thurman brings them up to give
some lights on this matter. On one moment, the observer experiences the reality by
immersing in it; on the other, he steps outside and watch from a certain distance. It is not
different, it is complimentary. It means that there are facts one cannot see from inside,
and others one cannot see from outside. He says that there are two levels of
understanding of the facts of religious experience. One is the examination of the facts
themselves and the other is the meaning of the facts as seen by the person experiencing
them2.
This reflection is of utmost importance to understand worship. I recall a minister who
used substantiate his sermons with his experience, but we used be skeptical about the
reality described by him. The interpretation of the facts, by who experiences them, may
disqualify the interpretation, says Thurman, because he/she cannot be objective, because
he/she cannot separate it from his/her needs, desires, hopes, fears and so forth.
This reflection is necessary for the goal of this study. The question here is if
experiencing God makes difference in the outward life of the individual, which includes
the context the individual is living and functioning3. Here he discuss a parallel between
what is self and what is not-self and develops a relationship between them in the sense
that self experience is and will influence the not-self. In fact the growth of the self
happens by having the not-self as reference, as in the development of a baby since birth.
This all philosophical view is brought to the Christian experience by Thurman in this
expression “what I have in Christ is not an impression but a life change; not an
impression of personal influence which might evaporate, but a fact of central personal
change. I do not merely feel changed. I am changed”. It a matter of receiving a new life
by surrender the self to God. What happens in fact is an exchange instead of a one side
only surrender. In fact the life of the surrendered self is given back at another level. It can
be said that the self loses the life and the life is given back to self.4
 This process of giving and receiving ends in transformation. This transformation
generates a different image of the self. This is the image that figuratively Jesus talks
about the salt and the light. Therefore, the outwardness will be this interference with the
context as happens with salt and light. A beautiful argument of Thurman about self
(somebody) and others is that all those with whom self relates have an interpretation of
the facts concerning self and the image they have of self. He says that there is a tendency
of being guided by the image of self instead of the facts.5 He concludes this way: “in the
religious experience the individual sees himself as he is and as God sees him and makes
an honest surrender, and then such an experience would give to the individual integrity
of appraisal with reference to the facts of his own life and the pretensions which are
often present in the image”6.

The community encounter with God: its meaning and

implication with private and public worship.
We could say that this is the moment of the encounter where the private give place
the public worship in the sense that the inwardness transcend to the outwardness.
Therefore, the self experience of God is shared with others and it becomes a communion
of a plurality of self encounters.

The inner need for love: What the inner need for love has to
do with God.
Love is essential to the formation of personality, according to Thurman. And much
more, the way a child is loved is going to influence his later love relationship. This ability
to love, like other human faculties, has to be learned and practiced, he adds.
Two elements are essential to understand the inner need for love, based on what
Thurman defends that the emotional formation of the individual has a straight relation
with his ability to love. These elements are the need for personal attention and the need
for emotional stability.
One important aspect brought up by Thurman in this study is the role of love in the
formation of personality. He says that “…the need for love is so related to the structure
of the personality that when this need is not met, the personality is stunted and pushed or
twisted out of shape”. He says that the role of the mother in availing love in the phase of
formation of the personality is indispensable “Something in the nature of being a mother
must be present to deal with that need. This something is mother love. It seems that this
quality is indigenous in the female structure”7. By bring examples of experiments with
animals he assumes that this ability to love is related to birth delivery pain. It is
something that involves the whole emotional structure of the mother which creates a
natural link with the offspring as part the mother’s pain. He concludes that “where birth
pain is absent, there is absolutely no mother love exercised with reference to the
offspring … The unlocking of the mother love complex through pain is beyond
consciousness, beyond the knowledge of the mother, and has nothing to do with drawing
her attention to her offspring”8.
The conclusion he comes to is that love is an essential element in the structure of
personality. Here then associates it as a pattern that comes underneath the response of
human beings to others leading to formation of community and all types of relationship in
society. It seems that he intends to let us get to our own conclusions that the ability to
love is essentially related to the formation of personality since birth.
The need to love is explained by the excellence of the feeling raised by the
acknowledgement that someone cares for someone else with no extras; that the object of
love has no need to pretend in any sense; it awakes the personal importance, the sense of
self worth when the person realizes that he/she is needed, it is the “need to be needed”.

The inner need for love: Its implications with private and
public worship.
Worship – May I infiltrate here! – seems to be all about love. In worship there is no
trade-ins; there is no I pay, I receive; no do or die; no surrender and be compensated.
Worship is about expressing love. “For he so loved the world that gave his life in favor
…!” It means not that a price was paid for a great amount of reward! In the same sense, it
comes to our side in worship. We worship because we love, and we love because we
were loved first. Therefore, we go back to Thurman’s reflection about the formation of
personality and the later ability to love is greatly related to the way an individual was
loved in childhood.
The need for love and its relationship with worship is that in our need for love and
our need to love we anchor in the arms of God and his infinite love expressed in Jesus
Christ.
As a conclusion, as a tool for further use, it is worth to transcribe the words of
Thurman: “There is a direct continuity between the need to be loved, to be deeply cared
for, and the heart, the very pulse beat of the individual’s experience of God in the
religious encounter. Here the individual is laid bare, stripped of all façade – what I am
in and of myself is finally dealt with. … This is the essence of the meaning of the love of
God. In the presence of God, at last, a man is relieved of all necessity for pretending. He
can stand clean … This does not mean that limitations are not overlooked, that sin are no
longer sin, but it does mean that anything less than the very core of one’s being is not
quite relevant”.

The outer necessity for love: What the outer necessity for love
has to do with God.
After discussing the inwardness, or the inner being, and the outwardness, or outer
being, as well as the inner need of love, we come to the higher purpose of Thurman’s
study, which is the outer necessity of love. On our side, therefore, we reach our purpose
which is to evaluate the human necessity in general of love and establish a relationship of
this very human element with worship.
In this regard, Thurman navigates through a sea of possibilities related to the
incentive and or barrier to the patterns of love in shaping the society. He lists what he
calls “a series of cultural patterns” which are: 1) the God-centered culture, where the
significance of personality is measured by the personality’s service and usefulness to
God; 2) the family-centered culture, where the significance of the individual is related to
his/her usefulness to the family; 3) the state-centered culture, where the significance of
the individual is related to the degree to which he contributes to the centrality of the state;
4) the profit-centered culture, where the individual’s significance is based on his
relevance of his contribution to the economic order and its stability.
These four different cultures of organized society are structured, according to
Thurman, based on “an effort to meet certain of the basic needs of the individual; to give
to the individual a sense of belonging, of relatedness, of significance”. He offers grounds
to relate it to the basics of love, the individuals’ need of a feeling of belonging and being
significant, meaningful to the specific group, be it religious, state, family or profit
society.

The outer necessity for love: Its implications with private and
public worship.
This topic is amazingly wide in meaning, such that we could write books about it on
the grounds furnished by Thurman. However, for space and time limitations we have to
keep the boundaries.
The outer necessity of love, topic that is at the top of the sequence very well
established by Thurman, is the point where we could depart for any consideration related
to conflicts of life in society in general. It is a wide field for Psychology and it is not our
goal. Nevertheless, for the purpose of thinking the foundations for worship it is very
meaningful.
There is no need to expand much our analysis, for the development of this essay
lead us to understand in short how important it is for private and public worship to bring
into consideration the outer necessity for love, meaning high need of each and every
individual in society to love and to be loved; to build in their soul a sense of belonging in
an environment where loved is the bread everybody shares with abundance.

Conclusion
I believe that after reading and Thurman every worshiper will not be the same in their
perspective of worship anymore. Worship has not the same meaning of a business
encounter with a variety of individual or corporate purpose, but something that could be
seen as the sum of every individual expression of love in response to a greater love from
God. This way the soul becomes fulfilled with that sense of loving and being loved that
every human being cares for.
It is important to bring to this conclusion Thurman’s view of worship, when he says
that “man builds his little shelter, he raises his little wall; man builds his little altar, he
worships his little God; man organizes the resources of his little life, he defends his little
barrier. All this – to no avail! What man is committed to is … the effective possibility of a
vital religious fellowship which is creative in character, so convincing in quality that it
inspires the mind to multiply experiences of unity”. He goes on saying that he believes
“…that in the Presence of God there is no male nor female, white nor black, Gentile nor
Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, nor Moslem, but a human spirit stripped
to the literal substance of itself before God”9.
We can make ours his words by saying that worship happens when we become bared
of all in the presence of God “a human spirit stripped to the literal substance of itself
before God”.
1
Thurman, Howard. The Creative Encounter. Harper & Brothers: Richmond, Indiana, 1954.
2
Ibid p.63
3
Ibid p.65
4
Ibid p.75
5
Ibid p.89
6
Ibid p.90
7
Ibid p.101
8
Ibid p.102/103.
9
Ibid p. 151/152.