Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 317 of 447 · 20 per page

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  How we are saved is closely linked to the question of what we are saved for. This had a particularly sharp focus at the time of the Reformation. In sixteenth-century Europe, a great many people worried a lot about the doctrine of purgatory, the belief that after death faithful Christians could expect to spend time in a place of punishment and purgation where sins were finally dealt with before they might finally enter heaven. Luther’s early protest was fueled by his angry rejection of the corrupt practice whereby people could buy “indulgences” that would allow relatives or friends to get out of purgatory, or at least get through it more quickly. Purgatory gripped the imagination of late medieval Europe to a degree almost impossible to imagine today. The rich, and not least the royal, often left copious sums of money to fund “chantries” in which prayers would be offered for their souls in purgatory. Behind all this was the great heaven-and-hell scheme of Western eschatology, which we see in literary works like those of Dante and in majestic visual art like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes. Bodily resurrection remained the official dogma, but the late medieval period more and more envisaged the ultimate promised future not as a new creation, but as the picture of “heaven” common to this day in Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. Many dictionaries still define “eschatology” using the terms “death, judgment, heaven, and hell,” often known as the “Four Last Things.” It is possible to combine this with a belief in ultimate new creation, but most people who have been taught the traditional fourfold scheme don’t even realize that this alternate schema is an option, far less that it is the biblical option. The Reformers by and large rejected not only the abuses connected with purgatory (selling indulgences and the like), but the doctrine itself. In part this may have been because they saw this teaching being used as a weapon by the clerical elite to maintain social and dogmatic control. But their objections were set out in robustly theological and biblical terms. They insisted that the Christian soul went immediately to heaven after death. (Some tried to combine this with the New Testament’s sense of a time lag before the ultimate new creation, teaching that the soul might in some sense “sleep” in between bodily death and bodily resurrection; but the point, again, was “no purgatory.”) These issues remained unresolved and are not relevant to our present discussion, except as the context for the truly important thing. The rejection of purgatory precipitated a fresh emphasis from a new angle on an interpretation of the cross that echoed, but also differed from, that of Anselm.

• From Story of O (1954)

  With that, she felt a strange inexplicable storm of revolt rising within her, silently denying in the depths of her being the words she was hearing, denying her promises of submission and slavery, denying her own agreement, her own desire, her nakedness, her sweat, her trembling limbs, the circles under her eyes. She struggled and clenched her teeth with rage when, having made her bend over, with her elbows on the floor and her head between her arms, her buttocks raised, he forced her from behind, to rend her as René had said he would. The first time she did not cry out. He went at it again, harder now, and she screamed. She screamed as much out of revolt as of pain, and he was fully aware of it. She also knew—which meant that in any event she was vanquished—that he was pleased to make her cry out. When he had finished with her, and after he had helped her to her feet, he was on the point of dismissing her when he remarked to her that what he had spilled in her was going to seep slowly out tinted with the blood of the wound he had inflicted on her, that this wound would burn her as long as her buttocks were not used to him and he was obliged to keep on forcing his way. René had reserved this particular use of her to him, and he certainly intended to make full use of it, she had best have no illusions on that score. He reminded her that she had agreed to be René’s slave, and his too, but that it appeared unlikely that she was aware—consciously aware—of what she had consented to. By the time she had learned, it would be too late for her to escape.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Then indignation, accusation, and condemnation pour out: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, let that one be accursed! (1:6–9) Soon thereafter he calls them “foolish Galatians” and wonders if they have become possessed: “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (3:1). Near the end of the letter, his passion surfaces again: Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you…. I am confident about you in the Lord that you will not think otherwise. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. (5:2, 10) He concludes the section with sarcasm (whose etymology is “a gashing of flesh”): “I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!” (5:12). Why this passion about circumcision? Because requiring circumcision for gentile male converts countered Paul’s most foundational sense of his mission as well as his vision of what “in Christ” meant. His vocation was to be an apostle to the Gentiles—and for him that did not mean first converting Gentiles to Jews through circumcision so that they could then be baptized into Christ. For him to have accepted that notion would have meant a betrayal of his calling. And it would have countered his vision of what life “in Christ” in “the new creation” was like. Paul’s counterarguments (note the plural) are not really addressed to his opponents. We assume he was aware that he didn’t have much chance of changing their minds. Rather, he sought to persuade those in the community who were wavering, uncertain about what to think. He begins his defense of his apostleship by reminding them of his Damascus experience and call (1:11–24). He continues by reporting that Christian leaders in Jerusalem had approved his mission to the Gentiles (“the uncircumcised”) without requiring that they be circumcised (2:1–10). Then he turns to the strongest point of his opponents’ argument: the biblical text requiring circumcision of Abraham and his offspring. He mounts a number of counterarguments, only some of which we mention. He appeals to another text about Abraham from a few chapters earlier in Genesis, before the text requiring circumcision. “Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’” (Gal. 3:6, quoting Gen. 15:6). Paul also uses this argument in Romans 4:9–10, where he explicitly adds that faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness before he was circumcised. Then he continues: “So, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham….

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  He has Barnabas vouch for Paul at Jerusalem after his conversion: “Barnabas took him [Paul], brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus” (9:27). And, as just noted, he has Barnabas bring Paul back from his Tarsus refuge after that failed Nabatean mission (11:25). Finally, Luke has famine relief sent from Antioch to Jerusalem “by Barnabas and Saul” (11:30). In other words, Luke takes Barnabas’s mission—and what Paul did when he was under Barnabas—as a model for what Paul always did even when he was by himself. Luke filled out his lesser knowledge of Paul on his own with his greater knowledge of Paul under Barnabas. But is that what Paul did when he was on his own independent mission? And, first of all, how did he finally gain that independence? THE AEGEAN MISSION At the end of Paul’s second mission—that one under Barnabas in the 40s—there was a major apostolic agreement in Jerusalem and a major apostolic disagreement at Antioch. Paul details the former event in Galatians 2:1–10 and the latter in 2:11–14, but Luke speaks only of agreement at both Jerusalem and Antioch in Acts 15. The debate at Jerusalem was whether gentile males who converted to Christianity had to be circumcised. And, as Paul reminded the Galatians, “James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars,…gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised” (2:9). That was a crucial apostolic agreement for Paul. Simon, by the way, had a bilingual nickname, Cephas in Aramaic and Peter in Greek. Both terms meant “the Rock” or, if you prefer, Rocky. The debate at Antioch was whether a mixed community of Jewish and gentile Christians should observe kosher rules in their common eucharistic meals. Should it be kosher for all, with the gentile Christians deferring to the Jewish Christians? Or should it be kosher for none, with the Jewish Christians deferring to the gentile Christians? Peter, Barnabas, and Paul had first accepted kosher for none, but when James of Jerusalem, the brother of Jesus, demanded kosher for all, the other apostles agreed—all except Paul. He even said that the shift from kosher for none to kosher for all by Peter and the other Jewish Christian leaders was sheer hypocrisy: “The other Jews joined him [Peter] in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy” (Gal. 2:13). That was a crucial apostolic disagreement for Paul. You can sense his shock in that “even Barnabas.” Paul’s outraged refusal and truculent language at Antioch may well have stemmed from residual shock at the fact that there had even been discussion about gentile male circumcision at Jerusalem.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  But, although it is very familiar, its full weight and radical meaning can be seen only be contextualizing it within Galatians and the conflict in Galatia as a whole. Paul’s community in Galatia was in Asia Minor, probably in ancient Ancyra, Ankara in modern Turkey. Paul had established a community there apparently without planning to do so—he mentions that it was only because of a physical affliction that he stopped there: “You know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I first announced the gospel to you” (4:13). The Galatians had received him with great hospitality: Though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn me or despise me, but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus…. For I testify that, had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. (4:14–15) As we said in Chapter 3, we can only guess at the nature of this affliction, but our best scholarly conjecture is that Paul suffered from chronic malaria. But during his absence, things changed. The central issue was circumcision. Did male gentile converts need to be circumcised in order to be in the community “in Christ”? Some were being persuaded that the answer was yes. We do not know precisely who Paul’s opponents were. But if those gentile converts were former God-worshipers, we can easily imagine them being pulled in two different directions—toward traditional Judaism by the synagogue and toward Christian Judaism by Paul. We do know that the opposition to Paul in Galatia was fierce. We know from the letter that his opponents challenged his authority and impugned his credentials as an apostle. They also appealed to the authority of sacred scripture, the Jewish Bible, which was also Paul’s Bible. Indeed, they had the Bible on their side. In Genesis, God’s covenant with Abraham emphatically required circumcision: “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised” (17:10). Circumcision is mentioned another five times in the next four verses in Genesis. So it had been for males entering the Jewish covenant with God ever since. Who was Paul to set aside the clear command of the Bible? Especially since he was proclaiming a Jewish Messiah? The fierceness of the conflict is pointed to by the fierceness of Paul’s response. Galatians is the most polemical of his letters—and for Paul, that’s saying a lot. It is his only letter that does not begin with a thanksgiving. Instead, he immediately counters his opponents attack upon his authority: “Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (1:1).

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  A recent scandal illuminates just how fraught sex is. Parents of students at the Dalton School in New York City were outraged to discover their first-graders had learned about self-pleasure. During a lesson, sex educator Justine Ang Fonte played an informational cartoon where a boy asks, “Hey, how come sometimes my penis gets big … and points in the air?” The video explains what an erection is, and the boy says, “Sometimes I touch my penis because it feels good.” A girl adds, “Sometimes, when I’m in my bath or when Mom puts me to bed, I like to touch my vulva, too.” Once the outrage spread from these exorbitantly wealthy parents to right-leaning news media, the backlash was swift and unhinged. Candace Owens tweeted, “A teacher named Justine Fonte taught first-graders via a cartoon about how it feels good when they touch their clitoris and penis. In my opinion, she should have to register as a sex offender. This is worse than woke—it’s pedophilic.” Several months later, the headmaster announced that Fonte would not be returning to the school. In response, The Daily Mail published a story with a headline that read, “Sex-ed teacher at $55,000-per-year NYC private school RESIGNS after angering parents by teaching first-graders about masturbation and telling kids they can’t be hugged ‘without consent.’” Months after the scandal, Fonte told me that she was still inundated with hateful emails and DMs, many of them threatening murder. Those messages took up half her inbox. The other half were notes of extreme gratitude; people saying they desperately wished they’d had her as a sex educator when they were children. It struck Fonte that only sex could illicit such polarized, intensely emotional reactions. She posited that the people who want her dead must have been profoundly hurt by sex to be so viscerally triggered by her mission to ensure that young people learn to feel safe and happy in their bodies.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  that he had deserted me in my own trouble. It did not displease me to see Chuck on the griddle now, and to have the chance to show him that I was a better friend than he had been. I would stand up for him. No one else did. Not Huff or Psycho, not even his parents. Mrs. Bolger was in too much pain even to speak to him. She wept constantly, and hardly ever left the house. Mr. Bolger’s worry for her expressed itself in implacable anger toward Chuck. He rode Chuck hard, and when he wasn’t riding him he watched him furiously, especially during meals. Dinner was the worst time of the day. No one spoke. The sounds of steel on china, of chewing and swallowing, of chairs creaking, all seemed amplified and grotesque. Chuck’s sisters bolted their food and got out of there. So did I. Chuck had to stay, and then, when everyone else was gone, get browbeaten by his father. Mr. Bolger wanted him to marry Tina Flood. Chuck had lain with the girl, as he himself admitted. It made no difference whether she had also been with two other boys or a hundred, Chuck had lain with her and by that act he had become responsible for what might happen to her afterward. He had no right to refuse the responsibility just because it was hard. He had played at being a man; now the time had come to be a man. Mr. Bolger must have gagged on his own counsel. He was generous but proud, too proud to utter without mortification these arguments designed to win him The Flood for a daughter-in-law. But he accepted the cost of his principles and kept his feelings to himself. Huff and Psycho also wanted Chuck to marry Tina, but their reasons were simpler than Mr. Bolger’s. If he didn’t marry her, they would both go to Walla Walla with him. This seemed unnecessary and unfair. All Chuck had to do was bite the bullet for a few years and then dump her. Chuck wouldn’t do that. He did not explain his reasons to Huff and Psycho, or even to his father, but at night, when he felt most embattled and alone, he explained them to me. He had to work at putting them into words, and always seemed a little surprised to hear them. So was I. Basically, Chuck would not marry Tina Flood because he believed himself to be otherwise engaged. Sure, he liked to fool around, but way down deep he was saving himself for his wife. He had a clear picture of her, and when he finally met her he was going to marry her and stay married forever. The wife for whom Chuck was saving himself was a television wife, cute, sassy, and pious. Their life together would be a heartwarming series with lots of affectionate banter. It would also have some

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Well, you know—complain, speak in a whiny voice, talk in a way that makes people want to get away from me. Do I?” “What do you think, Myrna?” “I don’t think so. And your opinion?” Unable to procrastinate indefinitely, or to lie, or to tell the truth, Ernest squirmed. “If by ‘whine’ you mean you tend to complain about your situation repetitively and unproductively—then, yes, I’ve heard you do that.” “An example, please.” “I promise to answer that,” said Ernest, deciding it was time for a process comment, “but let me say something first, Myrna. I’m struck by the change in you these last weeks. It’s been so fast. You aware of it?” “Change how?” “How? In almost every way. Look at what you’re doing—you’re direct, focused, challenging. Like you say, you’re keeping it in the room; you’re talking about what’s taking place between us.” “And that’s good?” “It’s great, Myrna. I’m delighted to see it. To be honest, there were times in the past when I felt you hardly noticed I was in the room with you. When I say it’s great, I mean you’re moving in the right direction. But still you seem so—what should I say? So one-sided, so—well, acerbic, as though you’re continually angry with me. Am I off base?” “I don’t feel angry with you, just frustrated with my whole life. But you said you’d give me examples of my whining.” Suddenly this woman who had been too slow for him was becoming almost too fast. Ernest had to concentrate all his attention on their discourse. “Not so fast. I’m not buying into that word, Myrna. I feel you’re trying to brand me with it. I said ‘repetitious,’ and I’ll give you an example of that: your feelings about your CEO. How he’s not efficient, how he should make the company leaner, how he should fire incompetent workers, how his softheartedness is going to cost you big money in your stock options—that’s the kind of thing I mean. You’ve discussed this over and over again, hour after hour. Just like your comments about the dating scene—you know what I mean. During those hours I’ve ended up feeling less engaged with you and less helpful as well.” “But those are the things that preoccupy me—you tell me to share what I’m thinking.” “You’re absolutely right, Myrna. I know it’s a dilemma, but it’s not what you say but how you say it. But I don’t want to detract from my earlier point. The mere fact that we’re talking so openly supports what I said a little while ago—that you’re different, working better and harder in therapy. “It’s time to stop for today, but let’s try to pick up from here next week. Oh, yes, here’s the bill for last month.” “Hmmm,” said Myrna, uncrossing her legs, not neglecting to swish them vigorously, and scanning the proffered bill before dropping it into her purse. “How disappointing!” “What do you mean?”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Another problem emerges in the eighteenth century and is still with us powerfully today. I have written about this in Evil and the Justice of God. When much European culture in the eighteenth century was embracing Deism and then Epicureanism, a radical split emerged between personal sin, which stopped people going to heaven, and actual evil in the world, including human wrongdoing, violence, war, and so on, but also what has been called “natural evil,” earthquakes, tsunamis, and the rest. “Atonement theologies” then addressed the former (how can our sins be forgiven so we can go to heaven?), while the latter was called the “problem of evil,” to be addressed quite separately from any meaning given to the cross of Jesus by philosophical arguments designed to explain or even justify God’s providence. The two became radically divided from one another, and questions about the meaning of Jesus’s death were related to the former rather than the latter. The revolution that began on Good Friday—whose first fruit was the socially as well as theologically explosive event of the resurrection—seemed to be pushed to one side. One unexpected result of this, therefore, as I suggested in that earlier book, is that it has been tacitly assumed that the cross has nothing to do with social and political evil. Such “evil” was then to be addressed in (apparently) nontheological ways. After the terrible events of September 11, 2001, Western leaders united in declaring that there was “evil” at large in the world and that they and their allies were going to deal with it—basically by dropping bombs on it. That proposal was not only politically naive and disastrous, not only philosophically shallow; it was also theologically naive or even, one might say, heretical. It was trying to “deal with evil” all by itself, with no reference to any belief that this might be God’s job. (This is an analogy to the Reformers’ protest against what they saw as the Roman tendency to add to the unique sacrifice of Christ, whether in purgatory or in the Mass.) In Christian theology it is God who deals with evil, and he does this on the cross. Any other “dealing with evil” must be seen in the light of that. This is of course very difficult to work out on the ground. For that we would need a freshly thought through theological analysis of international politics in the postmodern age of global empire, on the one hand, and terrorism, on the other. There are no easy or glib solutions. But just as we must (I believe) restore the biblical vision of God’s ultimate future and reconceive atonement in relation to that—the task of Part Three of the present book—so we must restore the biblical analysis of evil and see the cross as addressing it all, not just part of it. Scandalous—For the Wrong Reasons?

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  For women everywhere! I would fight back. I put an old blanket over the cage, lifted it by the handle, walked out of the house—the streets still empty, no one up yet—and marched to the train station. I bought a ticket for Esztergom, about an hour away, but then, deciding it was not far enough, I rode all the way to Szeged, about two hundred kilometers away. When I got off the train I walked a few blocks, then stopped, took the cover off the cage, and prepared to release Merges. As I looked at him, his eyes slashed at me—sharp, like a razor, and I shuddered. There was something about his wild look, so hateful, so relentless, that I knew then, with an eerie certainty, that Cica and I would never be free of him. Animals have been known to return home from across a continent. No matter how far I took Merges, he would return. He would track us from the ends of the earth. I picked up the cage and walked a few squares farther until I came to the Danube. I walked to the center of the bridge, waited until there was no one in sight, and threw the cage into the water. It floated for an instant, then began to sink. As it sank lower in the water, Merges never stopped looking at me and hissing. Finally the Danube stilled him, and I waited until I saw no more bubbles, until he had reached his riverbed grave, until I was safe forever from the hellcat. Then I boarded a train for home . On the ride back, I thought of Kovacs, of his retaliation, and I was terrified. When I returned, his windows were still shuttered. He was then working nights, had slept through Merges’s exodus, and would never, never know of my act of defiance. For the first time in my life I felt free. But not for long. That night, an hour or two after I fell asleep, I heard Merges’s yowling outside. It was, of course, a dream, but a dream so vivid, so tangible, that it was more real than my life awake. I heard Merges clawing and scraping a hole in the wall of my bedroom. Staring at the splintering wall, I saw his paw thrust into the room. More scraping, plaster falling all over my room. Then Merges burst into my bedroom. A big cat to start with, he had grown to now double, maybe triple his old size. Soaking wet, the dirty water of the Danube still dripping off him, he spoke to me. The beast’s words are frozen in my mind. “I am old, you murdering bitch,” he hissed, “and I have already lived eight of my lives. I have a single life left, and I swear here and now to dedicate it to revenge. I will dwell in the dream dimension, and I will haunt you and your female descendants forever.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  She went into the room and the light vanished, drawing the shadows away in its wake. We followed her, wondering what she was up to. She pulled back the mattress of the bed-chest where my sister slept, and propped the top open while she rummaged inside. A sharp odor of mildew invaded the whole room. Her arms went deep into the chest and she drew forth the dirty linen, a handful at a time, and then began to sort it out methodically. She would bring the clothes close to the lamp to examine them before deciding. One of my sweaters, two pairs of pants, and a shirt were chosen, with a dress, a sweater and two pairs of drawers of my sister. Lastly, she removed all the buttons of imitation mother-of-pearl, leaving only the tailor’s buttons, which could all be replaced easily from my uncle’s stock. We were at last witnessing the mysterious operation that regularly deprived us of our old clothes. Fraji didn’t seem to notice our hostile glances, but continued to stare intently with his big protuberant eyes at the pile of clothes that was beginning to assume some importance. Then my mother sent me to borrow ten cents from Joulie Barouch. When I came back, I found on the table a bundle wrapped in newspaper and a thick slice of bread. Fraji hastened to bury the money deep in his pocket, grasped the parcel and the piece of bread in his arms and, without uttering a word, made a dash for the door. Then, at last, we exploded with anger: “Why do you give him our clothes?” Mother, in a dreamy mood, answered briefly, but in a decisive tone: “Because they are poor.” But this explanation didn’t satisfy us. Our life of confinement in our blind alley had scarcely prepared us to understand the world, and we resented Fraji, who was filthy and aroused our disgust, as well as all the poor who helped dispossess us. Gravely, we concluded that our dignity must truly be very considerable, our own and that of our father, the Saddler. An hour later my father sent me back to repay Joulie her ten cents and I did the errand without more ado. When we were sent to bed, my sister to the bed-chest and I to the far side of the big family bed, right up against the blue distempered wall, I began to project upon the uneven surface of the masonry the images that my imagination always discovered there.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  A word of caution is required at this point. When I was quite young, I was told by a senior church official responsible for the training of ordination candidates that it was good for us junior folk to have a tough time in college—to live in a damp apartment, to be constantly pulled away from our young families, and so on. This suffering would toughen us up and prepare us for real life in active ministry. Now, although there is no doubt a grain of truth in that—especially in that in active ministry seniors may sometimes bind heavy burdens on their subordinates while not lifting them themselves!—the church has a poor track record in the way it has approached such things. The idea that “suffering is good for you, therefore you need to put up with the conditions we are laying upon you” is at best callous and patronizing. At worst it is unpardonable and abusive. Jesus himself, warning that suffering was bound to come, pronounced a solemn woe on the person through whom it came (Matt. 18:7). Life will throw quite enough problems at us without the church adding more while telling us sanctimoniously that it’s good for us. If we hadn’t recognized this problem already, we would have been reminded by the fully justified protests of many in the feminist movements, who have rightly pointed out that the message about necessary suffering has often been preached by men to women, indicating that the women have to put up with whatever life throws at them while the men organize things to their own advantage. But suffering, nevertheless, is still the means by which the work goes forward. First Peter explains this in considerable detail, perhaps because the audience of that sparkling little letter had somehow imagined that the Messiah had done all the suffering, so that there was no more for them to face. The book of Revelation emphasizes the same point in its own ways. At one level all this continues to be perplexing, especially when we ourselves are facing that suffering (in other words, when the problem ceases to be merely theoretical and becomes urgent and personal). But when we pause for a moment we can, I think, glimpse something of why all this should be necessary. It has to do with Jesus’s own sense of vocation and with the redefinition of power itself which he modeled, embodied, and exemplified.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  In Acts 4, Peter and John are hauled in front of the chief priests and elders because of the lame man they had healed and the preaching about Jesus that had followed. Those in charge give the apostles a lecture and warn them against continuing to speak in Jesus’s name, which of course makes little or no impact on Peter and John. They return to their own people and report what has happened, and the whole company prays together, invoking Psalm 2: Why did the nations fly into a rage And why did the peoples think empty thoughts? The kings of the earth arose And the rulers gathered themselves together Against the Lord and against his anointed Messiah. (4:26, quoting Ps. 2:1–2) The psalm continues by declaring that God has established his Messiah, who will then judge the world and call all rulers to account—a passage well known and often expounded in various other Jewish traditions of the period. The whole psalm is clearly in mind at this point. And here it has acquired a particular significance. Evil—in the persons of Herod and Pilate—has gathered itself together, as the psalm always said it would, and God in response has raised up his true king, who will bring justice to the whole world. This will happen not least through the strange healing ministry that comes by the powerful name of Jesus: So now, Master, look on their threats; and grant that we, your servants, may speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand for healing, so that signs and wonders may come about through the name of your holy child Jesus. (4:29–30) The same point—of evil gathering itself together and then being overthrown—comes out clearly in the striking parallel between the challenges and claims made by the satan in the temptation narratives in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 and the mocking of Jesus on the cross: “If you’re God’s son . . .” (Matt, 27:40; 4:3, 6; Luke 4:3, 9). We are clearly meant to hear, in the crucifixion scene, the earlier whispered voice in Jesus’s head now turning into a public mockery from the chief priests and other bystanders. Jesus had spoken of an initial victory over the “strong man,” because of which he was now enabled to plunder his house—referring presumably to an initial victory in the battle with the satan, resulting in the exorcisms in his subsequent public career (Matt. 12:29). Now the battle is resumed and comes to a head. “This is your hour,” he says to the soldiers coming to arrest him. “Your moment has come at last, and so has the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53).

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  (Among the bad reasons for wanting to get rid of it is the lazy idea that God, if such a being exists at all, is like an indulgent elderly relative who doesn’t want to spoil people’s fun and so never gets angry about anything. As has often been pointed out, this is mere sentimentalism. If there is a God, and if he does not hate injustice, child prostitution, genocide, and a lot of other things as well, then he is not a good God.) Page after page of the New Testament insists, as we have already glimpsed, that what happens in the death of Jesus happens because of the love of God. But the problem with the “angry despot” picture of God is not solved by simply producing a few texts that say the opposite. Most preachers who in fact offer this picture will always say, if challenged, that God did what he did because of “love.” It’s just that it doesn’t look like that or sound like that to anyone trying to make sense of what’s just been said. It is easy for a preacher to deny the “angry despot” picture in theory, but to reinforce it in practice. Talk to people who attend those churches. They know. But the problems don’t stop there. Many people have pointed out that the idea of an angry, bullying deity who has to be appeased, to be bought off, to have his wrathful way with someone even if it isn’t the right person fits uncomfortably well with the way many human authority figures actually behave: tyrants, rulers, bosses, sometimes tragically also fathers, within families older men in general. Sometimes, of course, clergy. People who have grown up in a family with a violent, perhaps drunken, father or who have been abused one way or another by people in authority hear someone in a pulpit telling the story of the angry God, and they think, “I know that character, and I hate him.” It doesn’t do any good to tell people in that state of mind that this angry God is really a loving God in disguise. “ If that’s love ,” they think,” then I don’t want it.” They have quite possibly been told by an abuser how much he “loves” them. You cannot rescue someone from the scars of an abusive upbringing by replaying the same narrative on a cosmic scale and mouthing the word “love” as you do so. Now, as I say, there are many ways of speaking of the death of Jesus in relation to the punishment of sin. At least one of those ways is biblical. We shall come to that, and when we do we will find that the entire setting undermines any suggestion of the angry, bullying God. There is a different story, one that we need to think through in fresh ways.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I don’t want to open my mouth and show him the big gaping hole. “Nimbus?” Ernest asked when she stopped. “You know, uh—radiance, holy light, halo.” “Oh, right. Yes, nimbus. So, Myrna, what are your thoughts about the dream?” “I think I know what you’ll say about it.” “Stay with your experience. Try to free-associate. What comes to you immediately as you think about the dream?” “The big hole in my face.” “What comes to mind as you think of it?” “Cavernous, abyssal, abysmal, inky black. More?” “Keep going.” “Gigantic, vast, stupendous, monstrous, Tartarean.” “Tartarean?” “You know, hell—or the abyss below Hades where the Titans were confined.” “Oh, right. Interesting word. Hmm—but back to the dream. You’re saying there’s something you don’t want doctors to see, and I guess I’m the doctor?” “Hard to quarrel with that. Don’t want you to see the big gaping hole, that emptiness.” “And if you open your mouth I’ll see it. So you guard yourself, guard your words. You still see the dream, Myrna? Still vivid?” She nodded. “Keep looking at it—what part of it draws your attention now?” “The tonsils—lot of energy there.” “Look at them. What do you see? What comes to mind?” “They’re hot, scalding.” “Keep going.” “Bursting, turgid, livid, distended, tumescent, turgescent—” “‘Tumescent, turgescent’? And that other one—‘Tartarean.’ These words, Myrna?” “I’ve been browsing in a thesaurus this week.” “Hmm, I’d like to hear more about that, but right now let’s stay with the dream. These tonsils; they’re visible if you open your mouth. Just like the emptiness. And they’re about to burst. What’ll come out?” “Pus, ugliness, something odious, hideous, loathsome, disgusting, execrable, abhorrent, rancid—” “More thesaurus browsing?” Myrna nodded. “So the dream suggests that you’re seeing a doctor—me—and our work is uncovering some things you don’t want seen, or you don’t want me to see it —a vast emptiness, and tonsils ready to burst and spew something vile. Somehow the scalding red tonsils make me think of just a few minutes ago when all those words burst out of you.” She nodded again. “I’m moved by your bringing in this dream,” Ernest said. “It’s a sign of trust in me and what we’re doing together. It’s good work—real, good work.” He paused. “Now can we talk thesaurus?”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  One can imagine a conversation between the four evangelists who wrote the gospels and a group of “evangelists” in our modern sense who are used to preaching sermons week by week that explain exactly how the cross deals with the problems of “sin” and “hell.” The four ancient writers are shaking their heads and trying to retell the story they all wrote: of how Jesus launched the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven and how his execution was actually the key, decisive moment in that accomplishment. The modern evangelists come right back with their theories, diagrams, and homely illustrations. The ancient writers eventually explode: “You’re just not listening!” “Yes, we are,” reply the modern preachers (who are, after all, committed to “believing in the Bible”), “but you guys just aren’t saying the right stuff!” Of course, modern readers and preachers have invented ways of making them say the “right stuff” despite what is actually on the page. We have become adept at picking out a verse here and a phrase there that will fit into our schemes even if it means ignoring the context. Thus, as we have seen, Mark 10:45 (“The son of man . . . came . . . to give his life ‘as a ransom for many’”) is taken as warrant for invoking Isaiah 53, which is then itself read in the decontextualized way I described earlier. John 19:30, the last shout of Jesus from the cross, is sometimes translated “It is finished” or “It’s all done!” This is then turned into a statement about a bill being paid or an account being settled to fit in with a particular atonement theology rather than being allowed to make John’s point, which is the completion of Jesus’s vocation in parallel with the completion of creation itself in Genesis 2:2 (see also John 17:4). One hears less often the quotation of Jesus’s words over the cup at the Last Supper, even though the idea of Jesus’s blood being shed “for the forgiveness of sins” might be thought relevant to the “normal” story. Perhaps the problem there is that preachers in the Protestant or evangelical tradition have sometimes been anxious about any focus on the Last Supper, lest they find themselves being drawn into a more sacramental world of meaning than they had intended.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Celebrities have been able to indulge their sexual appetites more and more openly, relying on the popular mood, especially in the media, not to be “judgmental,” but instead to be “tolerant” and even “supportive.” As we now know, many clergy have joined in, citing to themselves and quite often to others the biblical warnings about not judging “lest you be judged” and about living not by law, but by love. The fact that these biblical teachings sat side by side in scripture with a robust no-nonsense sexual ethic was quietly forgotten. The church has faced, and still faces, one lawsuit after another brought by the innocent victims whose mental health was, again and again, irreparably damaged in the process. We know all this, but still in public discourse the Western world finds it unthinkable to tell any adults that their sexual desires must be resisted. The exception to this is of course pedophilia, and for that remaining taboo we may be grateful. But the shrillness of denunciation there shows up the absence of wise thinking on most other related topics. What might it mean for the gospel to confront the power of Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love, in our own day? It will mean, for a start, moving beyond the low-grade thirdhand Freudianism in which different groups accuse one another of psychological instability. It will mean a clear reaffirmation of the early Christian teaching, especially for those who hold office within the church. The misunderstandings here are so widespread and the muddled thinking so confused that one might be tempted to despair. But if we believe that on the cross Jesus won the victory over all the powers that hold people captive, we must take courage and proceed. In particular, we must reaffirm that the heart of that victory is the forgiveness of sins. This too can be misunderstood. “Don’t you believe in forgiveness?” people will ask when someone is caught in bad behavior—as though “forgiveness” meant “tolerance” or the declaration of a general “anything goes” kind of amnesty. It does not. In the New Testament, “forgiveness” goes closely with “repentance”; and “repentance” doesn’t just mean feeling sorry (perhaps because one has been caught!), but is an active turning away from the idols one had been worshipping. Just as in the world of business and high finance, and also in the world of lotteries and gambling, Mammon is available for worship on every street corner and every computer screen, so in the world of human relations Aphrodite can be summoned up on the iPad, the iPhone, or any of a number of other clever devices. The other false deity regularly seen in our contemporary world is of course “power” itself, particularly power in the sense of military might and force. Here, alongside Mammon and Aphrodite, we face Mars, the ancient god of war. Many in recent years, mindful of centenaries connected with World War I, have been pondering the causes of that terrible conflict.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  And that thing is me.” “Yet you see her request for a breather as rejection,” I respond. “You know, desire acts in weird ways. Here she is asking you to ignore her, not to want her, as a way for her to want you. I can see why this makes no sense. Why such detours? And I understand your reaction. But you see, she needs to separate the intimate from the erotic, and for that she needs space. She invited you into a scheme that would allow her to do just that. It wasn’t a rebuff; it was an invitation. You have to imagine it not literally, but as a form of sexual play. Play at not needing me. Play at ignoring me.” But Jimmy could not play, because he was caught in a struggle with Candace. He didn’t want to engage in such contortions to elicit her desire. He wanted her to want him his way. Jimmy had felt deprived and rejected for so many years that the main feeling that escorted him was anger. His bile only highlighted the extent of his longing and need. The way they neutralized the threat of rage was through massive affection. Their almost constant physicality acted like a sexual appetite suppressor. This kind of contact can sustain itself for years without turning into desire. Unconditional love does not drive unconditional want. That’s what we have with friends, and Jimmy and Candace were friends who wanted to be lovers. Knowing that Candace had already expressed a need for distance, I saw an opening to intervene. I sought to introduce a disruption into the cozy, affectionate touch that had come to replace sex. “Do you touch each other?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “All the time,” she replied. “Do you cuddle?” “Yes,” Jimmy said. “A lot?” “Yes,” they said in unison. “Well, it’s got to stop.” They looked at me wide-eyed. Here they had been emphasizing one aspect of their relationship that they both cherished, and I was taking it away from them. But by the way Candace responded, I knew I was on to something. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me,” she said. “I’m so touch-sensitive. For me, it’s all about touch. I’ll take it from anyone, even a relative stranger. I’m a touch whore.” Jimmy added, “When we visited my family last week, my mother’s best friend was rubbing her shoulders. You know, now that I think about it, I remember wondering if it even mattered whether it was me or Mrs. Monahan.” “So, this is going to be the goal of therapy,” I interjected. “We’re going to differentiate between Jimmy and Mrs. Monahan.” By telling them not to touch I was mapping a space that would give her room to go after him. That, in turn, would give him the feeling of being desired. “I’ll make this clear for you. No contact. No pecks, no kissing, no massage, no strokes. Nothing. Sorry, you guys.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  At some level the therapist’s feelings about the patient are invariably transmitted. I’ve never seen it fail !?” he said, waving his pipe for emphasis. “And this is why we must understand, and work through, and reduce our neurotic responses to patients. “But here, in this—this T-shirt instance,” Dr. Werner continued, “we’re not even considering nuances ; we’re not dealing with the patient’s subtle perceptions of the therapist’s feelings. Dr. Lash insulted the patient openly—no nuanced guesswork required here. I can’t shirk my responsibility to label that an egregious therapeutic error—an error that threatens the foundations of the therapeutic alliance. Don’t let the California ethos of ‘anything goes, everything is permitted’ contaminate your therapy. Anarchy and therapy are not mutually compatible. What is your first step in therapy? You’ve got to establish a safe frame. How in the world, after this incident, can Dr. Lash’s patient free-associate? How can she trust the therapist to consider her words with evenly suspended attention?” “Is evenly suspended attention possible for any therapist?” asked Ron, a heavily bearded and intense therapist, and one of Ernest’s closest friends; they had been linked since medical school by their mutual iconoclasm. “It wasn’t for Freud. Look at his cases—Dora, the rat man, Little Hans. He always entered into his patients’ lives. I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to maintain a position of neutrality—that’s what Donald Spence’s new book argues. You never really apprehend the patient’s real experience.” “That doesn’t mean you give up trying to listen without letting your personal feelings contaminate the scene,” said Dr. Werner. “The more neutral you are, the closer you approximate the patient’s original meaning.” “Original meaning? Discovery of another’s original meaning is an illusion,” Ron shot back. “Look at the leaky communicational pathway. First, some of the patients’ feelings are transformed into their own images and then into their favorite vocabulary—” “Why do you say ‘some’?” asked Dr. Werner. “Because many of their feelings are ineffable. But let me finish. I was talking about the patients transforming images into words: even that process is not pure—the choice of words is heavily influenced by the individual’s imagined relationship with the audience. And that’s just the transmitting part. Then the reverse has to take place: if therapists are to grasp the meaning of the patients’ words, they must retranslate the words into their own private images and then into their own feelings. By the end of the process, what kind of match is possible? What’s the chance that one person can really understand the other’s experience? Or to put it another way, that two different people will hear another person in the same manner?” “It’s like that word game ‘Telephone’ we played as kids,” Ernest chipped in. “One person whispers a phrase into another’s ear, and that person whispers to another, and so on around the circle.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  He concludes the section with sarcasm (whose etymology is “a gashing of flesh”): “I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!” (5:12). Why this passion about circumcision? Because requiring circumcision for gentile male converts countered Paul’s most foundational sense of his mission as well as his vision of what “in Christ” meant. His vocation was to be an apostle to the Gentiles—and for him that did not mean first converting Gentiles to Jews through circumcision so that they could then be baptized into Christ. For him to have accepted that notion would have meant a betrayal of his calling. And it would have countered his vision of what life “in Christ” in “the new creation” was like. Paul’s counterarguments (note the plural) are not really addressed to his opponents. We assume he was aware that he didn’t have much chance of changing their minds. Rather, he sought to persuade those in the community who were wavering, uncertain about what to think. He begins his defense of his apostleship by reminding them of his Damascus experience and call (1:11–24). He continues by reporting that Christian leaders in Jerusalem had approved his mission to the Gentiles (“the uncircumcised”) without requiring that they be circumcised (2:1–10). Then he turns to the strongest point of his opponents’ argument: the biblical text requiring circumcision of Abraham and his offspring. He mounts a number of counterarguments, only some of which we mention. He appeals to another text about Abraham from a few chapters earlier in Genesis, before the text requiring circumcision. “Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’” (Gal. 3:6, quoting Gen. 15:6). Paul also uses this argument in Romans 4:9–10, where he explicitly adds that faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness before he was circumcised. Then he continues: “So, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham…. Those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed” (Gal. 3:7, 9). Believing—faith—is what makes a person a descendant of Abraham, not circumcision. We hasten to add that believing and faith are not about a set of beliefs, but a relationship of commitment and trust. Paul’s point about Abraham is central also to his contrast between justification by “works of the law” versus “through faith in Jesus Christ,” treated more fully in our previous chapter on Romans. We note in passing a rather curious argument that Paul makes about Abraham. He writes that, according to Genesis: God’s promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ as of many; but it says, ‘And to your offspring,’ that is, to one person, who is Christ. (3:16)