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.

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

  Time, resources, playfulness, and fun are redistributed, and libido is rescued from forced retirement. My work with gay and lesbian couples has led me to recognize that these dynamics are replicated whenever one parent, gender notwithstanding, takes charge of the kids. Since same-sex couples are not constrained by a traditional division of labor—women at home, men at work—they offer a useful basis for comparison. What I see over and over is that the person who takes on the role of primary caretaker almost always undergoes changes similar to Stephanie’s: a total immersion in the lives and rhythms of the children, a loss of self, and a greater difficulty extricating himself or herself from chores (a compulsion that is simultaneously frustrating and grounding). The role of the more autonomous parent is to help the primary caregiver disengage from the kids and reallocate energy to the couple. “Leave the toys for now, nobody is going to give you a medal, go take a nap.” “You don’t have to make these pecan pies from scratch, you’ve done enough today.” “The nanny is here, let’s sit down for ten minutes and share a glass of wine before she leaves.” It’s a different approach from the traditional division of labor, one which emphasizes shared responsibility and mutuality and honors the interdependent agency of both partners. When Warren asks, “Want to?” and Stephanie finally answers, “Convince me,” their dynamic begins to shift. This puts a halt to the grinding antagonism and introduces an overdue mutuality. Asking him to help her is, in itself, an expression of sexual assertiveness. And Warren, finally relieved of being the supplicant, can set out to get his wife back. His role as keeper of the flame is given new meaning. Lifting the Erotic Embargo Warren and Stephanie are headed in the right direction, but the forces of eros are not yet aligned. Warren’s most elaborate seduction rituals are thwarted, repeatedly and pitifully, by an unaccommodating home life. There is something absurd about the extent to which their lives revolve around their children: weekends filled with Pee Wee baseball and birthday parties; kids who go to bed a mere half hour before their parents; an open-door policy for the marital bed. In six years, Warren and Stephanie have not spent a single weekend together, away from their kids. They have stopped factoring their own needs into the family budget, and a babysitter is considered a rare luxury rather than a vital necessity. Simply put, they have never carved out the time and space they need to unwind and replenish themselves, either as individuals or as a couple. No longer focused on one another, they have turned to the children to compensate for what they are missing. I have noticed over the years that child-centrality isn’t just a matter of lifestyle; it is sometimes an emotional configuration as well. Children are indeed a source of nurturance for adults.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  It is the way we can become aware of our emotional undercurrent before it becomes an out-of-control emotion. The tools that allow us to do this are the twin sisters of awareness and embodiment. As people learn to master their emotions, they also begin to harness the underlying impulses to action. For example, underneath the emotions of rage and anger are the impulses of aggression. Healthy aggression is about protecting ourselves and those who are close to us. It is also about setting clear boundaries and getting the things we need, including food, shelter and mating partners. It is what empowers our lust for life. This passion for life must be supported by a capacity to embody a range of purposeful emotions. For now, let us back off and ask the following question: What is an emotion, anyway? “Qu’est ce qu’une émotion?” Binet posed this very provocative question at the dawn of the twentieth century. 143 He opened the debate with a salvo that eludes a solution even to this day, despite the most vigorous of arguments. Simple to ask, though difficult to answer, the question remains: What the heck is an emotion? Theories of emotion, abundant and diverse, have had a long, twisted, confounding and often-contradictory history. They have been grappled with in turn by philosophy, psychology and evolutionary biology. Each of these disciplines has attempted to define, refine or, simply, understand emotion. “Emotion as a scientific concept,” wrote Elizabeth Duffy, the matriarch of modern psychophysiology, “is worse than useless.” On the basis of extensive physiological recording, she felt that there was no way of differentiating one emotional state from another. In other words, distinguishing an emotion solely on the basis of physiological measurements (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, temperature, skin conductance, etc.) seemed impossible. Thus, emotions, from her vantage point in 1936, were unworthy of scientific study. Yet recently there has been a rich vein of inquiry and grounding in the emerging field of the “affective neurosciences,” 144 demonstrating distinct brain systems involved in the expression of various emotions (e.g., fear, anger and sadness). However, the question of felt (as opposed to expressed) emotional experience has been all but neglected. Psychology, questing for objective respectability, has attempted to purge subjectivity from its midst. It has, in the process, unwittingly thrown out the proverbial baby (the subjective feeling experience) with the bathwater by studying primarily the expression of emotion. Much of philosophy and early psychology were of the logical, “common-sense” conviction regarding the sequence by which an emotion was generated. Today, like the early philosophers, we resort to similar explanations.

• 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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Ryan said nothing at the time, but he was shocked. “How was I supposed to know she felt that way? She always looked happy enough to me. I thought she had what she wanted. I thought I was the only one feeling restless.” Now, he was divided. On one hand he was angry that she hadn’t lived up to his expectations; on the other, he was anxious about what her polemic said about him. “In my mind, she’s a rock, I’m the squirmy one. I’ve had to work hard at being who I thought she wanted me to be, creating this life together. I felt put down. If she feels trapped, mired in drudgery, what does that make me?” “Do you need her to acknowledge your hard work?” I asked. “I guess so. Somehow her doubts diminished the value of my efforts. But then, this weird thing happened.” He paused before speaking again. “I started to like it.” “Explain,” I said. “It’s like I did a complete 180. I couldn’t interrupt her, which I probably would have done if we’d been alone—not that she would ever say this stuff to me, anyway. Besides, I was intrigued. She felt just like I did; she was saying the very same things I didn’t dare say. She wanted more. She was hungry, too. She missed her freedom. She kept becoming more interesting to me, more foreign. The wine really loosened her tongue.” “What else did she say?” I, too, was curious. The actor in him couldn’t resist playing her part. “‘ I feel like we’re just stuck together,’” he said, again imitating her voice. “‘Sometimes I fantasize about other lives, other men. Not any one man in particular—I just imagine a clean slate, unencumbered, no history, no problems. Someone I could be different with. I get so resentful that I am stuck in this house, in this family, inside my body. All I want to say is leave me alone, don’t bother me.’” Ryan shared with me the unexpected denouement of the evening. “I started out shocked and then defensive and then angry. But, weirdly, the more she was going on and on, the more I wanted her. She was on fire. At first I thought, oh, just quit the diatribe; but then I was captivated by her, I identified with her, and in a strange way I felt closer to her and more turned on than I had in a long time. My fascination with Barbara vanished. And I knew that if I’d married Barbara I’d be longing for Christine.” “And you didn’t have to work for it,” I say. “I couldn’t have sent you home with an assignment that would have had this kind of result.” I explain to him that his renewed desire came from her reassertion of her separateness and her dreams. When she voiced her unrequited longings, she gave Ryan permission to unleash his.

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

  Ryan repeated these words in a dazed voice as if he still couldn’t quite believe hearing them. At my prodding, he told me the rest of his wife’s remarks—that she felt she had always just done what was expected of her, that this was easier than figuring things out on her own. He continued, his tone both mocking and full of admiration as he expertly mimicked his wife. “‘I know it’s not right to complain when you have it all,’ she says. ‘Where’s my gratitude? I’m blessed with the kids, with Ryan, the remnants of a decent career, good friends. When you don’t have it—the family, the marriage—you romanticize it. At least I did. But then when you do have it, you feel trapped. I have my blissful moments, but mostly I’m mired in drudgery.’” Ryan said nothing at the time, but he was shocked. “How was I supposed to know she felt that way? She always looked happy enough to me. I thought she had what she wanted. I thought I was the only one feeling restless.” Now, he was divided. On one hand he was angry that she hadn’t lived up to his expectations; on the other, he was anxious about what her polemic said about him. “In my mind, she’s a rock, I’m the squirmy one. I’ve had to work hard at being who I thought she wanted me to be, creating this life together. I felt put down. If she feels trapped, mired in drudgery, what does that make me?” “Do you need her to acknowledge your hard work?” I asked. “I guess so. Somehow her doubts diminished the value of my efforts. But then, this weird thing happened.” He paused before speaking again. “I started to like it.” “Explain,” I said. “It’s like I did a complete 180. I couldn’t interrupt her, which I probably would have done if we’d been alone—not that she would ever say this stuff to me, anyway. Besides, I was intrigued. She felt just like I did; she was saying the very same things I didn’t dare say. She wanted more. She was hungry, too. She missed her freedom. She kept becoming more interesting to me, more foreign. The wine really loosened her tongue.” “What else did she say?” I, too, was curious. The actor in him couldn’t resist playing her part. “‘ I feel like we’re just stuck together,’” he said, again imitating her voice. “‘Sometimes I fantasize about other lives, other men. Not any one man in particular—I just imagine a clean slate, unencumbered, no history, no problems. Someone I could be different with.

• From Story of O (1954)

  O was standing in the middle of the room, facing René. He told her to turn around; she was rooted to the spot. “She also crosses her legs,” Jacqueline added, “but that you won’t be able to see, of course. As you won’t be able to see the way she accosts the boys.” “That’s not true,” O shouted, “you’re the one!” and she leaped at Jacqueline. René grabbed her just as she was about to hit Jacqueline, and she went on struggling in his arms merely for the sake of feeling weaker than he, of being at his mercy, when, lifting her head, she saw Sir Stephen standing in the doorway looking at her. Jacqueline had thrown herself down on the sofa, her tiny face hardened with anger and fear, and O could feel that René, though he had his hands full trying to subdue her, had eyes only for Jacqueline. She ceased resisting and, crestfallen at the idea of having been found wanting in the presence of Sir Stephen, she repeated, this time almost in a whisper: “It’s not true, I swear it’s not true.”

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Not only had the divine wrath been placated through the Father’s own action in sending the Son; the punishment for sin had already been meted out. The more one emphasized Jesus’s wrath-bearing death in the sinner’s place, the less one could then ask the sinner to bear any subsequent punishment. Luther’s protest of 1517 thus kept the medieval picture of God’s wrath, but insisted that this wrath was quenched by God’s love through the death of Jesus. Exactly one hundred years earlier, a traveling monk called Poggio Bracchiolini discovered a previously lost manuscript of Lucretius’s first-century BC masterpiece, De Rerum Natura, which forms an elegant, poetic exposition of the Epicureanism that would then make such an impact on Europe. Bracchiolini too was reacting against the medieval vision of an angry God. But whereas Luther kept the wrath of God and declared that the wrath had fallen on Jesus, Bracchiolini followed the ancient Epicureans in proposing that God, or the gods, were a long way away and were unconcerned with human affairs and certainly not angry about anything in our world. Both were reacting against the same medieval excess, Bracchiolini by denying it altogether and Luther by interposing Jesus and his death. Both have had a long and continuing influence in Western culture. The other great Reformation protest was against the medieval Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass. In particular, the Reformers objected strongly to the idea that the priest at the altar was sacrificing Jesus all over again, thus making the benefit of his atoning death available for all those who witnessed the event. (Watching Mass being celebrated was deemed to be as effective as actually receiving Communion, if not more so.) Here again the doctrine of penal substitution provided a strong, sharp answer: Jesus died in our place once for all, ephapax (as Paul puts it in Rom. 6:10); as a result, the priest could not be sacrificing Jesus again in the Mass. The Mass was thus vilified as doing blasphemous violence to the unique, one-off self-offering of Jesus by attempting to add to the “finished work of Christ” some extra “works” on the part of the congregation, or at least the celebrant. This question thus became further muddled as the specter of “justification by works” loomed up behind, enabling the Reformers to accuse their Roman opponents of not only adding to the already complete sacrifice of Christ, but also bringing their own “works” into play to supplement what Jesus had already achieved. The question of whether medieval Catholics actually taught all this is beside the point, since the Reformers certainly thought they did. As with purgatory, there is also more than a hint that there are social and cultural forces at work behind the theology as people came to reject the power exercised, through the Mass, by the clergy.

• 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)

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  All this was still true several centuries later when people went out from the Jewish into the pagan world with the news of a different lord, a different empire, a different salvation—and perhaps also a different wrath. When we turn to the Roman equivalent of Homer, we find a striking parallel. Virgil’s great epic, the Aeneid , begins not with wrath, but with arms: Arma virumque cano , “I sing of arms and the man.” Virgil can also write poems of great pastoral beauty, just as Homer gives us wonderfully rich natural imagery. But it is no accident that the greatest and best-known poems of pagan antiquity begin with the words “wrath” and “arms.” That was the world everyone knew, even if they reacted against it: war and violence, and the human and divine rage that smoldered or flamed beneath them. Wrath and arms! With the gods themselves sharing in the wrath and urging on the violence, what escape could there be? And—we cannot help commenting already—is it not against this world of wrath and arms and its all too apparent reflection in various theories or models of “atonement” that so much recent theology and popular opinion has reacted? Readers of the New Testament might want to say, and in a more nuanced fashion, that we believe in a different sort of wrath, a different kind of battle, and indeed a very different vision of God and of salvation. Yes, indeed. But it is within the world of the Greeks and the Romans that Jesus was crucified; and it was within that same world that the originally Jewish message about Jesus received its wider airing and, arguably, its early shaping. The world of wrath and arms helps to explain why anyone would want to execute a fellow human being in so brutal a fashion. A brief reminder of what crucifixion entailed—necessary sooner or later in this book—will make the point, lest we take for granted or gloss over what was actually involved in the event whose meaning we are discussing. Few readers of this book are likely to have seen, except on screen, the kind of violence that was common in the first century. Even those who watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ might either screen out the gratuitous horror of it all or be so overwhelmed by the physical brutality as to miss the point that such a death was designed to degrade as well as kill. Crucifixion was one of the central ways in which authorities in the ancient world set out quite deliberately to show subject peoples who was in charge and to break the spirit of any resistance. Crucifixion was, after all, one of the most horrible fates that humans could devise. That isn’t a modern overstatement. It was the considered opinion of the Roman orator Cicero and the Jewish historian Josephus, two men who had seen plenty of crucifixions, and also another who knew what he was talking about, the church father Origen.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She was angry at me for attempting to help her to detach from Jack and direct her energy elsewhere and for encouraging her to meet other men. And angry at me for not being Jack. As a result of our deep engagement, our intimate exchanges, our fighting, our mutual caring, it was with me that she most approximated the feelings she had had with her husband. And then, at the end of the hour, she hated having to go back to a life with neither me nor Jack. That’s what made the ending of every session so tumultuous. She hated the reminder that our relationship had formal boundaries, and no matter how I signaled that we were at the end of our hour, she often exploded: “You call this a real relationship? This is not real! You look at the clock and just kick me out, throw me away!” Sometimes she sat there at the end of the hour, glaring and refusing to budge. Any appeals to reason—to pointing out the necessity for schedules, to her own scheduling of patients, to suggestions that she watch the clock and end the hour, to repeating that my ending the hour was not a signal of rejection—all these fell on deaf ears. Far more often than not, she left my office angry. She was angry at me for being important to her and angry that I wouldn’t do some of the things Jack had done; for example, compliment her on all her good points—her appearance, her resourcefulness, her intelligence. We often had pitched battles about compliments. I felt that a recitation of compliments would infantilize her, but she put so much emphasis on it, was so insistent, that I often complied. I asked her what she wanted me to say and practically repeated her words back, always trying to include some original observation. Yet what seemed like a bizarre charade to me almost without fail raised her spirits. But only temporarily: she had holes in her pockets, and by the next session she insisted that I do it again. She was angry at my presuming to understand her. If I tried to combat her pessimism by reminding her that she was in the midst of a process that had a beginning and an end and by offering reassurance from some of the results of my research, she responded angrily, “You’re depersonalizing me. You’re disregarding what’s unique in my experience.” Any optimism I expressed about her recovery she invariably turned into an accusation that I wanted her to forget Jack.

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

  In Paul’s communities (and generally among early Christians), the Lord’s Supper was a real meal, a “share meal,” and not simply a ritual involving a morsel of bread and a sip of wine. From what Paul says in this chapter, the Lord’s Supper began with the breaking of the bread, which was followed by the meal, and concluded with the passing of the cup after the meal (11:24–25; note “after supper” in v. 25). The meal was framed by bread and wine in remembrance of the final meal of Jesus. But this was not what was happening at Corinth. Paul’s comments in this section of Corinthians presume that the meal was being hosted by those in the community who were wealthy and powerful, most likely in a villa. At the beginning of the section on the Lord’s Supper, Paul writes: I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you…. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper. (11:17–18, 20) Why this judgment? Why is what they are doing “not really” the Lord’s Supper? Paul continues: Each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? (11:21–22) The issue here is that not everybody got to eat the same food. The wealthy had their own food and drink, and others had little or nothing. This practice was common in the Roman world when a wealthy patron hosted a meal that included people from lower social classes. The patron would serve finer food and wine to others from his social rank and less fine food and wine to those of lower rank. Meals, even when they crossed social boundaries, would nevertheless mirror those boundaries. Paul’s counsel near the end of the section suggests an additional problem: “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another ” (11:33). The implication is clear: some arrived early and began to eat and drink at once. Who would arrive early? Not those who had to work for a living, but those who had leisure—that is, the wealthy and powerful.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  THE BRITISH ARE noted for their sense of irony, often applied particularly to themselves. Self-deprecating humor is, at least in theory, our stock in trade. One current example is a brilliant and rightly popular BBC sitcom called W1A, which is the postal code for the headquarters of the BBC itself. The satire, created by people who themselves work for the organization they are sending up, is often telling as well as very funny. In one now famous episode, while a middle-aged broadcasting executive is trying to figure out how to solve a particular problem about a program, he is being badgered by a young, sassy eager beaver of a PR agent who has her own agendas. The man keeps trying to explain to her that she doesn’t understand the question, and she keeps trying to explain to him how her proposals are going to solve everything and make the program a roaring success. Eventually, exasperated, he turns on her. “You’re just not listening!” Back comes the answer, pitch-perfect for the character: “I totally am listening! What it is—you guys aren’t saying the right stuff!” I was reminded of that moment when reflecting on the ways in which the four gospels have routinely been ignored by people trying to construct a vision of the atonement, trying to understand the meaning of Jesus’s death. The long tradition of in-house church discussions about such things, swapping theories and schemes for how precisely to understand what happened on Good Friday, has emerged—especially in popular culture—from a world where it was assumed, as we saw earlier, that the point of Christianity was how to go to heaven granted that we are all sinners deserving hell. That is the agenda: How do we get to that goal? The four gospels have very little to say about this topic. Almost nobody talks about “going to heaven.” When Jesus talks about the “kingdom of heaven,” he doesn’t mean a place called “heaven,” but the rule of “heaven,” that is, God’s reign, coming to birth on earth. Almost nobody in the gospels warns about “going to hell.” The dire warnings in the four gospels are mostly directed toward an imminent this-worldly disaster, namely, the fall of Jerusalem and other events connected with that. There are occasional sayings that go beyond that, such as Matthew 10:28 and its parallel in Luke 12:4–5, but this dimension seems to be taken for granted rather than made central. And despite a wealth of detail in the buildup to Jesus’s death, so much detail in fact that the gospels have sometimes been described as “Passion narratives with extended introductions,” the four writers do not seem particularly concerned with building into their accounts any kind of answer to the expected question of how this death somehow enables sinners to be forgiven and to go to heaven after all.

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

  Paul’s counsel near the end of the section suggests an additional problem: “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (11:33). The implication is clear: some arrived early and began to eat and drink at once. Who would arrive early? Not those who had to work for a living, but those who had leisure—that is, the wealthy and powerful. And so eating together a shared meal framed by the breaking of the bread and the passing of the cup was not happening. Thus the way the Lord’s Supper was practiced at Corinth reflected the social hierarchy and inequality of that world. This is what Paul protests against, and this is the context for his warning: Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. (11:27–29) In some Christian denominations, the words about partaking “in an unworthy manner” have been understood to mean in an unworthy state of repentance, and “without discerning the body” as referring to failing to discern the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine. But in Paul’s context, something simpler and at the same time more important is meant: “discerning the body” refers to the community as the body of Christ. The way the Lord’s Supper was being practiced at Corinth denied the equality of life “in Christ,” life in the body and Spirit of Christ. Instead, it perpetuated the gulf between rich and poor and conformed life “in Christ” to the normalcy of this world. Instead, “in Christ” everybody is to be at the same table and eat the same meal. Don’t literalize this—it’s not about monotony of food, though it precludes monopoly of food. Within the community, everybody is equal and should get the same—it is a share meal, a sharing of God’s stuff, of God’s earth. Everybody gets enough. This is the supper of the Lord. HIERARCHY AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS IN CORINTH The community in Corinth was divided not only by hierarchy and inequality based on material wealth and power. Some were also claiming superiority based on the possession of particular spiritual gifts. The issue was speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, to use the technical term. Some saw glossolalia as a public manifestation of having received the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and therefore as evidence of spiritual superiority. The problem and Paul’s response take up the next three chapters of his first letter to Corinth, 12–14.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As I had never played except with my sister, I stayed away from the others, feeling vaguely ill at ease and hostile. All around these savage trespassers, the whole street remained silent and deserted, expressing its disapproval of their strange liveliness in the heart of my own kingdom. Suddenly, the game stopped because of a nigat, a draw. All the players uttered one single yell in a single clear-cut peal, after which they relaxed, joking and jeering before deciding to play another game. Chouchane, the tailor, and Fraji were both considered too weak and were refused by both teams, ruthlessly sacrificed. As for myself, I approved this decision. Without wasting time, the game began again, a bit further away from the garbage cart. Chouchane and Fraji, both disappointed, continued to gravitate around the stakes of the players, although the latter kept a watchful eye on them, and had to content themselves with kibitzing and giving advice that nobody followed. Fraji finally lost interest in the battle and, having nothing better to do, became aware of the presence of the garbage cart, pushed it forward with one hand, and then took hold of the two shafts. The mountain of refuse began to tremble, with avalanches of green and red vegetable peel rolling down its sides. Fraji then discovered the real use of this godsend: he set his right foot on the hub of one wheel, grasped the rail of the cart with the palms of his hands, and began to climb the whole edifice. Scarcely hesitating, he dug his little legs deep into the rotting garbage and stood up, staring all around and quite surprised at what he saw: himself towering above us all, above the whole world, on a many-colored throne made of butcher’s wrapping paper, egg shells, and vegetable peelings. The meat flies, all green and gold as they rose disturbed, made a moving halo around him, glistening in the sun. Then he raised his hands to the sky and exclaimed, proud as a crowing cock and convinced of the truth of his claim: “I’m the king of the castle, I’m the king of the castle!” The other urchins paid little attention to this claim, all of them tense in the moment of silence that comes before the apricot kernels are thrown. Only Chouchane was watching him and exclaimed: “Yes, you’re king of the outhouse!” As for me, I was furious at hearing this dirty little rascal, to whom we actually gave food and who wore my old clothes, utter such impertinences. I was indeed the only uncontested king of the whole alley, and Kalla would have been able to testify to the validity of my claim had she not been away at the bath house. So I approached him, full of noble anger, and placed my hand, the heavy hand of the owner, on his sleeve, on the sleeve of my own sweater:

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

  Hitler develop his atomic bomb before we developed ours, and we would all be speaking German today. Mr. Mitchell relied heavily on audiovisual aids in teaching his classes. We saw the same movies many times, combat documentaries and FBI-produced cautionary tales about high-school kids tricked into joining communist cells in Anytown, U.S.A. On our final examination Mr. Mitchell asked, “What is your favorite amendment?” We were ready for this question, and all of us gave the correct answer—“The Right to Bear Arms”—except for a girl who answered “Freedom of Speech.” For this impertinence she failed not only the question but the whole test. When she argued that she could not logically be marked wrong on this question, Mr. Mitchell blew up and ordered her out of the classroom. She complained to the principal but nothing came of it. Most of the kids in the class thought she was being a smarty-pants, and so did I. Mr. Mitchell also taught PE. He had introduced boxing to the school, and every year he organized a smoker where hundreds of people paid good money to watch us boys beat the bejesus out of each other. Miss Houlihan taught speech. She had adopted some years back a theory of elocution that had to do with “reaching down” for words rather than merely saying them, as if they were already perfectly formed in our stomachs and waiting to be brought up like trout from a stock pond. Instead of using our lips we were supposed to simply let the words “escape.” This was hard to get the hang of. Miss Houlihan believed in getting the first thing right before moving on to the next, so we spent most of the year grunting “Hiawatha” in a choral arrangement she herself had devised. She liked it so much that in the spring she took us to a speech tournament in Mount Vernon. The competition was held outside, and it started to rain while we sat declaiming in The Great Circle. We wore Indian costumes made from burlap sacks that had once held onions. When the burlap got wet it started to stink. We were not the only ones to notice. Miss Houlihan wouldn’t let us quit. She walked around behind the circle, whispering, “Reach down, reach down.” In the end we were disqualified for keeping time on a tom-tom. Horseface Greeley taught shop. At the introductory class for each group of freshmen it was his custom to drop a fifty-pound block of iron on his foot. He did this as an attention-getter and to show off his Tuff-Top shoes, which had reinforced steel uppers. He thought we should all wear Tuff-Tops. We couldn’t buy them in the stores but we could order them through him. When I was in my second year at Concrete an impetuous freshman tried to catch the block of iron

• From White Oleander (1999)

  She’d had her revenge, she had won, but it was like she didn’t even know it. She was drifting outside the limit of all reason, where the next stop was light-years away through nothing but darkness. How lovingly she arranged the dark leaves, the white blooms. A POLICE OFFICER showed up at our apartment. The officer, Inspector Ramirez, informed her that Barry was accusing her of breaking and entering and of trying to poison him. She was completely calm. “Barry is terribly angry with me,” she said, posing in the doorway, her arms crossed. “I ended our relationship several weeks ago, and he just can’t let go of it. He’s obsessed with me. He even tried to break into this apartment. This is my daughter, Astrid, she can tell you what happened.” I shrugged. I didn’t like this. It was going way too far. My mother kept going without missing a comma. “The neighbors even called the police that night. You must have a record of it. And now he’s accusing me of breaking into his house? That poor man, really, he’s not all that attractive, it must be hard for him.” Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway. Oh Inspector Ramirez, her eyes said, you’re a good-looking man, how could you understand someone as desperate as Barry Kolker? After he left, how she laughed. THE NEXT TIME we saw Barry was at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, where he liked to shop for ugly gag gifts for his friends. My mother wore a hat that dappled her face with light. He saw her and turned away quickly, fear plain as billboards, but then he thought again, turned back, smiled at us. “A change of tactic,” she whispered. “Here he comes.” He walked right over to us, a papier-mâché Oscar in his hands. “Congratulations on your performance with Ramirez,” he said, and held it out to her. “Best actress of the year.” “I don’t know what you mean,” my mother said. She was holding my hand, squeezing it too tight, but her face was smiling and relaxed. “Sure you do,” he said. He tucked Oscar under his arm. “But that’s not why I came over. I thought we could bury the hatchet. Look, I’ll admit I went too far calling the cops. I know I was an asshole, but for Christ’s sake, you tried to destroy the better part of a year’s work. Of course my agent had a preliminary draft, thank God, but even so. Why don’t we just call it a draw?” My mother smiled, shifted to the other foot. She was waiting for him to do something, say something. “It’s not like I don’t respect you as a person,” he said. “And as a writer. We all know you’re a great poet. I’ve even talked you up at some of the magazines.