Guilt

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 Martin Luther (2016)

  But it may also have made him feel guilty toward his siblings, and worried about their envy. Luther knew the price of his university education: Two years of smelting had to pay for his studies at Erfurt, something his father doubtless made sure he never forgot.60 He also knew that this was money not spent on his brothers and sisters. Seven or possibly eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood, had to be trained or found dowries—all to be funded from Hans Luder’s mining operations. The structure of the family economy, where the children were meant to make their way from the income of the Mansfeld ores, was likely to have fostered a sense of common purpose, and the family seems to have remained close-knit throughout Luther’s life.61 When his parents died there was some bad feeling over the inheritance, which was to be equally divided, an irritation that perhaps revived conflicts from the past. Luther, as the eldest, acted as peacemaker and drew up the contract of division, insisting that now all “dislike and unwillingness” be set aside.62 But Martin’s privileged position may have left occasional envy and bitterness as well. Luther’s almost allergic reaction whenever he thought others envied him would become a settled feature of his character. Whereas most of Luther’s generation of scholars came from the craft towns, and many were familiar with the large imperial towns and their elegant fashions and civic pride, Luther’s character was forged in a very different and much rougher world. His upbringing in Mansfeld would have given him a toughness and a readiness to put himself physically on the line, qualities that would be tested to the limit in the years ahead. From his father and the other mine owners he would have learned the importance of creating networks, a skill that would make the Reformation possible. He would have learned how to be a leader—and to expect not deference but assaults, arguments, and brickbats. Mansfeld nurtured in him a sense of politics that was grounded in authority and class division, and rested on a clear distinction between the counts who ruled from the hill and the “black miners,” as Luther termed them, who worked below.63 Socially, it taught him the importance of friendship and kin. Through marriage he would become related to most of his Mansfeld friends and he would replicate the same patterns years later, as Lutheran clergy intermarried, creating a new professional caste, bound by ties of kinship.64 Theologically, his childhood may have inclined him toward a powerful sense of the unbridgeable distance between God and man, and of the unpredictability of God’s providence. Nothing stood between the miner and disaster; and for every miner who struck a lucky seam there were more who lost everything. But those who did not trust Lady Luck, or grasped at superstition, might be left with a shrewd realism about the operations of the world, and a cynical distrust of the stars.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1532, watching his own pregnant wife, Katharina von Bora, feed their young son Martin, Luther remarked, “It is hard to feed two guests, one in the house, the other at the door.” 58 When their fifth child, Paul, was born in 1533, Luther held him in his arms and mused “how much Adam must have loved his firstborn son Cain, and yet he became his brother’s killer.” At one level, this was a conventional recognition that fathers love their children no matter what they do, but the off-kilter remark may also reveal that he knew how envious a displaced firstborn can feel. 59 Whether or not Luther ever had an older brother, it was his education in which his father chose to invest, and this special treatment would have made him proud and confident of his ability to succeed like his father. 7. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Luder, 1527. But it may also have made him feel guilty toward his siblings, and worried about their envy. Luther knew the price of his university education: Two years of smelting had to pay for his studies at Erfurt, something his father doubtless made sure he never forgot. 60 He also knew that this was money not spent on his brothers and sisters. Seven or possibly eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood, had to be trained or found dowries—all to be funded from Hans Luder’s mining operations. The structure of the family economy, where the children were meant to make their way from the income of the Mansfeld ores, was likely to have fostered a sense of common purpose, and the family seems to have remained close-knit throughout Luther’s life. 61 When his parents died there was some bad feeling over the inheritance, which was to be equally divided, an irritation that perhaps revived conflicts from the past. Luther, as the eldest, acted as peacemaker and drew up the contract of division, insisting that now all “dislike and unwillingness” be set aside. 62 But Martin’s privileged position may have left occasional envy and bitterness as well. Luther’s almost allergic reaction whenever he thought others envied him would become a settled feature of his character. Whereas most of Luther’s generation of scholars came from the craft towns, and many were familiar with the large imperial towns and their elegant fashions and civic pride, Luther’s character was forged in a very different and much rougher world.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I wondered what it would feel like to flirt, to express sensual longing and be coveted. These visions of romance became so frequent and intense, I feared I’d “committed adultery in my heart.” These dreamy episodes always felt plausible, if only . . . If only I didn’t have to go to all these meetings. If only I had more time. If only I earned more money. If only I belonged to a community that encouraged spiritual exploration. If only I didn’t have so many people counting on me to be good. If only the definition of “good” could be expanded to include detours. If only I could explore without being judged and worried over by all the most important people in my life. If only I were single. There—I said it. If only I were single. One common theme in all my fantasies was that Ross was not in them. The most disturbing fantasy came as I searched for a way out. I started daydreaming about receiving a phone call from the police. “Your husband,” the official, monotonic voice would say, “has been killed in a car accident. I assure you, ma’am, he suffered no pain. From the angle of the wreckage, we are absolutely sure he was killed instantly.” In these imagined episodes, I would experience intense sadness and months of grief and upheaval. But time heals all wounds, and then I’d be free. These fantasies generated a lot of guilt in me. One day, I mustered the nerve to share this twisted daydream with my therapist, seeing it as evidence of my cold, cold heart. She smiled softly and informed me this was a common and normal fantasy among people wishing for a divorce. Divorce. In the Witness community, it just wasn’t done. Marriage was considered so sacred, the only scriptural grounds for ending it were infidelity or death. No wonder I sought resolution in daydreams. Church policy did not recognize irreconcilable differences or growing apart as acceptable reasons to split up; these issues were often taken for spiritual weakness and evidence of a breach in the spiritual practices of study and prayer. One night Ross and I joined our good friends Erik and Marie for dinner and a movie. I was quiet and detached throughout the evening. Erik and Marie held each other’s hands; we did not. Marie laughed at Erik’s jokes; I stared off when Ross spoke. The conversation seemed bathetic and trivial. At my suggestion, we saw The Fugitive for a second time. It was my one guarantee of enjoying the outing. I was grateful for the dark respite of the theater, the familiar torpor setting in. I sat with arms crossed, declining offers of popcorn and M&M’S. “What is the matter with you?” Ross asked, as we got in the car to drive home. “You were so . . . so bitchy.” “Give me a break,” I said, as we both closed our doors.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I’d inched up to second place in sales for the year. There was an avalanche of work to do, and I allowed myself to be carried away by the mass of details and meetings, which made it easier to dismiss fears about my future and unexpected explosions of homesickness. But then one balmy evening in May, as I arrived home, I heard the muffled sound of my phone ringing. “Hello,” I said, irritation slipping into my cadence. “Hey, Linda.” The lethargic, Eeyore-like voice belonged to Ross. I immediately regretted having answered the phone. “Hey,” I said, forcing some enthusiasm into my reply. “How are you?” It was a perfunctory question. “Fine,” I said, instinctively aware that he was pressing on to some end, some bit of news or something important to say. “And you?” I said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” “I’ll come straight to the point,” he said. I started pacing back and forth in the kitchen: two steps, turn; two steps, turn. “Linda, I’ve met someone.” I stopped pacing. He told me her name and what a great sense of humor she had. She and her family had recently moved into the congregation. I got the impression she was in her early twenties. “She’s fantastic, and for some crazy reason she likes me, too. But I can’t date her, now can I?” His voice was taut, anger rippling just under each syllable. My stomach twisted. “Can I?” Ross repeated the question. I wanted to tell him the truth right then and there. I felt the words collecting in my throat, the incantation that would release him, release me, from this retched spell. “Linda, am I free?” he asked, mewling now. I knew what I had to do. If I told him what he so desperately wanted to hear, he’d jump off the phone and broadcast the news to all his friends. But I couldn’t do that to my family. This was the sort of confession I wanted to make in person. There could be no more hemming and hawing. My next steps were clear and poignant and absolute. “No, Ross,” I paused. “No, you’re not free.” I could hear a deep sigh from him that turned into a groan. “Woman,” he said, “you’re killing me.” “Guilty as charged,” I said. It was seven o’clock in Portland, and this was a Tuesday night, when he would usually have been at the Kingdom Hall. “No meeting tonight?” I asked. “Couldn’t do it tonight,” Ross said. “Just feeling too down to be around people. I’ve been trying to reach you since six.” “Should I be worried about you?” I asked pacing again. “No. Don’t do me any favors. I’ve got plenty of people here covering that territory.” “Well, then,” I said, “if there is nothing else you wish to harass me about, I’ll be going.” “Good night.” And I heard the click of the phone line trail off into oblivion.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I could see his sad blue eyes in my mind and felt the tears that must be welling there. “Everyone’s looking out for me, trying to keep me busy,” he continued. “Socially, I mean.” And he paused for a moment. The conversation became stilted. “Linda, I need to know, is there any hope of us getting back together? Are you ever going to come home?” I shuddered. Could I believe my ears? Did he seriously hope for reconciliation? If he was, it could only be out of a sense of religious obligation, not love. Truer still, I knew he was longing for a physical connection. My insides were rattling with guilt. He was overriding natural desires, clinging to antiquated rules that demanded he live the life of a celibate, while I kicked up my heels. “Ross, I love it here. I can’t imagine I’ll ever live in Portland again.” I sat there for a long while in the silence between us, a silence that contained our despair and anger, at different things for different reasons. “Sorry,” I continued, holding back tears. “But that is the truth of it.” After I hung up, I sat on the kitchen floor for a long while, feeling like a lying, conniving, hard-hearted bitch of an ex-wife. Of course he was free to do as he liked. But I knew he was suffering and would endure this unhappiness for a long time, rather than break “God’s law.” I, on the other hand, was no longer interested in appeasing a God that cared about what I did in my bedroom. Our divorce was final, and Ross’s choices were no longer my business, but when he called me like this, it felt like my business. I stood up and walked over to take in the view. Fall had turned to winter. Night was descending, and the lake looked placid, reflecting the gunmetal hue of the sky. It was too cold to sit on the balcony. I wrapped myself in a blanket, curled up on the couch, tears braiding down my cheeks. How had it come to this? Niggling doubts, a crisis of faith, a desire to move freely in the world, and here I was, in a “moral” showdown with my former spouse. Whoever had sex first was the adulterer. For either of us, there would be shame and the invitation from on high—delivered via the elders—to repent. Seeking forgiveness was the gateway to good standing in the church. If Ross should succumb to his loneliness, he would surely regret it, confess his “sin,” and be received with love. That same love would be extended to me, but I just couldn’t muster any regret. To say I was sorry for the way I’d been living my life these past months would be a lie. To reveal my sin would cost me everything, because I was unrepentant.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “This past year has been tough—so much transition. But I can’t say I have any regrets. I’m no longer afraid of the world, like it’s something to be avoided. I feel like I have a new lease on life—there’s so much to learn and discover.” “How do you feel about The Truth?” asked Jeremy. I remembered his prayer, and all that talk about Satan and the “desires of the flesh.” “Being at the Kingdom Hall is very uncomfortable,” I said. “That’s not uncommon for someone in your situation,” said Ray. Jeremy nodded his head in agreement. I knew I needed to get more direct in my language. This was turning out to be easier than I thought, perhaps because I lacked history with these men and was not seeking their approval. “Teachings that once comforted me now seem archaic. There are rules for everything, and I don’t care to live that way. I’ve become curious about other religions, other ideas. I haven’t pursued anything yet, but I’m open to it. One thing I’m clear about is that I don’t plan to attend meetings at all anymore.” Ray sat expressionless. “What does your family say to this?” “I’m traveling to Portland in two weeks. I’ll tell them then.” “I’m sure they’ll be very disappointed.” “No doubt.” I said. “Even more so when I tell them one more thing, which is why I really asked you here today.” I could hear a police siren in the distance and getting closer, probably from Lake Shore Drive. “I’ve gotten involved with someone, a lovely man.” I’d decided in advance I wasn’t going to reveal that my dalliances had started over a year ago, or that there had been more than one. I felt foolish enough talking about something so personal with near strangers. But this was official business, part of the process, so I pressed on. “When I go home, I’ll also be telling my ex-husband that he is free.” They correctly understood I meant Ross was now free to remarry. I’d expected to feel lighter, freer, but I didn’t. Part of me felt sorry these decent people had to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon talking about this soap opera that was my life. “When were you dedicated and baptized?” Ray asked, wanting to clarify my official standing with the organization. “Ages ago,” I said. “I was sixteen.” I felt like I was remembering something from another person’s life. “This is very serious for you,” Ray said. “Yes,” I said. “Life-changing.” I expected him to pull out his Bible and beseech me with Scripture, but both men sat still for a moment, observing my determined expression. “Is there anything we can say to help you change your mind?” Jeremy asked. “No,” I said. “I know you consider this a gross sin.” “It is on the Bible’s authority that we call it a sin,” Jeremy said, correcting me. “I no longer share that view, nor do I feel any remorse.” “That is clear,” said Ray.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Months of therapy had guided me into some of these painful memories, and I was just beginning to comprehend how our family dynamics and religious rigor had gotten all mixed up and created a stranglehold on me. “And do you remember what a relief it was when he got baptized?” “Yes,” I said, and remembered how Randy wept as Dad was dipped briefly under the baptismal waters. At the time, his sensitive display made me appreciate the deep impact that growing up without a Witness father had had on him. I’d never seen such fragility from him. He seemed now to be filled with the same overwhelming emotions. Years had passed, and I’d assumed he’d released these feelings. I felt sick to my stomach, seeing how my actions resurrected old fears and familiar pain in him, as they had done with my sister. “Now we have to worry about you,” he said. “No one ever thought you’d become an unbeliever. You’ve always been one of the sane ones.” “I wouldn’t say I’m an ‘unbeliever,’ per se, just not a ‘believer.’” It sounded much better in my head than out loud. Randy rolled his eyes and shook his head. I decided to mount one last plea, because he was my big brother and I just wanted to be understood. “But, Randy, can’t you please just try to understand what I’m going through? Odd as it may seem, I’ve never felt more sane in my life. Haven’t you ever had a time in your life when you just knew you were doing the right thing, when you could feel it?” “Marriage and The Truth are not things to be so easily discarded,” he said, and a wave of heavy breaths started to overtake him a second time. He pushed the tissues to his eyes and managed to pull himself together. I was a catalyst for something bigger going on inside him. It seemed the only way I could make him feel better was to tell him what he wanted to hear. I was completely thrown off by his lack of compassion or attempt at understanding. I wanted him out of my car. The guilt of breaking up a family had been dumped in my lap, and it was clear Randy was speaking not just about Ross and me but about all of us—“the whole-fam-damily,” as my father would say. “Then we’re done here,” I said in a firm voice. “Really, I can’t take any more of this, at least not today.” I pulled one last Kleenex from the box on the dashboard and adjusted the rearview mirror so I could see my face. My eyes were beady and bloodshot. “Are you guys going to be able to come to dinner at my new place next weekend?” I asked, looking for some neutral conversation. I’d invited everyone in the immediate family over for a casual housewarming dinner. Everyone had said they would come. Randy and Marlene were the only holdouts.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  LW 46, 49; 50; WS 18, 357:12; 13–14; 358:14–18. 23. WB 3, 877, May 30, 1525; 878, May 30, 1525, 517:2; 890, June 15, 1525 (to Rühel, Johannes Thür, and Caspar Müller); 896, June 20, 1525. Interestingly, Lutheran memorial culture tried to stick to Luther’s initial view that faults lay on both sides, lords and peasants. See, for example, Spangenberg, Mansfeldische Chronica, 419. 24. Luther probably decided to publish this letter to Müller as Ein Sendbrief von dem harten Büchlein wider die Bauern, WS 18, 384–401, after talking to his Mansfeld friends at his wedding on June 27: WB 3, 902, first half of July 1525; WS 18, 392:22–25. 25. Scott, Müntzer, 175. 26. WB 3, 874, n.10: Luther interceded for Meinhard, and this probably saved his life. Meinhard gave him a silver Becher in token of his gratitude. 27. Matheson, ed. and trans., Müntzer, 161; Müntzer, Briefwechsel, 491–506, 498. 28. Müntzer and not Luther became the great protagonist of Marxist accounts of the Reformation, from Friedrich Engels onward. By the time of the five hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1983, East German scholarship had moved back to interpreting the Reformation as a religious event and seeing it through the eyes of Luther, partly because it needed to seize the celebrations of Luther—whose Reformation happened on the East German soil of Saxony—from the grip of the Federal Republic of Germany. 29. Matheson, ed. and trans., Müntzer, 44, March 29, 1522 (Müntzer to Melanchthon); Müntzer, Briefwechsel, 127–39, 133. This letter was published by Johann Agricola in 1525 as part of a polemic against Müntzer. 30. Müntzer, Briefwechsel, 505, n.1: She was a former nun and her name was Ottilie von Gersen, probably of the noble family von Görschen from the region around Merseburg; we do not know which convent she had left. 31. Karlstadt, Endschuldigung, fos. B i (v); B ii (r). Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 383. The pamphlet probably appeared in July; there was also an Augsburg printing. See Zorzin, Karlstadt, 104. “I was amongst the peasants as a hare among ferocious dogs,” he writes, fo. B ii (r), Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 383. He gives several examples of threats peasant bands made to him; but he also admits, “That I lodged with peasants and ate and drank with them and at times helped them extol injustice or castigated sin too often and too severely, I cannot do anything about. I had to eat and drink, and I was not prepared to endanger the life of my wife and child. I would have been a fool had I stood up to the peasants; they would have cut me into pieces for a single word”; fo. B iii (r); Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 385. 32. Karlstadt, Endschuldigung, fo. B [iv] (r); Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 386. 33. WB 3, 889, June 12, 1525, 529:2–3. The original was probably in Latin, translated by Spalatin. 34.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “Sorry,” I continued, holding back tears. “But that is the truth of it.” After I hung up, I sat on the kitchen floor for a long while, feeling like a lying, conniving, hard-hearted bitch of an ex-wife. Of course he was free to do as he liked. But I knew he was suffering and would endure this unhappiness for a long time, rather than break “God’s law.” I, on the other hand, was no longer interested in appeasing a God that cared about what I did in my bedroom. Our divorce was final, and Ross’s choices were no longer my business, but when he called me like this, it felt like my business. I stood up and walked over to take in the view. Fall had turned to winter. Night was descending, and the lake looked placid, reflecting the gunmetal hue of the sky. It was too cold to sit on the balcony. I wrapped myself in a blanket, curled up on the couch, tears braiding down my cheeks. How had it come to this? Niggling doubts, a crisis of faith, a desire to move freely in the world, and here I was, in a “moral” showdown with my former spouse. Whoever had sex first was the adulterer. For either of us, there would be shame and the invitation from on high—delivered via the elders—to repent. Seeking forgiveness was the gateway to good standing in the church. If Ross should succumb to his loneliness, he would surely regret it, confess his “sin,” and be received with love. That same love would be extended to me, but I just couldn’t muster any regret. To say I was sorry for the way I’d been living my life these past months would be a lie. To reveal my sin would cost me everything, because I was unrepentant. The Witness community would have no choice but to cast me out. If Ross slipped up, he’d still have his family, his community. I would not. I was surer than ever that my family would turn their backs on me— as Randy had done—and I wasn’t strong enough to face being shunned by them. The next thing I knew, I was awakened by pelting rain that sounded like someone from the floor above was beating a rug against the window. Raising my head from the arm of the couch, I felt a sharp crick in my neck. I was still in my jeans and blouse from earlier, eyes puffy, mouth dry, surrounded by wads of used Kleenex. It was two o’clock in the morning, and I needed to be up for work in four hours. [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] The first snows began to fall, and so did the temperatures. Lake winds gave new meaning to the phrase “wind chill,” which until then had brought to my mind a slight breeze, perhaps the need to throw on a jacket. But no.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  24 Uncharacteristically indecisive, Luther first set out what he saw as the flaws in Melanchthon’s argument. If, as Melanchthon argued, vows had to be broken because of the severity of the sins that would otherwise be committed, then the same could be said of marriage vows. And then people could just dissolve marriages at will. Does it not make a difference, Luther asked, that the vows were entered into by free Christians? Trying another tack, he suggested that just about everyone entered into monastic vows in the belief that they would ensure salvation—they were a good work that would make them pleasing to God. This alone would be enough to render them invalid, because they were entered into for the wrong reasons. Luther added that monastic vows included poverty and obedience as well. These were “for boys,” Luther wrote, the kind of thing designed to keep youths in check. A man, on the other hand, should not aim to lead this kind of life: Not only were monks vowing to obey someone else, they were resorting to begging instead of earning a living. 25 Luther was evidently beginning to reject the monastic life, as an estate of perpetual childhood. Luther adopted a much more personal tone as he talked about his own vows. Recalling the promise he made in the storm, he wrote, “I was practically seized by God, rather than drawn” into the monastery. 26 Yet in the very same sentence he admits he fears that “I, too, may have taken my vow in an impious and sacrilegious way.” Revealingly, he recalled his father’s reaction: “Let’s hope that this was not a delusion from Satan,” the words that, Luther told Melanchthon, at the time “took such deep root in my heart that I have never heard anything from his mouth which I remembered more persistently. It seemed to me as if God had spoken to me from afar, through my father’s mouth.” Now his father’s words struck him in a different way. Instead of concluding that his father had been right, and that the visitation had been diabolic, Luther feared that perhaps there had been nothing miraculous about his vocation at all. So, if it had not been a calling, he concluded, “Am I myself already free and no longer a monk?” 27 Then, dropping the confessional tone and returning to marriage, Luther’s mood suddenly changed. Perhaps, he teased Melanchthon, you are just trying to pay me back, by wishing a wife on me “in order to get even with me for having given you a wife.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He had preached before the Diet opened, castigating the sacramentarians for four days in front of hostile Augsburg congregations. But he also chafed at being stuck in a “mining town” like Eisleben, and hankered after a wider stage for his theological gifts. 34 When Luther suggested in 1536 there might be an opening at Wittenberg for him in the theology faculty, Agricola jumped at the chance, setting off for Wittenberg before a position had even been arranged. He soon moved into Luther’s house with his wife and nine children. 35 So close were the two men that when Luther went to Schmalkalden for the negotiations, he entrusted his doctrine, pulpit, church, wife, children, and house—his “Heimlichkeit,” or most intimate matters—to Agricola, licensing him to preach and lecture in Wittenberg in his place. 36 Ambition and proximity produced tensions. Free at last of provincial Eisleben, Agricola wanted to find his own theological voice, and in March 1537 he preached a sermon in front of some dignitaries at Zeitz in which he gave an unusual interpretation of Romans 1:18, where Paul described God’s retribution for the wickedness and godlessness of man. He argued that we come to knowledge of the law through the gospel, and that the law of the Old Testament, which had formerly revealed the wrath of God, had been replaced by the Cross of Christ. This conviction was rooted in Agricola’s own experience, because “from my youth on I had an evil, timid and shocked heart and conscience, so that when I was young and went to school I ran to the monasteries and hermitages seeking comfort.” 37 The experience of overwhelming guilt and his liberation through the evangelical gospel was his touchstone, and he therefore described the Christian as undergoing an emotional journey of faith: “the preaching of the death of Christ shocks and depresses the understanding and conscience of man; that is, it teaches repentance. Whereas, the preaching of the resurrection of Christ raises up the conscience, shocked by the death of Christ, and restores the understanding and conscience; that is: it teaches the forgiveness of sins.” 38 This might appear like conventional Lutheranism, but references to “shocked consciences” were new and emotional terms, deviations from what had now become the established Wittenberg terminology. Moreover, Agricola was putting the Crucifixion in place of the Law, that is, God’s law, through which we come to recognize our sin. As Luther saw it, he was too quick to set aside the law of the Old Testament, the “law of anger,” as if Christians did not first have to come to a realization of their own sin as they failed to fulfill God’s commandments. Only then would they come to recognize and appreciate Christ’s saving death. Having spent so much energy over the last decade in developing definitive statements of the evangelical faith, he was increasingly defensive, unwilling to tolerate the slightest deviation or innovation.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  In that charged encounter is a characteristic moment of tension for Christianity: how does one form of authority relate to another, and which is going to prevail? Perpetua was disobedient not just to her father but to the institutional Catholic Church which later enrolled her among its martyrs, because she was a Montanist. Some of the most remarkable passages in her account occur in her description of the second and third dreams or visions that she had in her prison cell. She saw her younger brother Dinocrates, who had died of cancer at the age of seven without being baptized as a Christian, in a dark place, very hot and thirsty, and just out of reach of a cooling pool of water. She prayed for him. In the third dream, she watched him drink from the pool, and ‘play joyfully as young children do’; the cancerous growth in his face melted away. Perpetua did not comment on this vision of release, but the likelihood is that she would not have needed to for the contemporary readership she envisaged. What she was saying was that, through prayer, she had been granted the power to release the dead from suffering because of her faith in the ‘New Prophecy’. Dinocrates needed no institutional Church or cleric to remedy his lack of sacramental grace. But perhaps the most agonizing moral choice of all for Perpetua was whether to be a martyr or a good mother. In choosing to affirm her faith and face imprisonment and death, she was forced to abandon her suckling baby. There followed a miserable alternation of separation and return of the child, in which in the end she was told in her prison cell that her baby no longer wanted her breasts. Seldom do we read a Christian text which so brutally exposes what a Christian commitment might mean: it returns us to the terrifying story of Genesis 22, when God commanded the Patriarch Abraham to make a human sacrifice of his own young son, Isaac, and only countermanded the order as the butcher’s knife was raised. In counterpoint to the Church’s pronounced drive towards conformity with society’s often perfectly reasonable expectations, which we have noted as such a characteristic feature of the later literature in the New Testament (see pp. 114–18), Christian obedience repeatedly plays a troubling wild card. It is the Apostle Peter’s impudent retort to the angry high priest of the Jerusalem Temple, recorded in Acts 5.29: ‘We must obey God rather than men.’ Not so long after Perpetua brutally confounded her father’s natural expectations and set herself up as the agent of God’s forgiveness, bishops including Peter’s self-styled successor in Rome would come to find themselves cast in the role of the high priest: furious at the disobedience of Christians to their own authority and in the end even condemning Christians to death, as once Peter had been by the Roman authorities. More often than such incidents of dramatic intensity as Perpetua’s sufferings,

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  And my ID blows. But I’ll flirt my way through.” She made a sudden and unsignaled left turn, pulling onto a road that dropped precipitously down a hill with fields on either side, and she gripped the steering wheel tight as we accelerated, and she waited until the last possible moment to brake, just before we reached the bottom of the hill. There stood a plywood gas station that no longer sold gas with a faded sign bolted to the roof: COOSA LIQUORS: WE CATER TO YOUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS. Alaska went in alone and walked out the door five minutes later weighed down by two paper bags filled with contraband: three cartons of cigarettes, five bottles of wine, and a fifth of vodka for the Colonel. On the way home, Alaska said, “You like knock-knock jokes?” “Knock-knock jokes?” I asked. “You mean like, ‘Knock knock...” “Who’s there?” replied Alaska. “Who.” “Who Who?” “What are you, an owl?” I finished. Lame. “That was brilliant,” said Alaska. “I have one. You start.” “Okay. Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” said Alaska. I looked at her blankly. About a minute later, I got it, and laughed. “My mom told me that joke when I was six. It’s still funny.” — So I could not have been more surprised when she showed up sobbing at Room 43 just as I was putting the finishing touches on my final paper for English. She sat down on the couch, her every exhalation a mix of whimper and scream. “I’m sorry,” she said, heaving. Snot was dribbling down her chin. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She picked up a Kleenex from the COFFEE TABLE and wiped at her face. “I don’t...” she started, and then a sob came like a tsunami, her cry so loud and childlike that it scared me, and I got up, sat down next her, and put my arm around her. She turned away, pushing her head into the foam of the couch. “I don’t understand why I screw everything up,” she said. “What, like with Marya? Maybe you were just scared.” “Scared isn’t a good excuse!” she shouted into the couch. “Scared is the excuse everyone has always used!” I didn’t know who “everyone” was, or when “always” was, and as much as I wanted to understand her ambiguities, the slyness was growing annoying. “Why are you upset about this now?” “It’s not just that. It’s everything. But I told the Colonel in the car.” She sniffled but seemed done with the sobs. “While you were sleeping in the back. And he said he’d never let me out of his sight during pranks. That he couldn’t trust me on my own. And I don’t blame him. I don’t even trust me.” “It took guts to tell him,” I said. “I have guts, just not when it counts.

• From Action (2014)

  Even if people in your life treat porn like an immoral cesspool in which sinners are drowning their deficient souls, it’s more of a sizzlin’ cabana party, from what I’ve seen on my computer screen. Much like a coconut rum–infused fuck-a-thon, it’s pretty unbeatable in moderation: a nice diversion from real life, but not what you expect it to be like around-the-clock. THE ETHICAL SMUT [image file=image_859.jpg] Taking in a rude motion picture is the same as any other consumer choice—you can decide how to do it ethically. If you’re concerned that the pornography you like to watch is disadventageous to either the individual actors in it or our twisted society-culture on the whole, man, let’s talk about how to make sure you’re watching videos that you don’t feel go against your moral code. Are you mad at what you like because it doesn’t square with your personal gender, race, class, or sexual orientation–based politics? I try to take a look at the way I conduct myself in the world, and reexamine what my actual feelings and behaviors about social justice, equal rights, and respecting people of all stripes are. Yeah, yeah—they’re pristine. Except they’re not, of course! Few people can be convinced of their bigotry, even when it’s obvious that we live in a white supremacist patriarchy that imbues us with it. Look, I get that you’re not currently guffawing heartily at a homeless person on your office flat-screen TV and smacking your secretary’s ass while clad in a KKK uniform. However: If you were born white, male, straight, or cisgender, you were given a book of get-out-of-jail-free cards that was withheld from others, and if you’re not trying to redistribute them in all things, including pornography, that’s kind of a boner-killer for the rest of us. In your broader life, do you make a concerted effort to lift up and listen to others in order not to bulldoze them? Great! Let’s take a look at how that extends to your skinematic taste. Are you able to recognize, if you’re watching porn that isn’t a perfect representation of your politics (aka, 97 percent of porn), what and where the flaws are? Okay, then go ahead and watch it if you want to.

• From Action (2014)

  Get all altruistic. You know how people sometimes sniff that volunteering and other forms of do-gooderism are ultimately, like, so selfish in the end—they’re all about making the person doing it feel good about themselves. To this, I say: Correct, probably! And that is so rad. People who apply their time and energy, if they are fortunate enough to find themselves with extra supplies of these resources, to making the world the slightest bit less harrowing for others, have the right to feel good about themselves (so long as they don’t post TOO many pictures of it on the internet—I don’t care if people talk about the causes they love, but I rankle when that’s to the end of broadcasting their own saintly virtue and generosity). Also: Who cares! Good is being done here. If, in chasing momentarily rewarding-feeling self-aggrandizement rights, a person is chipping at the net grossness of the planet’s collective miseries, at least they’re trying to both preen and big-up themselves (even if that’s just internally) through fellowship. I vastly prefer this kind of grandstanding to the types of which the by-products do not serve anyone but their enactors. Like, attempting to have THE HOTTEST SEX-HAIRSTYLE TO PROVE YOU’RE THE TOP DOG doesn’t end up affecting anybody besides the updo-er in question, but fixing to have THE BIGGEST SEX-HEART BY DOING GOOD TURNS at least helps others out. A secret: I used to be one of the eye-rollers who mentally (and sometimes vocally) accused people who donated time, cash, and/or public support of being self-deifying phonies. But you know how people who are obsessed with whether the motives of others are “fake” or not are so often anxious in that way because they’re fearful that expressing their own interest in similar activities is valid? When I waffled about the worth of my own motives, which were fine—and would have been even if they were narcissistic—I was stating an argument to counter what I actually believed because I was worried that if I got involved in causes I cared about, people would roll their eyes at ME. That is major dunce behavior, and it shouldn’t have stopped me from just saying FUCK IT and heading down to the food pantry to see what I could do. You don’t have to “volunteer” quite so overtly, either. As I mentioned, not everyone has that temporal luxury—and maybe you don’t WANT to plant a rain forest on an oil spill! Find your own version of answering to the itchy beliefs you’re inclined to scratch at most persistently by quizzing yourself thusly: Did I add worth and/or goodness to another person’s life today? If the answer is yes: You are closer to whole than you would have been otherwise, and more appealing, because there is nothing hotter than a person unafraid of actively executing what they think is true.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  highest standards demanded by God. The world which he would have constructed on these principles would have been one vast monastery.46 It would have been impossible to sustain the mixed human society of vice and virtue which Augustine presents in the ‘City of God’, where no Christian has the right to avoid everyday civic responsibilities in this fallen world, even to be a magistrate who is responsible for executing other human beings, precisely because we are all caught up in the consequences of Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden. Augustine’s pessimism started as realism, the realism of a bishop protecting his flock amid the mess of the world. It is worth noticing that his first denunciations of Pelagius’s theology came not in tracts written for fellow intellectuals, but in sermons for his own congregation.47 The sack of Rome in 410 produced a scatter of refugees throughout the Mediterranean and this began spreading the dispute beyond Pelagius’s Roman circle. One enthusiastic follower of Pelagius, a lawyer named Celestius, arrived in North Africa and began expounding Pelagius’s views to an extreme point where he left no possibility of affirming original sin. So he said that there was no sin to remit in baptism: ‘sin is not born with a man, it is subsequently committed by the man; for it is shown to be a fault, not of nature, but of the human will’.48 There could not have been a more sensitive issue to choose in North Africa, where much of the argument between Catholics and Donatists had centred on both sides’ claim to be the true heir of Cyprian’s third-century teaching on baptism as the only way to gain salvation. It was these statements of Celestius which first provoked Augustine’s fury against the group of propositions which came to be labelled as Pelagianism; his relations with Pelagius himself did not descend to the same bitterness. Over the next few years, a complicated series of political moves and counter-moves raised the temperature to new heights; Augustine’s crusade against the Pelagians eventually resulted in their defeat and the dismissal from Church office of all their highly placed supporters. In the process, Augustine’s thoughts about the nature of grace and salvation were pushed to ever more extreme positions, which can be traced both through The City of God and the long series of tracts which he wrote attacking Pelagian thought. Eventually he could say not simply that all human impulses to do good are a result of God’s grace, but that it is an entirely arbitrary decision on the part of God as to who receives this grace. God has made the decision before all time, so some are foreordained to be saved through grace – a predestined group of the elect. The arbitrariness is fully justified by the monstrousness of Adam’s original fall, in which we all have a part through original sin: Augustine repeatedly uses the terrible word ‘lump’ (massa) to describe humanity in its state of loss. It is a word to which he often returned, associating it with Latin words for ‘loss’, ‘sin’,

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  it was possible to work out exact scales of what penance was appropriate for what sin: tariffs of forgiveness. They saw the spiritual life as a constant series of little setbacks, laboriously compensated for before the next little lapse. They used their tariff books to help layfolk who were oppressed by guilt and shame. When missionaries from Ireland and Scotland started spreading their faith in northern and central Europe in the seventh century, they brought tariff books with them; these were the first ‘penitentials’ or manuals of penance for clergy to use with their flocks. The idea was hugely popular – who would not jump at the chance of being able to do something concrete and specified, however hard, in order to lift a burden of guilt? It became the basis of the medieval Western Church’s centuries-long system of penance: a practice whereby everyone repeatedly confessed their sins to a priest, who then consulted his book or his memory and awarded the necessary penance. Despite its success and acceptance into the Church’s pastoral practice, the whole system directly contradicted Augustine’s theology of grace, and that was to become an issue which helped permanently to split the Western Church in the sixteenth century Reformation, as we will see.23 The fact that this remote corner of Europe could have such a profound influence on the whole Church is testimony to the restless energy of Celtic Christians, for whom the sea was a series of trackways to their neighbours and cultures far beyond. They treasured a legend of St Brendan sailing to discover new lands to the west, which has long generated Irish pride in its anticipation of Christopher Columbus, and is certainly testimony to the openness of Celtic society to such a possibility. In the later sixth century one of the greatest of their monastic leaders, Columba or Colmcille (‘Dove of the Church’), not only founded the monasteries of Durrow and Derry in central and northern Ireland, but also built an island monastery far to the north on the island of Iona, which remains one of the best-known sacred places in the Atlantic Isles; he frequently crossed the sea between his various foundations.24 But adventurous as Columba was, he was still moving within a Gaelic Celtic world. One of his younger contemporaries, also Columba (but conventionally and conveniently distinguished from the elder as Columbanus), found a new and more challenging image for his travels: he would follow the biblical example of Abraham and travel to strange peoples to do the will of his God. Columbanus’s first journeys (probably in the 580s) were into Christian Gaul, where his foundation of monasteries was met with less than wholehearted gratitude by the existing episcopate. One liturgical issue which was to prove a recurrent source of annoyance between Celtic and non-Celtic Catholics was their disagreement about the date for celebrating Easter, that earliest and most

• From Action (2014)

  • A note to special guest stars: The key to nailing your walk-on role in someone else’s relationship: It’s best not to try and steal the show here. While this is a fun and light evening for YOU, the people with whom you’re sleeping are going to maintain joint custody over this memory for the rest of the time they’re magnetized to each other. While it’s up to them how they approach your encounter—there’s no way to control other people’s feelings—you have some responsibility to contribute to its emotional tenor. How are these two treating each other? Are they looking at each other with great devotion and intensity? Don’t try to hop in on that. I’m thinking of the words “equal” and “equitable.” Wreathe both parties with affection and attention equally: Make all parties feel sexy, included, and accounted for. Ménagin’ is the best—have fun. OPEN RELATIONSHIPS [image file=image_1092.jpg] One method of maintaining a loving partnership that includes sex from outside forces: non-monogamy. I’m not at all proud to admit that I’ve cheated on almost every boyfriend I’ve ever had except for a few, including my last one—although that doesn’t mean I stopped hooking up with other people when we were dating. The difference is, in that relationship, my foremost love associate knew about (and was cool with) my liaisons. It’s taken me a while to admit this, but in the past few years I’ve come to accept that I mostly prefer romantic relationships that don’t require me to be sexually faithful. I think a lot of people find this “deviant” or weird, but, unlikely as it may sound, it’s actually not that complicated. Monogamy has always been hard for me, even in the context of loving, committed relationships. In the past, the trouble usually began after a few months, when some new heartthrob would swim into my life. Although I knew my then-boyfriends wouldn’t be cool with it, I would start lying about how often I saw said heartthrobs, flirting with them on Facebook and in person, or secretly having “sleepovers” with them that involved a lot of physical contact but no official “fooling around.” I rationalized all of this behavior as friends bein’ friendly, even though my motivations were decidedly less pure. Once I started being dishonest, it was hard for me to stop. Although my cheating usually didn’t involve anything more serious than some furtive makeout sessions, I’d always wake up the next morning smothered in guilt, which quickly morphed into resentment: Why should I feel bad about wanting to fool around with people while I’m young? The answer, of course, was BECAUSE YOU ARE LYING TO A PERSON WHO CARES ABOUT YOU, JERKUS. But I also had a point: It’s totally okay to feel like kissing basically everybody, if you can find a way to do it without being deceitful and/or disrespectful to anyone else. I just hadn’t figured out that way yet.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  At the treatment facility, the chief psychiatrist told Frank that Susan would need to be isolated and that Frank couldn’t see or talk to her for a month. Frank couldn’t imagine a more painful fate. Even at the Moon, she’d been with him every moment. When doctors finally allowed him to visit, Frank found Susan much improved. They walked hand in hand across the grounds, and they talked. Frank felt a crushing guilt. All these years, he’d been selfish—mission had always come before family—and he’d never realized the toll this had taken on Susan. He, too, attended counseling sessions. He considered resigning from Eastern, changing his hard-charging ways. But he realized, with the doctor’s help, that such a move would run counter to his DNA; it would do no one any good if he tried to become someone he was not. Instead, he promised to himself and to Susan: He would make more time for her, he would do more to communicate with her. And he swore to himself never to let anything like this happen again to the person he loved most. Susan stayed for four months at the Institute of Living before returning home to Miami. From that day forward, neither she nor Frank touched alcohol again. Susan even brought home a friend from the facility, a young woman with addiction issues who’d been rejected by her family. Susan helped the woman find an apartment and a job, then counseled her for months until she’d settled in to the community. After that, Susan threw herself into volunteer work, helping organizations that fought drug abuse, an effort that would extend to a national scope in later years. Frank had never known a feeling of pride such as he felt for Susan in the months after she came home. In May 1975, Borman was elected president and chief operations officer of Eastern Airlines. He was beloved by many in the company, from board members to pilots to mechanics. Often, he worked unloading baggage at the airport or checking engine parts on the tarmac, and he drove an old Chevy to work. In a later newspaper profile, another airline executive would say of him, “He kind of preceded all the ‘excellence’ books.” Less than two years later, Borman became chairman of the board at Eastern, and he appeared in several of the company’s television commercials. Even on TV, he couldn’t help but talk straight. “Selling you a seat on Eastern Airlines isn’t easy. It’s not easy to sell you on any airline. You know, they’re all pretty much the same,” he said in one spot. For several years under Borman, Eastern enjoyed record-setting profits. But labor difficulties, and the deregulation of the airline industry, caused a downturn in the company’s business. Borman fought to right the ship, even making concessions that went against his instincts. For a time, the moves worked. But after a downturn in the economy, and new labor conflicts, Eastern was sold to new owners.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  In the summer before Anders’s third year at the Academy, he and about four hundred classmates boarded the USS Bennington, an aircraft carrier bound from the East Coast for Halifax, to see how fliers operated at sea. Also aboard was an array of fighter aircraft: Panthers, Cougars, Crusaders, and the AJ Savage, a three-engine nuclear-weapon-carrying bomber. On the first night, a young Marine pilot made a landing approach in his Cougar, floated over all the wires, and slammed into a pack of parked airplanes. Such was the surplus of aircraft after the Korean War that sailors just pushed the damaged ones overboard rather than fix them. Hours later, an AJ Savage came roaring in and hit badly on landing. The pilot and copilot tumbled down the flight deck head over heels in their severed, flaming cockpit but somehow managed to survive; the third crewman, however, died when he was thrown under the ship. The smoke had hardly cleared on that incident when Anders saw one of the gull wings of a Corsair fold up during takeoff. Just off the flight deck, the plane did a full roll and plummeted into the water. Immediately, the carrier turned toward the downed aircraft to make a rescue. Anders could see the pilot in the cockpit, but it was clear the man wasn’t moving. Anders had been on the plebe swim team and could handle himself in rough waters; now he had a decision to make. He could jump in and try to rescue the pilot, or he could allow carrier rescue personnel to do what they were trained to do. The sight of the pilot, unresponsive and starting to sink, pulled on him, but he also knew the ship was moving at about thirty-five knots, he had no life jacket, and he’d have to fall about fifty feet before hitting the water. He had a thought that would bother him for years: If he did jump, he might get put on report or receive demerits. He saw a helicopter and a destroyer approaching to assist in the rescue, and in a split second he made his decision to stay aboard the ship. Rescuers couldn’t reach the scene, however, before the pilot and his airplane disappeared under the waves. Anders hardly knew what to make of the disasters he’d seen. Navy pilots were trained to be the best in the world in combat, yet they risked their lives every day, even during takeoff and landing. Still, an airplane had the power to take the fight to an enemy with an immediacy unavailable to giant ships. It was more personal, too, just pilot and machine as one. When it came time to decide what to do with his military career, Anders wanted nothing to do with aircraft carriers, but knew he had to fly. —Anders continued to write to Valerie every day.