Hope

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 Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  By the time Littman’s study was finally published two years later, ROGD had already been uncritically discussed in numerous mainstream publications and cited by gender-disaffirming practitioners in academic journals. The study itself was roundly critiqued for its obvious sampling bias, the fact that it interviewed only parents and not their trans children, its inability to distinguish ROGD from regular gender dysphoria, and its mistaking correlation for causation (Littman presumed that trans peers and trans-themed social media sites were causing children to adopt trans identities, rather than the more likely scenario that the children were seeking out said peers and social media because they were trans).20 In fact, there were so many problems with Littman’s study that the journal that published it later issued a correction and apology. As I write this, at least nine peer-reviewed studies have tested ROGD and “transgender social contagion,” and all yielded results inconsistent with, or that directly contradict, these hypotheses.21 Despite having been refuted in the scientific literature, these concepts continue to persist in the public imagination. I often see people use “social contagion” as shorthand for “the increased number of trans children today relative to the past” without a shred of evidence that trans identities have suddenly become “contagious.” Indeed, the very concept of “social contagion” has long been critiqued for being poorly defined and conflating several potentially distinct social phenomena.22 One such phenomenon is a reduction of restraints: If there is a social norm prohibiting a particular behavior, many people who are inclined to engage in said behavior may refrain from doing so—in queer communities, we colloquially call this “being in the closet.” But once that social restraint is lifted, these people may start expressing that behavior publicly for the first time (which onlookers may misperceive as a “rapid increase” due to “social contagion”). There is no “transgender social contagion.” What we are witnessing is simply an across-the-board increase in all LGBTQ+ identities because the stigma targeting us is gradually diminishing. As I argued in a 2017 essay, these dynamics are strikingly similar to the rise in left-handedness (from roughly 2 to 13 percent of the population) in Western countries over the course of the twentieth century as the stigma associated with left-handedness receded and the practice of coercing children into being right-handed abated.23 If “social contagion” (or “80 percent desistance,” or trans identities being a mere “trend,” or any of the other alternative hypotheses promoted on these anti-trans parent websites since 2015) were indeed true, then we would expect that by now there would have been a large exodus of teenagers and young adults renouncing their trans identities. But that hasn’t happened. The most recent research studies continue to show that gender-affirming care remains highly efficacious and the rates of regret or detransition remain very low.24 In other words, there is no credible evidence that kids today are adopting trans identities spontaneously, capriciously, or frivolously. “Just Asking Questions” and the “Cisgender People Turned Transgender” Trope

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Religious persecution arises not only from bigotry and fanaticism, and the base passions of malice, hatred and uncharitableness, but also from mistaken zeal for truth and orthodoxy, from the intensity of religious conviction, and from the alliance of religion with politics or the union of church and state, whereby an offence against the one becomes an offence against the other. Persecution is found in all religions, churches and sects which had the power; while on the other hand all persecuted religions, sects, and parties are advocates of toleration and freedom, at least for themselves. Some of the best as well as the worst men have been persecutors, believing that they served the cause of God by fighting his enemies. Saul of Tarsus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic saint and philosopher on the throne of the Caesars, have in ignorance persecuted Christianity, the one from zeal for the law of Moses, the other from devotion to the laws and gods of Rome. Charlemagne thought he could best promote Christianity among the heathen Saxons by chasing them through the river for wholesale baptism. St. Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, and Calvin were equally convinced of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy. A religion or church established by law must be protected by law against its enemies. The only sure guarantee against persecution is to put all churches on an equal footing before the law, and either to support all or none. Church history is lurid with the infernal fires of persecutions, not only of Christians by heathens and Mohammedans, but of Christians by Christians. But there is a silver lining to every cloud, and an overruling Providence in all human wickedness. The persecutions test character, develop moral heroism, bring out the glories of martyrdom, and sow the bloody seed of religious liberty. They fail of their object when the persecuted party has the truth on its side, and ultimately result in its victory. This was the case with Christianity in the Roman empire, and to a large extent with Protestantism. They suffered the cross, and reaped the crown. Let us now briefly survey the chief stages in the history of persecution, which is at the same time a history of religious liberty. 1. The New Testament furnishes not a single passage in favor of persecution. The teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are against it. He came to save the world, not to destroy it. He declared that His kingdom is not of this world. He rebuked the hasty Peter for drawing the sword, though it was in defense of his Master; and he preferred to suffer and to die rather than to call the angels of God to aid against his enemies. The Apostles spread the gospel by spiritual means and condemned the use of carnal weapons. For three hundred years the church followed their example and advocated freedom of conscience.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The opposition came partly from the anti-Catholic sects, which, in spite of cruel persecution, never ceased to protest against the corruptions and tyranny of the papacy; partly from the spirit of nationality which arose in opposition to an all-absorbing hierarchical centralization; partly from the revival of classical and biblical learning, which undermined the reign of superstition and tradition; and partly from the inner and deeper life of the Catholic Church itself, which loudly called for a reformation, and struggled through the severe discipline of the law to the light and freedom of the gospel. The mediaeval Church was a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. The Reformation was an emancipation of Western Christendom from the bondage of the law, and a re-conquest of that liberty "wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. v. 1). § 5. Periods of the Middle Age. The Middle Age may be divided into three periods: 1. The missionary period from Gregory I. to Hildebrand or Gregory VII., A.D. 590–1073. The conversion of the northern barbarians. The dawn of a new civilization. The origin and progress of Islam. The separation of the West from the East. Some subdivide this period by Charlemagne (800), the founder of the German-Roman Empire. 2. The palmy period of the papal theocracy from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., A.D. 1073–1294. The height of the papacy, monasticism and scholasticism. The Crusades. The conflict between the Pope and the Emperor. If we go back to the rise of Hildebrand, this period begins in 1049. 3. The decline of mediaeval Catholicism and preparation for modern Christianity, from Boniface VIII. to the Reformation, A.D. 1294–1517. The papal exile and schism; the reformatory councils; the decay of scholasticism; the growth of mysticism; the revival of letters, and the art of printing; the discovery of America; forerunners of Protestantism; the dawn of the Reformation. These three periods are related to each other as the wild youth, the ripe manhood, and the declining old age. But the gradual dissolution of mediaevalism was only the preparation for a new life, a destruction looking to a reconstruction. The three periods may be treated separately, or as a continuous whole. Both methods have their advantages: the first for a minute study; the second for a connected survey of the great movements. According to our division laid down in the introduction to the first volume, the three periods of the middle ages are the fourth, fifth and sixth periods of the general history of Christianity. FOURTH PERIOD –––––––––– THE CHURCH AMONG THE BARBARIANS FROM GREGORY I. TO GREGORY VII. A.D. 590 to 1049. ––––––––––

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  across the North Sea to that little kingdom which was to become the chief bulwark of Protestantism. In vain did Leo X. set himself against the free circulation of literature.1349 The Greek edition of the New Testament and the printing-press,—that invention which cleaves all the centuries in two and yet binds all the centuries together—were the two chief providential instruments made ready for Martin Luther. But he had to find them. They did not make him a reformer, the leader of the new age. Erasmus, whom Janssen mercilessly condemns, remained a moralizer. He lacked both the passion and the heroism of the religious reformer. The religious reformer must be touched from above. Reuchlin, Erasmus and Gutenberg prepared the outward form of the Greek and Hebrew Bible. Luther discovered its contents, and made them known. Such were the complex forces at work in the closing century of the Middle Ages. The absolute jurisdiction of the papacy was solemnly reaffirmed. The hierarchy virtually constituted the Church. Religious dissent was met with compulsion and force, not by persuasion and instruction. Coercion was substituted for individual consent. Popular piety remained bound in the old forms and was strong. But there were sounds of refreshing rills, flowing from the fresh fountain of the water of life, running at the side of the old ceremonials, especially in the North. The Revival of Letters aroused the intellect to a sense of its sovereign rights. The movement of thought was greatly accelerated by the printed page. The development of trade communicated unrest. But the lives of the popes, as we look back upon the age, forbade the expectation of any relief from Rome. The Reformatory councils had contented themselves with attempts to reform the administration of the Church. Nevertheless, though men did not see it, driftwood as from a new theological continent was drifting about and there were prophetic voices though the princes of the Church listened not to them. What was needed was not government, was not regulations but regeneration. This the hierarchy could not give, but only God alone.1350 The facts, set forth in this volume, leave no room for the contention of the recent class of historians in the Roman Church,—Janssen, Denifle, Pastor, Nicolas, Paulus, Dr. Gasquet—who have devoted themselves to the task of proving that an orderly reform-movement was going on when the Reformation broke out. That movement, they represent as an unspeakable calamity for civilization, an apostasy from Christianity, an insurrection against divinely constituted authority. It violently checked the alleged current of progress and popes, down to Pius IX. and Leo XIII., have anathematized Protestantism as a poisonous pestilence and the mother of all modem evils in Church and state.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  After the Babylonian exile, Jeconiah became the father of Salathiel, Salathiel of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel of Abioud, Abioud of Eliakim, Eliakim of Azor, Azor of Sadok, Sadok of Achim, Achim of Elioud, Elioud of Eleazar, Eleazar of Matthan, Matthan of Jacob, and Jacob of Joseph the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus, who is called “Messiah.” So all the generations from Abraham to David add up to fourteen; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; and from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations. (1:1–17) To get the point, we have to understand one thing in particular. To put it simply, most Jews of Jesus’s day did not believe that the exile was really, properly over. Yes, they’d come back from Babylon—well, some of them, anyway. Yes, they’d rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. But pagan foreigners were still ruling over them. They were still slaves even in their own land, as Ezra and Nehemiah complain: “Here we are, slaves to this day—slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts” (Neh. 9:36). The great promises of Isaiah and Ezekiel hadn’t yet come true. All this is summed up graphically in a vital passage in Daniel 9, normally assumed to have been written in the early second century BC, in which Daniel in exile in Babylon asks God whether it isn’t time now for Jeremiah’s prophecy to be fulfilled, the prophecy that the Babylonian exile would last for seventy years. Back comes the answer: not seventy years, but seventy weeks of years, in other words, seventy times seven years: In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of YHWH to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes….

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  presides; in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and suffering; in the faith, the brotherly love, the beneficence, and the triumphant death of its confessors. To this internal moral and spiritual testimony were added the powerful outward proof of its divine origin in the prophecies and types of the Old Testament, so strikingly fulfilled in the New; and finally, the testimony of the miracles, which, according to the express statements of Quadratus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and others, continued in this period to accompany the preaching of missionaries from time to time, for the conversion of the heathen. Particularly favorable outward circumstances were the extent, order, and unity of the Roman empire, and the prevalence of the Greek language and culture. In addition to these positive causes, Christianity had a powerful negative advantage in the hopeless condition of the Jewish and heathen world. Since the fearful judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism wandered restless and accursed, without national existence. Heathenism outwardly held sway, but was inwardly rotten and in process of inevitable decay. The popular religion and public morality were undermined by a sceptical and materialistic philosophy; Grecian science and art had lost their creative energy; the Roman empire rested only on the power of the sword and of temporal interests; the moral bonds of society were sundered; unbounded avarice and vice of every kind, even by the confession of a Seneca and a Tacitus, reigned in Rome and in the provinces, from the throne to the hovel. Virtuous emperors, like Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were the exception, not the rule, and could not prevent the progress of moral decay. Nothing, that classic antiquity in its fairest days had produced, could heal the fatal wounds of the age, or even give transient relief. The only star of hope in the gathering night was the young, the fresh, the dauntless religion of Jesus, fearless of death, strong in faith, glowing with love, and destined to commend itself more and more to all reflecting minds as the only living religion of the present and the future. While the world was continually agitated by wars, and revolutions, and public calamities, while systems of philosophy, and dynasties were rising and passing away, the new religion, in spite of fearful opposition from without and danger from within, was silently and steadily progressing with the irresistible force of truth, and worked itself gradually into the very bone and blood of the race. "Christ appeared," says the great Augustin, "to the men of the decrepit, decaying world, that while all around them was withering away, they might through Him receive new, youthful life." Notes. Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth chapter, traces the rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman empire to five causes: the zeal of the early Christians, the belief in future rewards and punishment, the power of miracles, the austere (pure) morals of the Christian, and the compact church organization.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I’d owned enough New Age tchotchkes in my lifetime to know that within a few days of purchase they just seemed like more crap. But as you were shopping, sifting through the stones and their meanings, there was hope that this was a turning point. It was the velocity of buying something that was the high, the potentiality of it. I could capitalist-believe in magic. In the store was hope, and hope was what separated me from the flat expanse of the rest of my life. It was like a line, a gateway that stopped me from being swallowed. I looked at the fliers for all of the different healers. Some did numerology, others Tarot, others Reiki and chakra cleansing. I could have sat there all day and had my fortune told until someone predicted what I wanted to hear—that I was getting back together with Jamie, that he was coming back to me—so I quickly pulled away. I looked at the crystals. I would have loved to buy rose quartz, giant hunks of it, hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth. I wanted to make a circle around me; do some ritual shit with rose petals; burn vanilla, gardenia, and strawberry incense to attract love. Instead I bought a sparkly raw chunk of amethyst in the palest purple, which was said to bring peace and stability. There was also a table where magic candles were sold: red for love and passion, green for money. I bypassed the love candle and selected an egg-colored one for clearing and needed change. Maybe I could just burn the past year away. —At home I ate pad thai and drank white wine, fed Dominic, and gave him his medicine. I’d known nothing about dogs before him—how or where to pet them—but he was patient with me, and I’d soon discovered his favorite places to be touched. His entire head was brown with the exception of two white patches: one a white stripe down the center of his forehead, which I stroked gently with one finger and called his angel mark, and the other a diamond shape on the back of his neck, an arrow pointing as if to say, Scratch me here. This was the area that he could not reach with his paws, and, when scratched, would lull him right to sleep. We would play a game where he gazed at me lovingly, trying to keep his brown eyes open, his lids growing heavy, then popping open, then heavier and heavier until they were sealed shut: just two stitches lined with little lashes. When he rolled over onto his back and showed me his white underside, it meant that it was time for a belly rub. Sometimes I would get crazy like I was waxing a car, Dominic pawing joyfully at the air, fur flying, tongue out, and panting. Other times I would gently stroke and kiss the softness there, relishing his scent, which was somehow reminiscent of a warm roast chicken.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I look tanned, happy, relaxed, like I’m always up for a big laugh and a good time. My curly hair, a bit wild, indicates that I’m not buttoned-up or afraid to look like the most natural version of myself. My strapless clothing shows that I’m comfortable with my body. Those things are true about me, I’m not purporting to be someone I’m not. This may be a superficial and one-sided presentation of myself, but it’s not false advertising. I’m showing my teeth – white enough and straight enough; I’m showing my body – petite, strong and healthy; I’m showing my nails – manicured and brightly colored. In other words, there shouldn’t be any surprises when a man meets me in person, nothing that I’m squirreling away and hoping he won’t notice when I’m alive in front of him. And if Michael does see my profile then it means he’s on Tinder too. I do the thing that I’ve been doing over and over again for the past few months: I take a leap of faith. I click the button to make my profile public for anyone on Tinder to see. A few hours later, lying in bed with Georgia pressing her warm feet against me as she sleeps, I stare at my phone and wonder how I survived the monotony of my life pre-Tinder. Tinder contains a vast sea of men, so many of them with such odd profile pictures that when I find the occasional one that doesn’t reek of inappropriateness, I click the heart button just to show solidarity, like hey, my normal sees your normal and thinks we might be able to make some normal magic together. It doesn’t matter if I find the person attractive, I just care that he seems like a person I could know in my current life. If it looks like a mug shot, swipe left – if you can’t smile for this one picture, I worry. Sitting in your car with your seatbelt on, swipe left – come on, live a little! There have to be more creative backdrops for a selfie. Lying in bed shirtless, swipe left, don’t be so obvious. Oh, even better, take a pic of yourself in front of a mirror with nothing but briefs on, swipe, swipe, swipe! All of your photos are ones in which you’re posing with other women, swipe left – that raises suspicion, are you hinting at an open marriage? You’re posing with your kids, swipe left – don’t drag your kids into this sordid place. You’re posing with your dog in every photo, swipe left – I’ve been down this road, I see your dog for the jealous lover she really is. You never part your lips when you smile, swipe left, what are you hiding?

• From How God Became King (2012)

  But the whole point of the gospels is to tell the story of how God became king, on earth as in heaven. They were written to stake the very specific claim toward which the eighteenth-century movements of philosophy and culture, and particularly politics, were reacting with such hostility. Behind the attempts of Reimarus and others to suggest that the “kingdom of God” in the teaching of Jesus referred either to a violent military revolution or to the “end of the world” there lay the determination to make sure that God was kept out of real life. This was not a “result” of fresh research. It was the philosophical and theopolitical assumption that drove the research in the first place. This is, I think, the real problem with post-Enlightenment historical skepticism. It was not simply that it begged leave to doubt all kinds of elements in the gospel stories (the “miracles,” and so forth) as well as the framing dogmas of incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and so on. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher whose rejection of the miraculous still holds sway in many minds, is only one element in the picture. Alongside him are Hobbes, Rousseau, Voltaire, and, not least, Thomas Jefferson—the masterminds not only of a new “climate of opinion,” but a new political agenda. The wedge they drove between faith and public life, between religion and politics, is exactly the same wedge that Reimarus and others drove between (what came to be called) the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. This philosophy was not new. The philosophers in question, of course, liked to present it as such, and the simultaneous advances in science and technology enabled them to suggest that this really was a wholly new era of world history. On the contrary, the mainline philosophy of the Enlightenment was simply one version of the ancient philosophy of Epicurus, who taught that the gods, if they existed at all, were a long way away from the world of humans and did not concern themselves with it. As a result, the world we know grows, changes, and develops under its own steam, as it were from within. Apply this to the scientific study of origins, and you get Darwinian evolution—again, not a new idea, but one that followed logically from the absence of divine control or intervention. Instead of “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” science was now studying the world as though God didn’t exist. Apply it to political science, and you get democracy: society ordering itself according to its own internal wishes and whims, fears and fancies. Instead of the “divine right” of rulers, politics was now ordering the world—at least in France and America—on the strict basis of a separation between church and state.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  You should be proud of yourself for ensnaring me,” I say, laughing, but really I’m not so sure. I know the adage that age is just a number and he certainly looks younger than I would imagine a 62-year-old could look, but still, he’s only three years shy of getting senior citizen benefits. I have envisioned myself with a man my age or younger, so I file this new information away to deal with at a later point when I can figure out why it might concern me. CHAPTER 29Saturday Night, Legs UpMy kids’ pediatrician and I have always been chatty and friendly, but the last time I saw her in the spring, I struggled to keep up my side of our usual banter, tripping over my words and looking morosely out the window. When she was done writing out a prescription for Georgia’s ear infection, she sent her out of the room to give us a minute alone. “What’s going on? Something is off,” she said, watching me closely. I didn’t mince words, quickly spitting out that Michael had had an affair and we had separated, that the older kids wouldn’t talk to him. She sucked in her breath, rolling back in her stool until she could lean against the wall. “I don’t know what to do. I’m so overwhelmed. I don’t think I can take him back even if he wants to come back, which is not certain to me,” I wept. “Laura, I want to tell you something. After my first son was born, my husband and I got divorced. The man I’m married to now is my second husband. I know what you’re going through and I promise you, no matter what happens, you’re going to be OK. Here’s my advice to you: don’t stay for the money, don’t stay for the kids, don’t stay because you’re scared to be alone.” “Those are the only three reasons I can imagine staying. I’m scared of financial instability, I feel horrible about the kids and I’m terrified to be alone,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. “No one can tell you what to do, only you know what is best for you. But staying because you’re afraid not to is not a good reason to stay,” she said. Now, seven months later, sitting in the Mickey Mouse-themed patient room for Georgia’s annual check-up, she again sends her out of the room to give us a chance to catch up. Georgia reaches for the phone I’m holding outstretched to her and rolls her eyes, asking me not to take too long. As soon as Dr B closes the door behind Georgia, she tells me that she is relieved to see that I look much healthier than the last time she saw me, that my color is back and I don’t look painfully thin anymore.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  This is a pivotal moment for me and I hover indecisively over the “purchase ticket” option on the bar’s website as for months I’ve done little aside from force myself out of bed every morning, paste on a tentative smile for my kids and carry on with copious tears and a rage I hadn’t previously known I could even muster up. My daily theme song has been from ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ in which Frosty is learning to walk: “Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking across the floor. Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the door.” I’ve done nothing but walk across the floor for the past five months, but something inside of me has subtly shifted and I am suddenly aware that there is indeed a door, one that I have the power to open, even if just a crack to peek at what’s on the other side. I click the button and quickly enter my credit card details before I can change my mind. I shower, grooming long-neglected parts of my body, and in a burst of optimism douse my sun-kissed skin with fragrant rose body oil that Tina brought me back from Paris (by the way, there’s apparently not a guide available to suggest cheer-up gifts for your girlfriend whose marriage has just imploded, and I both adored and felt for my friends as they plied me with things they thought might help: fancy herbal teas with names like Calm and Serenity and healing bath salts and body scrubs, aromatherapy candles, a delicate gold bracelet that said “You can do this,” a small blue porcelain elephant that had been passed from friend to friend going through hard times, jars of freshly canned tomatoes, a case of my favorite yellow marshmallow Easter Peeps and, of course, the (requisite) vibrator. I unearth a black lace thong dormant at the back of my underwear drawer, pull on a strapless navy blue dress with a summery beaded belt and barely have time to strap on my wooden-heeled clog sandals before I’m flying out the door, hair still dripping, racing to exit before Michael and Georgia arrive home from their bike ride and ask me where I’m going. As I drive down the road, fat raindrops start splattering on the car windows. My heart sinks; I should circle the neighborhood to find Michael and Georgia on their bikes and give them a ride home, but then my escape won’t be clean. In a first for me in my 18 years as a mother, I put myself before my kids, telling myself Georgia will be soaked but fine, and I drive on down the long country road before I lose my nerve. CHAPTER 2Is This Too Much?As I pull onto the side street where the bar is, I see couples streaming down the block.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  See, feminists have made it okay for girls to explore what used to be an exclusively boy world. But true equality won’t come until boys learn to embrace girl stuff as well. So here’s the deal: If you want your boyfriend to treat you with respect, then tell him that you won’t sleep with him until he starts putting barrettes in his hair. And I’m not talking about secret bedroom kinky shit. Make him wear them to work! The next time he buys a pair of shoes, make sure they’re Mary Janes (and don’t forget the white lacy anklets to go with them). Because as soon as he realizes the pure bliss of wearing a frilly, pink, poofy party dress, maybe he’ll finally relax a bit and loosen up that uptight male swagger. And maybe once he lets his guard down, he’ll look around and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him. You may think this is funny, but it’s no joke. “Girl stuff” is dangerous, so let’s use it to our advantage. We truly can change the world! Because if construction workers were man enough to wear skirts and heels, they wouldn’t whistle at women who walk by. And if misogynistic rockers and rappers were man enough to cry while watching tearjerkers, they wouldn’t need to masturbate all over the mic. And if presidents and generals were man enough to wear lip gloss and mascara, they wouldn’t have to prove their penis size by going to war all the time. Because male pride is not really about pride. It’s about fear—the fear of being seen as feminine. And that’s why “girl stuff” is so dangerous. And as long as most men remain deathly afraid of it, they’ll continue to take it out on the rest of us. 19 Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism I REMEMBER BACK IN COLLEGE—when I was admittedly rather naive with regard to gender politics—someone asked a friend of mine whether she considered herself a feminist. I was surprised to hear her answer “No.” After all, she certainly seemed like a feminist to me. She was independent, intelligent, career-minded, pro-women’s reproductive rights. She regularly stood up for herself and was keenly aware of the disparity between how certain professors treated her and how they treated her male counterparts. When she was asked why she didn’t identify as a feminist, her reply was, “I like being a girl.” She went on to explain that she enjoyed, and even felt empowered by, being feminine.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  If you belong to Jesus the Messiah, if his Spirit dwells in you, if you are a worshipper of the one true God, maker of heaven and earth—then however you may feel at the moment, whether you are sick or healthy, handsome or jaded, you are simply a shadow of your future self. God intends to transform the “you” you are at the moment into a being—a full, glorious, physical being —who will be much more truly “you” than you’ve ever been before. Sin, by distorting and downgrading our specific God-given capacities and vocations, makes us more and more alike in our degradation. Jesus makes us more and more alive in our uniqueness, and the resurrection will complete that in a great act of new creation. Thomas à Kempis put it like this in his great hymn “Light’s Abode, Celestial Salem” (translated here by J. M. Neale): O how glorious and resplendent, Fragile body, shalt thou be; When endued with so much beauty, Full of health, and strong, and free; Full of vigor, full of pleasure That shall last eternally. And Jesus will do this, declares Paul (Phil. 3:20–21), by the power that enables him to submit everything to himself. Our resurrection, in other words, like the whole new creation, will come about because Jesus is king and Lord. Once you get the kingdom back in its place, everything else—Trinity, incarnation, atonement, resurrection itself—all gain in meaning. They stop trying to do jobs they were not supposed to do and can play the parts they were originally given. Conclusion: How to Read the Gospels My case throughout this book, then, is that we have all misunderstood the gospels. We have either followed the apparent implication of the great creeds and allowed ourselves to tell a pseudo-Christian story from which the story of Israel, on the one hand, and the story of God’s kingdom, on the other, have been quietly removed. Or we have formulated a concept of the kingdom that did in fact grasp God’s passion to put the world to rights, but we were then unable to integrate that with the incarnation and death of God’s own son. And to correct this misunderstanding it is not enough, not nearly enough, to affirm airily that we believe in the “canon” (many say that who, alas, continue to assume that the canon merely supports the “orthodoxy” they already know), still less that we are supporting something called “Nicene Christianity” and determining to read the Bible in that light.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Yet now even really nice women with hairpins often found their less orthodox sisters quite useful. It would be: ‘Miss Smith, do just start up my motor—the engine’s so cold I can’t get the thing going;’ or: ‘Miss Oliphant, do glance through these accounts, I’ve got such a rotten bad head for figures;’ or: ‘Miss Tring, may I borrow your British Warm? The office is simply arctic this morning!’ Not that those purely feminine women were less worthy of praise, perhaps they were more so, giving as they did of their best without stint—for they had no stigma to live down in the war, no need to defend their right to respect. They rallied to the call of their country superbly, and may it not be forgotten by England. But the others—since they too gave of their best, may they also not be forgotten. They might look a bit odd, indeed some of them did, and yet in the streets they were seldom stared at, though they strode a little, perhaps from shyness, or perhaps from a slightly self-conscious desire to show off, which is often the same thing as shyness. They were part of the universal convulsion and were being accepted as such, on their merits. And although their Sam Browne belts remained swordless, their hats and their caps without regimental badges, a battalion was formed in those terrible years that would never again be completely disbanded. War and death had given them a right to life, and life tasted sweet, very sweet to their palates. Later on would come bitterness, disillusion, but never again would such women submit to being driven back to their holes and corners. They had found themselves—thus the whirligig of war brings in its abrupt revenges. 5Time passed; the first year of hostilities became the second while Stephen still hoped, though no nearer to her ambition. Try as she might she could not get to the front; no work at the actual front seemed to be forthcoming for women. Brockett wrote wonderfully cheerful letters. In every letter was a neat little list telling Stephen what he wished her to send him; but the sweets he loved were getting quite scarce, they were no longer always so easy to come by. And now he was asking for Houbigant soap to be included in his tuck-box. ‘Don’t let it get near the coffee fondants or it may make them taste like it smells,’ he cautioned, ‘and do try to send me two bottles of hair-wash, “Eau Athénienne,” I used to buy it at Truefitt’s.’ He was on a perfectly damnable front, they had sent him to Mesopotamia.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  All these flashbacks are important. They would have been much more readily apparent to Jesus’s first followers and to Matthew’s first readers than they are to us in the de-Judaized state of our secularized imagination. But far more important than flashbacks, than the picking up of detached themes and hints from long ago, is the towering sense of a single story now at last reaching its conclusion. For much of that time, as we said a moment ago, the story looked as if it was lost, many a mile from its destination, with night falling and enemies closing in. Suddenly, out of the blue, we discover that something is happening that will turn all that around. It isn’t (we need to be very clear at this point) that things have not been as bad as we’d thought. In fact, they’ve been worse. But the new event that is now happening is precisely an event we might call rescue. A fresh initiative. It hasn’t come from within the story as it was—though, strangely, those with eyes to see will recognize that it is where the story ought to have gone all along. That’s part of the complex task the gospel writers are accomplishing: describing something as both the fulfillment of the vocation of Israel and divine judgment on the mess and the muddle that Israel’s story had become. Matthew, then, is telling his story in such a way as to say: “This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for—even though we would never have thought it would be like this! This is where the single story of Abraham’s family, of David’s offspring, of the restoration from exile was going all along. We didn’t think it would look like this. But now that it’s happened, we can see that this is where it was supposed to be heading all along.” It didn’t just emerge from the story the way it was. The story was indeed stalled, stagnant, running out of hope. It required a fresh act of divine mercy to do what was needed. As later preachers would say about individual sinners, the only thing that Israel contributed to the story of Jesus that Matthew is telling was the particular set of muddle and rebellion from which God was now coming to free it.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  As later preachers would say about individual sinners, the only thing that Israel contributed to the story of Jesus that Matthew is telling was the particular set of muddle and rebellion from which God was now coming to free it. I hope it is clear from this that, when we turn up this first speaker, the music is telling us much more than simply that all four gospels refer to the Old Testament and present Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy. To say that sort of thing is to have the speaker turned up just far enough so that you can tell something is going on, but not far enough to be able to understand what it is. This is a point of fundamental importance for the whole New Testament and indeed the whole early Christian movement. The gospel writers saw the events concerning Jesus, particularly his kingdom-inaugurating life, death, and resurrection, not just as isolated events to which remote prophets might have distantly pointed. They saw those events as bringing the long story of Israel to its proper goal, even though that long story had apparently become lost, stuck, and all but forgotten. But, you may say, what’s the point of telling the story of Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel? What relevance has that got to the rest of the human race and to the wider world? Here we touch on another point of foundational importance for the whole of early Christian thought and life. Understand this point, and you will understand almost everything. In Israel’s scriptures, the reason Israel’s story matters is that the creator of the world has chosen and called Israel to be the people through whom he will redeem the world. The call of Abraham is the answer to the sin of Adam. * Israel’s story is thus the microcosm and beating heart of the world’s story, but also its ultimate saving energy. What God does for Israel is what God is doing in relation to the whole world. That is what it meant to be Israel, to be the people who, for better and worse, carried the destiny of the world on their shoulders. Grasp that, and you have a pathway into the heart of the New Testament. Mark: Jesus and the Breaking In of God’s New World The evangelists, each in his own way, tell the story of Jesus as the proper climax to Israel’s story. This is clear right from the start. We have already glanced at Matthew. Mark indicates that the arrival and baptism of Jesus are the moments at which the prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi of the ultimate redemption, of God’s returning to rescue his people, were at last coming true: Isaiah the prophet put it like this (“Look! I am sending my messenger ahead of me; he will clear the way for you!”): “A shout goes up in the desert: Make way for the Lord!

• From How God Became King (2012)

  That was the verdict of Ezekiel, and it is echoed by other writers of the period. But that could not be the end of the story. God had promised to come back. He had promised one final great Passover. One day, when he returned, his people would be free forever. And John, more clearly than the others, insists from the start that this promise has been made good in Jesus. The Word became flesh and kai eskenosen en hemin, “set up among us his skene, ” his “tent” (it’s the word from which we get “scene”; a theatrical backdrop is a kind of “tent” in which the action takes place). In case there was any doubt, the Greek word skene is (coincidentally?) a close echo of the Hebrew shakan, which means “dwell” or “abide”; when we read of people “abiding” with Jesus or his “abiding” with them later in John, we should almost certainly catch this echo. In particular, in postbiblical Jewish writing the idea of the presence of God in the Temple was given the name Shekinah, the “tabernacling, abiding divine presence,” the personal presence of the glory of God. So, when John continues by saying, “We gazed upon his glory, glory like that of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (1:14), we should get the point loud and clear. All this means that we should be able to read John with more sensitivity to the nature of his “high Christology.” Obviously he thinks Jesus was and is fully divine (as well as fully human, but he doesn’t need to make that point in the same way). But this doesn’t mean he is simply saying “Jesus is God” in the way of some rationalist apologists. John’s “high Christology” remains very, very Jewish, very much rooted in Israel’s scriptures. His chosen vehicle for his matchless opening statement, the logos, draws not so much on Platonic or Stoic ideas as on the living Word of the Old Testament, as, for instance, in Isaiah 55, where the word goes out like rain or snow and accomplishes God’s work (55:10–11). This work, God’s great act of rescue, rooted in the accomplishment of the “ servant of the L ORD ” in chapter 53 and the renewal of the covenant in 54, brings about the new creation in 55, with the thorns and thistles of Genesis 3 and Isaiah 5 replaced by wonderful trees and shrubs (55:12–13).

• From How God Became King (2012)

  and his throne endure before me like the sun. It shall be established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies.” But now you have spurned and rejected him; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust. You have broken through all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice…. How long, O YHWH? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire?… Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servant is taunted; how I bear in my bosom the insults of the peoples, with which your enemies taunt, O YHWH, with which they taunted the footsteps of your anointed. (89:1–4, 19–29, 36–42, 46–51) But the hope persists, and psalm after psalm brings it to expression. The gods of the nations are but idols, but Israel’s God made the heavens. God reigns over the nations, God sits on his holy seat; the princes of the people gather as the people of the God of Abraham, who has subdued peoples and nations. God has established his city, and the powers of wicked pagans will not prevail against it. Again and again it comes, shaping the hearts and imaginations of God’s people even in the many centuries when these songs of praise and triumph bore no relation to the sociopolitical reality in which they were living. This is the world in which we are to hear what the gospels are trying to tell us about the story of Jesus seen as the focal point of the story of God and Caesar. God and Caesar in the Gospels But, you say, surely Caesar is only mentioned once in the gospels, and there Jesus says that there’s a clear division between God and Caesar, a split of church and state, so that never the twain shall meet. Well, not so fast. We’ll get to that. It sounds suspiciously modern. Did Jesus really anticipate post-Enlightenment Western ideology so exactly? And the objection is forgetting, in any case, the wonderful passage in John 18–19 (to which also we shall return), in which Jesus, representing God’s kingdom, confronts Pilate, representing Caesar’s. They go at it together, arguing about kingdom, truth, and power until Pilate proves Jesus’s point by having him executed with the words “King of the Jews” above his head. And once we recognize that confrontation for what it is—part of the very climax of John’s astonishing gospel—there is more. Much more.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  While I was speaking, and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before YHWH my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God—while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He came and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved. So consider the word and understand the vision: Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.” (9:1–3, 20–24) That sounds like a devastatingly depressing answer, and in a way it is. That’s a long time to wait. But the idea of “seventy times seven” has a particular ring to it, more obvious to an ancient Jew than to us today. Every seven days, they had a sabbath. Every seven years, they had a sabbatical year. And every seven-times-seven years, they had—or at least they were supposed to have had, according to Leviticus—a jubilee. This was when slaves were freed, when land sold off by the family was restored to its original owner, when things got put back as they should be. The jubilee is a fascinating social innovation within the legislation of ancient Israel, a sign that relentless buying and selling of land, goods, and even people won’t be the last word. But seventy times seven? That sounds like a jubilee of jubilees! So, though four hundred and ninety years—nearly half a millennium—is indeed a long time, the point is this: when the time finally arrives, it will be the greatest “redemption” of all. This will be the time of real, utter, and lasting freedom. That is the hope that sustained the Israelites in the long years of the centuries before the time of Jesus. It is normally assumed that the book of Daniel reached its final form during the first half of the second century BC, around the time of the Maccabean crisis, when Judas Maccabeus and his family led a successful resistance against the Syrian invasion. And so, with Daniel 9 in mind, learned scribes were calculating and recalculating, asking when the seventy sevens would be fulfilled. When will the real return from exile happen?

• From How God Became King (2012)

  And—not least—about how we then might order our life and work in accordance with them. The problem of forgetting what the gospels are about is not confined to one segment of the church. Different branches—Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, charismatic, evangelical, liberal, social-gospel, and the many segments of church life that bear two or more of these rather misleading labels at the same time—come at things from different angles. Naturally. But it is my belief that all of them, over many centuries now, have backed off from facing the full challenge of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It would be fascinating to chart the ways in which different parts of the church have read (and, in my view, misread) the gospels. But that would require a different sort of book and is in any case way beyond my competence. Instead, I want to come at the question from the angle of the parts of the church I know best. After nearly twenty years in senior ministerial roles in the Church of England, seven of them as Bishop of Durham, and with fairly wide experience of traditions very different from my own, I think what I have to say reflects not a narrow or idiosyncratic viewpoint, but one at which many Christians from many traditions will nod with recognition. The question, then, is not only: Can we learn to read the gospels better, more in tune with what their original writers intended? It is also: Can we discover, by doing this, a new vision for God’s mission in the world, in and through Jesus, and then—now!—in and through his followers? And, in doing so, can we grow closer together in mission and life, in faith and hope, and even in love? Might a fresh reading of the gospels, in other words, clear the way for renewed efforts in mission and unity? Is that what it would look like if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven? That, after all, is the story all four gospels tell. I am aware, of course, that there are other documents that have been called “gospels,” and I shall say something about them in passing. But I am here dealing with the four that were recognized, from very early on, as part of the church’s “rule of life,” that is, part of the “canon”: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the story that the four evangelists tell is the story, as in my title, of “how God became king.” This, I discover, comes as a surprise to most people, and an unwelcome shock to some. It appears, as we say today, counterintuitive; that is, the claim that God has become king doesn’t seem to square with the world as we know it. “If God is really king, why is there still cancer?