Shame

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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Half a dozen hands waved and pointed to where the man leaned over the footlights, his whiskers fluttering in the heat.He, now, had started banging on the stage with the heel of his hand. I suppressed an urge to dance up to him and stamp upon his wrist (for, apart from anything else, I thought he was quite capable of seizing my ankle and dragging me into the stalls.) Instead, I took my cue from Kitty. She had hold of my arm, and had pressed it, but her brow was smooth and untroubled. At any moment, I thought, she would slow the song, launch into the man, or call for the door-men to come and remove him.But they, at last, had spotted him, and had begun their advance. He, all unknowing, ranted drunkenly on.‘Call that a song?’ he shouted. ‘Call that a song? I want my shilling back! You hear me? I want my bleeding shilling back!’‘You want your bleeding arse kicked, is what you want!’ answered someone from the pit. Then someone else, a woman, yelled, ‘Stop your row, can’t you? We can’t hear the girls for all your racket.’The man gave a sneer; then he hawked, and spat. ‘Girls?’ he cried. ‘Girls? You call them girls? Why, they’re nothing but a couple of - a couple of toms!’He put the whole force of his voice into it - the word that Kitty had once whispered to me, flinching and shuddering as she said it! It sounded louder at that moment than the blast of a cornet - seemed to bounce from one wall of the hall to another, like a bullet from a sharp-shooter’s act gone wrong.Toms!At the sound of it, the audience gave a great collective flinch. There was a sudden hush; the shouts became mumbles, the shrieks all tailed away. Through the shaft of limelight I saw their faces - a thousand faces, self-conscious and appalled.Even so, the awkwardness might have lasted no longer than a moment; they might have forgotten it at once, and grown noisy and gay again - but for what happened, simultaneous with their silencing, upon the stage.For Kitty had stiffened; and then she had stumbled. We had been dancing with our arms linked. Now her mouth flew open. Now it shut. Now it trembled. Her voice - her lovely, shining, soaring voice - faltered and died. I had never known it happen before. I had seen her sail, quite at her ease, through seas of indifference, squalls of heckling. Now, upon that single, dreadful, drunken cry, she had foundered.I, of course, should have sung all the louder, swept her across the stage, jollied the audience along; but I, of course, was only her shadow. Her sudden silence stopped my throat, and stunned me into immobility, too.

• From Bold Move

  But then he would be late for dinner with his family, causing another argument with his wife and disappointing his children. In these moments he was guided by his emotions. He put work first not because he consciously wanted to, but because he felt it was the only way to manage his discomfort in the moment, and this led to his divorce. I often struggle with emotion-driven behaviors myself. As I shared with you, I have tended to prioritize time with Diego, which is lovely, but honestly I do it based on how it makes me feel in that moment: his sweet eyes, smiles, kisses, and hugs every morning make me feel so loved that I choose to spend time with him, even though I know that taking some of that time to go to the gym would be better for me in the long run. But I have to confess, it is challenging. I often find myself falling prey to my emotions in that moment. Then I wind up upset with myself later in the day when my back hurts or my pants don’t fit. At such moments my brain scolds me: Hypocrite! Whatever happened to practicing what you preach? In these moments, Ricardo and I are acting based on how we feel, not what we value. And that is why emotion-driven behaviors are problematic when it comes to living a life in line with our values: these behaviors rob us of the opportunity to move toward what matters most to us. This is why I often refer to emotion-driven behavior as the fire extinguisher approach. Sure, we might be successful in putting out the closest fire, but we might also miss the broader opportunity to save what matters most. Are All Emotions Bad?Absolutely not! Our emotions have important functions. If you’ve seen the popular Pixar film Inside Out , you probably already know what I’m talking about. You can’t have a limited set of emotions and still live a rich and fulfilling life. Living a human existence means being open to all our emotions. Moreover, emotions contain information about our environment that helps us keep safe from harm. Out in the wilderness, if we are face-to-face with a lion, our fear propels us to get the heck out of there. At home, the disgust you feel when sniff-testing the milk in your fridge protects you from drinking rancid milk and getting a horrible stomachache. Emotions don’t just benefit us; they can help others too. The emotional expression of others also contains details about our environment that help us make our next move.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Meditation was only the first spiritual exercise of the day. Four times daily we chanted our version of the divine office in choir. Twice a day, for fifteen minutes, we examined our conscience, according to Ignatius’s five-point plan: this involved marking off one’s faults and achievements in a little book and counting the number of times we had failed to perform the special task for the week (in Ignatian terminology this was called the “particular examen”). There was half an hour’s spiritual reading, a community exercise during which one of us read aloud and the rest continued our everlasting needlework; half an hour’s silent adoration in the chapel in the early evening; and the private recitation of the rosary. Yet again, I flunked. Throughout my seven years, I hugged to myself the shameful secret that unlike the other sisters, I could not pray—and, we were told, without prayer our religious lives were a complete sham. For several hours a day on every single day of the year, I had to confront and experience my abject failure. In other ways my mind was capable and even gifted, but it seemed allergic to God. This disgrace festered corrosively at the very heart of my life and spilled over into everything, poisoning each activity. How could I possibly be a nun if, when it came right down to it, I seemed completely uninterested in God and God appeared quite indifferent to me? I don’t know quite what I thought should be happening. Certainly I didn’t expect visions and voices. These, we were told, were only for the greatest saints and could be delusions, sent by the devil to make us proud. But all the books that I read about prayer spoke about moments of consolation that punctuated the inevitable periods of dryness. Periodically God would comfort the soul, make it feel that he was near, and enable it to experience the warmth of his presence and love. God would, as it were, woo the soul, offering this periodic breakthrough as a carrot, until the soul outgrew this need and could progress to the next stage of its journey. Gradually the soul would be drawn into the higher states of prayer, into further reaches of silence, and into a mysterious state that lay beyond the reach of thoughts and feeling.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  When I wrote Beginning the World, I did try to chronicle some of my early sorties into the world of love. Writing about these relationships was a lowering experience for me, and the result must have been even more demoralizing for my readers. I see no reason to dwell on these episodes here, because none of them developed into anything significant. Like my failed thesis, they were doors slammed in my face, precluding me from a certain way of life and forcing me into another direction. Just as I was prevented from becoming an academic, so too I have never been able to achieve a normal domestic existence, and this, like my epilepsy, has also ensured that I have remained an outsider in a society in which coupledom is the norm. Nevertheless, I do speculate on the reasons for my lamentable failure with men. It is odd to be so inept at something that most people appear to manage naturally. I have always been reluctant to blame the convent for this since I am the exception rather than the rule: most former nuns seem to find partners quite quickly after leaving the religious life. Even Rebecca, who became so ill in the convent, is now happily married. But we all respond to things in different ways, and it may be that a touch of frost entered my soul during those years. The constant and abrasive rebuffs, which we all experienced as a matter of course during the novitiate, may have made me chronically unconfident of my ability to inspire love. The distrust of my wretched “sensitivity,” which was so carefully cultivated by some of my superiors, and my consequent habit of repressing strong feeling may have left me emotionally impaired. One of the purposes of the initiation rites of traditional societies is to confirm adolescents in their sexuality. It may be that my initiation into the religious life, which virtually ignored gender issues, transformed me into an androgynous anchorite rather than a virginal woman. Or there may be a simpler reaction against those years. Men of my age tend to be big on control, and I have found that when I have let a man into my bed, I have suddenly found my life invaded by a minidictator, who has to have his own way in the smallest matters. My last partner, for example, who had seldom composed anything longer than a letter, used to give me minute but peremptory directions about how I should go about researching and writing my own books; and after the convent, I cannot tolerate this type of supervision and restraint.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I hated myself for saying it - but thought, too, How Kitty will laugh at this, when I tell her!I had forgotten what early hours they all kept. The cousins left at ten; at half-past everybody else started yawning. Davy saw Rhoda home, and Alice bade the rest of us good-night. Father rose and stretched, then came to me and put his arm about my neck. ‘It’s been a treat for us, Nance, to have you home again - and you grown into such a beauty!’Then Mother smiled at me - the first real smile that I had seen upon her face that day; and I knew then how really glad I was to be at home, amongst them all.But the gladness didn’t last long. In a few minutes more I said my own good-nights, and found myself alone, at last, with Alice, in our - her - room. She was in bed, but the lamp was still high, and her eyes were open. I did not undress, but stood with my back to the door, quite still, until she looked at me.‘I’m sorry about the hat,’ she said.‘It doesn’t matter.’ I stepped to the chair by the fireplace, and began to unbutton my boots.‘You shouldn’t have spent so much,’ she went on.I pulled a face: ‘I wish I hadn’t.’ I stepped out of the shoes, kicked them to one side, and started on the hooks of my dress. She had closed her eyes, and seemed disinclined to say anything else. I slowed my hand, and looked at her.‘Your letter,’ I said, ‘was horrible.’‘I don’t want to talk about any of that,’ she answered quickly, turning away. ‘I told you what I think. I haven’t changed.’‘Neither have I.’ I tugged harder at the hooks and stepped free of the dress, then slung it over the back of the chair. I felt peevish and not at all tired. I went to one of my bags and got out a cigarette, and when I struck the match to light it Alice raised her head. I shrugged: ‘Another nasty little habit Kitty taught me.’ I sounded just like some hard-faced bitch of a ballet-girl.I took off the rest of my clothes, then pulled my night-gown over my head - then remembered my hair. I could not sleep with the plait still fastened to me. I glanced towards Alice again - she had paled at my words, but still watched - then pulled at the hairpins until the chignon came loose. From the corner of my eye I saw her mouth fall open.

• From Bold Move

  It doesn’t! And if you were my client, I would completely agree. Yet, in my brain, it makes sense, even though it hurts. Over time my brain, the product of good old-fashioned human evolution, developed an operating system that sorted all kinds of information into the category of “I am not enough” (see figure 3 ). In academia, having a paper accepted in a top journal is challenging and often a sign that the authors worked hard, have good science, and likely are smart. Being smart does not fit my puzzle piece, which says that I am not enough. So, for the pieces of my puzzle to fit together, I had to twist the actual information that I had written the paper, and conclude that it was only accepted because other, smart people were involved. By doing that, I am able to keep my old belief of not being enough alive. Similarly, Sara told herself that she was only asked on a date because they did not know her. After all, her brain concluded, unlovable people don’t go on a date. So, to make her own puzzle pieces match, she dismissed anything good about her (see figure 4 ). Janet’s puzzle pieces only fit after she was able to dismiss her co-worker’s compliment. After all, her brain said, worthless people are not efficient (see figure 5 ). We were all avoiding the discomfort of dissonance by confirming what we knew to be true (aka, we avoided the hassle of reworking the entire way we viewed ourselves and the world). Figure 3: A Look at Dr. Luana’s Brain [image file=Image00011.jpg] Figure 4: A Look at Sara’s Brain [image file=Image00012.jpg] Figure 5: A Look at Janet’s Brain [image file=Image00013.jpg] Our Brains Have a Tight GripAlbeit counterintuitive, recent research has shown that our tendency to hold on to strongly held beliefs, even in the presence of counterevidence, has an important biological basis.7 Resisting information that contradicts our beliefs is positively correlated with an increased activation of the prefrontal cortex. In other words, the more we resist new information, the more activation we see in the rational part of our brain. Though this might seem contradictory, it actually makes sense: to justify why we are not accepting and incorporating this new information, our brain must become irrationally rational to avoid updating our software and change our minds. In fact, research shows more intelligent people are not less biased,8 but perhaps more so. In the short term, creating a rationale to support a prior belief can help us avoid the discomfort of dissonance, but in the long term—say it with me—it keeps us stuck.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I did not want to appear before the world as pathetic, depressed, and psychologically ill. So I erected a barricade of words and wit around myself, so that nobody could see how needy I really was. Some of my remarks were so scathing that even Jane was surprised. “My God, Karen, I would really hate to incur your enmity!” she exclaimed one day after a particularly biting riposte. This surprised me, as I tended to underestimate the power of my tongue. In the convent I had grown accustomed to extremely abrasive treatment, and I thought that my own retorts were mild in comparison to the rebukes of some of my superiors, which I now reproduced in a secular context. Like many frightened people, I tended to lash out like a wounded animal, and very rarely said anything nice about anybody. Charlotte had also stayed in Oxford, but was not doing graduate work. She had begun to write seriously and now lived in a tiny room in the Iffley Road, and to pay the rent was working as a clerk in the local tax office. There was just enough space for a bed and a desk. When we sat there together, drinking coffee or a bottle of cheap wine, I felt full of admiration. I could not imagine how anybody had the courage to be a writer, but undeterred by her grim surroundings, Charlotte was steadily amassing a pile of typewritten sheets. Yet in some ways Charlotte seemed as ill equipped for the world as I. She too seemed to be imprisoned in her own Shalott. She was in love, and Mike, whom none of us was allowed to meet, dropped in on her sporadically whenever it suited him. Charlotte could never go to visit him or even call him, because she was not permitted to know his address or telephone number. Meanwhile, Mike roamed the countryside in his van, eschewing the trap of security and a regular job. It seemed imperative to his masculinity that he retain the initiative in his dealings with Charlotte. I had scarcely heard of feminism, but I found it quite outrageous that brave, talented Charlotte should live as a virtual prisoner because this useless drifter needed to be “free.” She was reluctant to leave her room in case Mike deigned to drop by while she was out, so she could never come and visit me at the Harts’ and we could never meet in a pub or some more cheerful venue. Whenever Charlotte jumped up at the sound of the communal phone or because a car door slammed in the street below, I vowed that if I ever fell in love, I would never allow myself to be so enslaved.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  When you’re trying to kill yourself, sponge bags are not uppermost in your mind.” I don’t want to make too much of this. When I woke up the next day, and gradually pieced it all together, I felt ashamed and could understand the scarcely veiled contempt of the nurses. When you are caring for people who are mortally ill and struggling desperately to live, it must be almost insupportable to have to deal with people who want to throw it all away. But I did not believe that I had really wanted to die, and as I pondered the events of that night, I became more and more certain that it was not death that I had sought. The pills that I had swallowed were not lethal; I could have downed any number of them without doing myself irreparable damage. And I was almost certain that I was aware of that. This strange act had been another cry for help. What I was unconsciously trying to do that night was to make clear the depths of my desperation. I did not know how to live any longer. And nobody seemed to realize just how frightened I was. Nobody was willing to listen. The trouble is that when people decide that what looks like a suicide attempt is “only” a cry for help, they sometimes conclude that this appeal need not be answered. Indeed, they even decide that it is better not to respond, because the patient must not be encouraged to give way to such neurotic exhibitionism. He or she must learn to express pain simply and directly, without resorting to such outlandish symbolism. But I had tried to explain my fears and bewilderment as clearly as I was able, and no aid was forthcoming. Quite simply, I wanted help, and I didn’t feel that I was getting it. That was probably what lay behind this unconsciously performed gesture. As I lay in bed that morning, amidst the confusion and the fear—what might I do next in this amnesiac state?—I was also aware of a definite sense of relief. I was sorry to have caused all this unnecessary bother, but on the other hand I was so weary and needy. I had spent years now fighting with demons, and the struggle had pushed me to an extreme. I felt exhausted, and it was good to have people looking after me, instead of telling me briskly that I was perfectly well and getting along just fine. I knew that this could only be a temporary respite, but it was not altogether unpleasant to give up the struggle for a while. And something in me had been calmed. Instead of the familiar turmoil within, there was a new stillness. I had tried my best, and to no avail. I had expressed my fear and despair, and I could do no more. I had come to the end, had given up hope, and there was a certain peace in that.

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  shares it. Make a toast? Are you kidding? I haven’t had time to prepare! Like the quest for certainty, the quest for perfection can include overplanning and list making. It can mean spending too much time on clothing and grooming, as well as decorating and cleaning. If you’ve got the biggest screen, the coolest kitchen, and the latest smartphone, who can criticize? As long as everything is “just right,” you won’t have to feel “less than.” Mistakes, of course, are inevitable. So your safety strategies will also include damage control. Mentally review everything you’ve said or done that might disappoint or offend. Justify your actions, first to yourself, then to everybody else. Everything can be explained if you put your mind to it. Once they understand what you’re up against, nobody can blame you. The safety strategies associated with perfectionism all share the same objective: neutralize the perceived threat and the anxiety that comes with it. If you can use these strategies occasionally without maintaining an anxiety cycle, good for you! For the rest of us, they bring only temporary relief. The cycle repeats and the quest for perfection continues. Over-responsible Strategies One of the great truisms in our culture is the assumption that caring for others’ needs is what brings the greatest happiness. But if you are saddled with a responsibility that is straining your resources—a chronically sick or mentally ill relative, for example—you can testify that taking care of others when you cannot take care of yourself can be a joyless burden that burns you out. When you are acting out of obligation or fear of disappointing others, caretaking is a safety strategy. Perhaps your partner has problems that you take on and try to manage, like poor diet, lack of exercise, or substance abuse. Unless he or she is happy and healthy, you can’t be happy and healthy. Are you the essential person in your work environment, someone everyone can depend on? Maybe things fall apart unless you pick up the slack, so you wind up working overtime and filling in whenever someone else is sick. Have you been doing more than your fair share for so long that you’ve become irreplaceable?

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I had tried, I told myself as I turned over and faced the whitewashed brick wall of my cheerful college room. I had not been the best nun in the world, but I had honestly done my best, and my superiors had all tried to help me. But it was just no good. If God did exist, he clearly wanted nothing to do with me, and right now I couldn’t blame him. There was something in me that was proof against religion, closed to the divine. Let it go, I told myself sleepily. Don’t beat yourself up anymore. Just live simply as a secular and give up these inappropriate spiritual ambitions. You’re in the world now. Make friends with it. One day at a time. But soon even that would become impossible. 2. The Devil of the Stairs It began with the smell. It was a sweet but sulfury aroma, reminiscent of bad eggs and giving off an aura of imminent menace. Like any odor, it was also intensely evocative. I recognized it immediately. This was how it always started. In the convent I had several times been assailed by this strange smell, had looked around for a cause and found the world splintering around me. The sunlight, the flickering candles of the altar, and the electric light seemed to oscillate crazily; there would be a moment of pure nausea, and then nothing: a long, long fall into emptiness. These fainting attacks had occurred four or five times, to the intense irritation of my superiors. Once it had happened on the day before Easter, and although afterward I felt reasonably well, Mother Frances had sent me to bed in disgrace and I was forbidden to attend the midnight Vigil. The next day I had to go to Mass at Our Lady of Victories in Kensington High Street, escorted as if under penal guard, and was subjected to a merciless scolding on my return. “Emotional indulgence. Exhibitionism . . . weakness of will”—I knew the list almost by heart. Nuns were not supposed to faint like wilting Victorian ladies; we were meant to be strong women, in control of our lives, exercising an iron constraint over our emotions and bodily functions. Ignatius had wanted his Jesuits to be soldiers of Christ, and we were to cultivate the same virile spirit. Whoever heard of a soldier fainting on the parade ground, crumpling helplessly into a heap as he stood to attention before his commanding officer? And so these blackouts of mine had been greeted with cold disapproval. “You must pull yourself together, Sister,” Mother Frances had concluded, tight lipped.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  They did not feel that Jesus had set them free from the Torah, but had experienced Paul’s vision as a potential deprivation. They were fighting for something very precious that gave meaning and value to their lives. I was also intrigued by the role of study in the religious life of Jews. As a woman, I could not visit the Orthodox yeshivas in Jerusalem where Jews studied Torah and Talmud, but Joel had some film of these noisy, lively sessions, which we were going to use in our series. I watched the men bent over the scrolls, swaying rhythmically in prayer, as they spoke the sacred words aloud and argued passionately with one another. Those gospel scenes suddenly sprang into new life. Those “scribes and Pharisees” excoriated by the evangelists were not simply trying to trap Jesus when they questioned him about the greatest commandment of the Torah, about what Moses would say about paying tribute to the Romans, or about Sabbath observance. They were like these modern Jews in the yeshivas. This argumentation was a form of worship. Certainly the rabbis who compiled the Talmud, some of whom were Jesus’ contemporaries, insisted over and over again that “when two or three study the Torah together, the Divine Presence is in their midst”—words that were strangely echoed in one of Jesus’ own maxims. Study of the Law was not a barren, cerebral exercise. It brought Jews into the presence of God. I might have liked that, I reflected as I watched those films. Studying in that intense way might have suited me a great deal better than Ignatian meditation. It seemed suddenly shameful to me that I had grown up in such ignorance of Judaism, the parent faith of Christianity. The more I read about first-century Judaism, the more intensely Jewish Jesus appeared; and even Saint Paul, who was such a rebel, was really arguing about a New Israel, a fresh way of being Jewish in the modern world of his day. I knew that because of this project, I would never again be able to think about Christianity as a separate religion. I would have to develop a form of double vision. Increasingly, Judaism and Christianity seemed to be one faith tradition which had gone in two different directions. But there was a third factor. Every time we visited the Western Wall, my eyes were drawn upward to the golden Islamic dome on the site formerly occupied by Herod’s temple, which had been destroyed by the Romans. The Dome of the Rock, I was told, was the first major building to be constructed in the Muslim world. Here was another faith that, in its earliest days, had been proud to declare to the world that it was firmly rooted in Judaism. Ahmed and his family took me up to the Dome one Saturday, and I stared at the rock from which the prophet Muhammad was said to have ascended to heaven.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But I was only eighteen years old and this had not been an isolated incident. On the very first day of our postulantship, Mother Albert, our mistress, explained that during the first years of our religious lives we would constantly be told things that seemed incredible or irrational. But they only seemed this way because we were lacking in spiritual maturity. We were learning to inhabit a different element from the rest of the world, to breathe another atmosphere. We were still fresh from “the world” and its taints; we still thought and responded like secular people, but now we had to enter into God’s perspective. Had God not told Isaiah: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, My ways are not your ways, For as high as the heavens are above the earth So are my thoughts above your thoughts, my ways above your ways. So when we were tempted to question the ideas, principles, and customs of the order, we must remember that as yet we were simply not in a position to understand. We were like babies, learning an entirely new language. One day, in the not too distant future, when we had developed spiritually, we would see all these matters quite differently. Until then, we just had to wait patiently, in what the mystics had called the cloud of unknowing, and all would be revealed. So my lying little essay on the Resurrection was part of this larger program. So was the fact that I had once, during my postulantship, spent hours treadling a sewing machine that had no needle. To be fair, this was the result of a misunderstanding, but the underlying principle still applied. I was finding all needlework very difficult indeed, and had just put the good sewing machine in our community room out of action. Furious, Mother Albert told me to practice on an older machine in the adjoining room for half an hour a day. But it had no needle. My mistake was to point this out. Mother Albert had been meaning to replace that needle for some time, but it had completely slipped her mind. She was already angry with me, however, and I was not supposed to answer back in this way. “How dare you!” she said, her voice cold with rage. “Don’t you know that a nun must never correct her superior in such a pert manner. ‘There’s no needle in that machine!’ ” she cried, tossing her head in supposed imitation of my defensive manner. “You will go to that machine next door, Sister, and work on it every day, needle or no needle, until I give you permission to stop.”

• From Bold Move

  At first, when you pause to write out your hot buttons, you might feel a slight increase in discomfort, but only because you are no longer avoiding (remember avoidance works fast!). But I encourage you to try to just observe these feelings instead of immediately being hooked by them. Additionally, by writing your hot buttons out on paper, you are activating your thinking brain, which means your emotional brain won’t have as much sway. While writing you can actually experience the lovely effect of bringing your emotional temperature down. So, feel confident that tracking is a hell of a lot better than remaining stuck in avoidance, and it will absolutely create a path out of your reactive avoidance pattern. After two weeks of tracking his hot buttons, Angad had come up with several different scenarios that caused him so much discomfort that he would engage in reactive avoidance to feel better, but all were also associated with a negative price tag for him (see table below). In addition to social media, Angad learned that any conversations where friends talked at length about their accomplishments would activate his emotional brain and he would want to react to cool off. During such episodes, he found that he would either do something impulsive, such as posting on Instagram, or would begin boasting in conversations, trying to prove that his life was fun and interesting enough to make any sane human sick with envy. At first, these actions might seem harmless, but over time Angad felt like he needed to maintain an “active” social media or else he would be bedridden with feelings of inadequacy. Angad’s Hot Buttons Situation Emotions Intensity Action Avoidance? Friend posted on Instagram about a trip that I missed Regret Yellow Posted pictures of my vacations Yes Was talking to a friend and realized I had nothing interesting to say Annoyance Sadness Yellow Shared a story about a vacation to Spain last year Yes Noticed that my latest Instagram didn’t get many likes Sadness Shame Yellow Edited the caption to make the post more interesting Yes Lost 10 followers on Instagram Fear Red Followed 100 random strangers to try to boost my numbers Yes Angad is stuck because he is avoiding his emotions. Every time his emotional temperature goes up, he does something to fight the discomfort. But it is not the action itself that keeps him stuck; rather, he is stuck because of the reason he is doing the specific action, which is to avoid his own emotions. If Angad were able to feel his emotions, by not reacting fast when they happen, he could develop a new relationship with them. Lessons LearnedAs you saw with Angad, tracking leads to insight and the ability to really catch where, when, and why reactive avoidance is taking over. Here’s how it worked out for our other cast of characters.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Notwithstanding, in how many most petty and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted, and how often we give way, who can recount? How often do we begin as if we were tolerating people telling vain stories, lest we offend the weak; then by degrees we take interest therein! I go not now to the circus to see a dog coursing a hare; but in the field, if passing, that coursing peradventure will distract me even from some weighty thought, and draw me after it: not that I turn aside the body of my beast, yet still incline my mind thither. And unless Thou, having made me see my infirmity didst speedily admonish me either through the sight itself by some contemplation to rise towards Thee, or altogether to despise and pass it by, I dully stand fixed therein. What, when sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them rushing into her nets, oft-times takes my attention? Is the thing different, because they are but small creatures? I go on from them to praise Thee the wonderful Creator and Orderer of all, but this does not first draw my attention. It is one thing to rise quickly, another not to fall. And of such things is my life full; and my one hope is Thy wonderful great mercy. For when our heart becomes the receptacle of such things, and is overcharged with throngs of this abundant vanity, then are our prayers also thereby often interrupted and distracted, and whilst in Thy presence we direct the voice of our heart to Thine ears, this so great concern is broken off by the rushing in of I know not what idle thoughts. Shall we then account this also among things of slight concernment, or shall aught bring us back to hope, save Thy complete mercy, since Thou hast begun to change us? And Thou knowest how far Thou hast already changed me, who first healedst me of the lust of vindicating myself, that so Thou mightest forgive all the rest of my iniquities, and heal all my infirmities, and redeem life from corruption, and crown me with mercy and pity, and satisfy my desire with good things: who didst curb my pride with Thy fear, and tame my neck to Thy yoke. And now I bear it and it is light unto me, because so hast Thou promised, and hast made it; and verily so it was, and I knew it not, when I feared to take it.

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

  Calvin, therefore, called them "Nicodemites," but with this difference, that Nicodemus only buried the body of Christ, after anointing it with precious aromatics; while they bury both his soul and body, his divinity and humanity, and that, too, without honor. Nicodemus interred Christ when dead, but the Nicodemites thrust him into the earth after he has risen. Nicodemus displayed a hundred times more courage at the death of Christ than all the Nicodemites after his resurrection. Calvin confronted them with the alternative of Elijah:, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: if Baal, then follow him "(1 Kings 18:21). He advised them either to leave their country for some place of liberty, or to absent themselves from idolatrous worship, even at the risk of their lives. The glory of God should be much dearer to us than this transitory life, which is only a shadow. He distinguished several classes of Nicodemites: first, false preachers of the gospel, who adopt some evangelical doctrines (meaning probably Gérard le Roux or Roussel, for whom Margaret of Navarre had procured the bishopric of Oléron); next, worldly people, courtiers, and refined ladies, who are used to flattery and hate austerity; then, scholars and literary men, who love their ease and hope for gradual improvement with the spread of education and intelligence; lastly, merchants and citizens, who do not wish to be interrupted in their avocations. Yet he was far from disowning them as brethren because of their weakness. Owing to their great danger they could better expect pardon if they should fall, than he himself who lived in comparative security.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  In the primitive Church the memorial act was part of a fraternal meal in which the Christian group met in re- ligious privacy to express its peculiar unity and coher- ence. Such communistic meals, to which every member contributed his portion of food, were quite common among the religious and fraternal societies of the time. Communistic meals produce solidaristic feelings even today. Paul was not a marked exponent of democratic emotions, but he was deeply shocked when he learned that the social character of the common meal at Corinth had been debased by the intrusion of the class divisions of the outside world. The welltodo gathered in cote- ries to eat their plentiful supplies, while the poor sat neg- lected and ashamed. His feeling testifies to the social beauty and power which the Lord’s Supper then pos- sessed. (I Cor. xi, 17-34.) There can be no doubt that the Lord’s Supper has always had a powerful influence in consolidating the fra- BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER 2O3 temal organization of the Church. It has always been an inner privilege, for which preparation had to be made, and from which a man might be excluded ; consequently it was prized. In the European State Churches, people who have become wholly indifferent to church life, still attend communion once a year and would regard it as a loss to be shut out from it. In the early Church, dis- cipline consisted largely in barring offenders from com- munion. The humiliation and sacrifices assumed by penitents in order to get back into the full solidarity of the Church shows that strong social feelings were at work here. Reconciliation among the members pre- ceded communion. None could share in the Lord’s Supper who were in a state of enmity with other Chris- tians. Thus people were compelled to face Christ’s law of love and forgiveness, and pluck the bitter root of pride and ill-will from their hearts. This, too, was a social value of the ceremony. The rubric of the Book of Common Prayer still empowers the minister to warn notorious offenders to stay away, and to do the same with those, betwixt whom he perceiveth malice and hatred to reign, not suffering them to be partakers of the Lord’s Table, until he know them to be reconciled.” This is expressed also in the beautiful invitation: “Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity wdth your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the command- ments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and take this holy sacra- ment to your comfort, and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.” 204 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  What would happen, though, I asked, if when a guy said that, the girl responded that she did want to go to lunch? What if she said that the truth was, she was looking for a loving relationship? “Well, at my school that would be lethal for her social life.” So, I pressed, what choice does she really have, then? If you’re having sex with girls you’re not especially attracted to or interested in and your supposed righteous honesty about not wanting a relationship potentially forces them to either deny their own feelings or sacrifice their sex lives, how, exactly, are those hookups “loving and respectful”? Wyatt nodded emphatically. “That’s what I’m trying to say! I haven’t always been true to my own philosophy. It’s been sort of—masturbatory on my part.” That’s why, he continued, he, too, was starting to sour on hookup culture. Over the summer, Wyatt had been hanging out a lot with an old high school friend in the Bay Area, going to bars and parties. At the end of every evening, he would invariably have sex with one of the guy’s female friends—a different one every time. Finally, after Wyatt indulged in a drunken threesome with two girls, the other boy confronted him: “I go out with you to have a good time together, but it feels like you’ve made a checklist of all my friends so you can go through it and fuck them and then discard them.” That wasn’t far from the truth, and it stung. “I realized I was becoming, like, a feminist fuckboy,” Wyatt said. “The kind of guy who says all the right things, but still treats women badly. And that feels horrible. . . .” Wyatt broke off, pausing for a long time. “No,” he continued quietly. “That’s a lie. In the beginning it felt amazing, but eventually not, because there is no investment, because the sex doesn’t mean shit to me. Because the other person doesn’t mean shit to me. And, well, I’m not going to lie. I’ve liked it. I thought I was okay with it. But I’m starting not to be okay with it. Because . . .” He paused again. “Because there’s more to me than that.”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  These are important questions to answer because God is not impressed with fake spirituality. He is not manipulatable, and He doesn’t take kindly to people manipulating other people in His name. He also doesn’t want us to deceive ourselves into thinking we are healthy, happy, and holy just because we checked off our spiritual to-do list this morning. This sort of superficial, religious whitewashing was what got the Pharisees into trouble with Jesus regularly. THE MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS The term spiritual bypassing is relatively new, but the action it describes is as old as humanity. James writes, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (2:15–16). Note that phrase: “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed.” That is some James- level sarcasm, and I’m here for it. And yet, we do this exact thing when we substitute prayer for action, empty faith for generosity, religious platitudes for practical love. The prophets frequently confronted Israel for their tendency to bypass needed social change with religious activity. The people would offer sacrifices, pray, and claim to follow God, all the while ignoring the real issues around them, which included taking care of the poor, standing up for the oppressed, and making sure justice was done in the legal system. For example, the prophet Hosea says, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” (6:6). Micah says something very similar: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8). God’s value system is not based on saying the right words or meeting some religious expectation, but on being the right kind of people. We are meant to reflect the love, mercy, and justice that characterize Him.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Here’s a suggestion: Don’t avoid prayer because of shame; use prayer to fight shame. If you feel embarrassed or insecure before God, take time to pray through some Bible verses that affirm your standing before Him. In prayer, you can reprogram the way you think. Changing the way you think will change the way you feel. Changing the way you think and feel will change the way you act. And that will change your life. Need some suggestions of Bible verses that will help you fight shame? Here are a handful, but there are many more. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned.” (John 3:17–18) “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” (Romans 5:1–2) “Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) “If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” (1 John 3:20–21). 6. FLESH: I DON’T WANT TO DO IT. Let’s be honest. Sometimes we don’t pray because we don’t feel like it. There are other things that seem more fun or exciting in the moment, like scrolling Instagram or reorganizing the furniture or making a fourth cup of coffee.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Therefore, I avoid visiting the dentist. Why would I go somewhere that makes me feel bad about myself? Many people treat God the same way. They feel shame when they think of Him, so they avoid Him. They think He’s always judging their soul hygiene. That’s not exactly healthy for their prayer lives, of course. FROM VS. FOR Our beliefs about God—about His character, His attitude toward us, His value system, His desires—shape the premises for our prayers. In other words, the way we see God determines the way we approach Him. Read that again: The way we see God determines the way we approach God. Similarly, our beliefs about ourselves—our worth, our standing, our potential, our importance—also shape our premises for prayer. The way we see ourselves will influence what we ask for and how we ask it. These two things—our view of God and our view of ourselves—are pretty much inseparable. We rarely put words to them, but they lie at the base of how we pray, what we ask for, how much faith we have that God hears us, and whether we obey God when He speaks. If we think we are failures, and we believe that God is mostly concerned about failure, we will avoid Him. We won’t talk to Him. Why would we? That would be like making friends with the dentist. (I’m kidding. Dentists are people too.) Even if we do pray, we’ll probably spend most of our time and energy trying to convince God to forgive us, to like us, and to bless us. That’s not how Jesus prayed. It’s not how Paul or other Bible characters prayed either. For example, listen to this prayer of Paul’s for the Ephesian believers: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17–19