Trust

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 Come As You Are (2015)

  All of us are engaged in the ongoing process of cultivating our gardens—digging out the weeds and nurturing the plants we hope will flourish. Often it’s a joyful experience; sometimes it’s painful; always it’s deeply personal. And as we tend our gardens, all of us look outside ourselves for confirmation that what we are experiencing is normal. We look to our community for comfort when we’re distressed. We look to experts for answers we can’t find on our own. Everyone does it, from the toddler who falls down while they’re learning to walk to the gifted meditator feeling their way through recovery from a sexual assault. We all look up from our own experience, look out to the world, and say, “That hurt. Am I okay? Am I doing this right?” (You are doing it right. You are okay. When you hurt, you heal.) And in the same way that our stress response physiology made a lot of sense when our typical stressors had sharp teeth and claws, so this practice of looking outside ourselves for confirmation that we’re okay may have made more sense when “outside ourselves” meant our local community and people we actually knew in real life, rather than people we know only through mass media. We live in a world of Top 5 Tips, where there are twelve new techniques for mind-blowing fellatio each month, followed by six sexy new positions he’s always wanted to try. This world is full of fun, exciting, entertaining things that draw and hold our attention. But the structure of the truth is quieter, slower, more personal, and so much more interesting than mere entertainment. And it lives exclusively inside you, in the quiet moments of joy, in the jarring moments of worry, in the torn moments when the flock that is you is trying simultaneously to fly away from a threat and toward a pleasure. So when you notice something unexpected inside yourself and you want to look outward to check if it’s normal, if you’re okay, remember me saying this: You are okay. Let this book be a mirror: When you look up, see yourself. And you are beautiful. Trust your body. Listen to the small, quiet voice inside you that says, “Yes. Yes, more,” or “No. Stop.” Listen especially when that voice is saying both at once. When that happens, be compassionate with yourself. Go slow. When you look “out there,” you’ll find inspiration and entertainment and amazing science and support, too. But you won’t find the truth of your own sexual wellbeing—what you want, what you like, what you need. To find that, look inside. I think very often people attend workshops like the ones I teach, or read a book like this one, hoping to find the “secret ingredient,” the hidden all-powerful something or other that will put the apparent chaos of their sex lives into some kind of meaningful order. So, what is the secret ingredient? Well. Have you seen the movie Kung Fu Panda?

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  First, remember that you are healthy and functional and whole. Your body is not broken and you are not crazy. Your body is doing what bodies do, and that’s a beautiful thing. Hooray! So know that you are normal. Tell your partner you are normal. Tell them calmly, joyfully, and confidently. No need to be defensive or aggressive—it’s not their fault they don’t know about nonconcordance. Actually, it’s more my fault and the fault of all the other sex educators and researchers. We have failed to communicate this idea clearly to the world, and now you’re stuck with the job of fixing our mistake. Sorry about that. So apologize for me, on behalf of all the sex educators and researchers in the world, and then give your partner the facts: “Emily Nagoski is sorry that you didn’t already know that genital response isn’t a reliable indicator of pleasure or desire. But it’s true. What my genitals are doing doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how I feel. Thirty years of research confirms this. So please pay attention to my words, not my vagina.” You don’t actually have to apologize for me; you can just email me and say, “Could you please email my partner an apology for the fact that they didn’t know about nonconcordance?” and I’ll do it myself. Seriously, I will. Second, offer your partner other ways to know that you’re turned on. Here are some alternative things your partner can pay attention to if your genitals are telling them only about learning, not about liking: Your breath. Your respiration rate and your pulse increase with arousal. You begin holding your breath, too, as you get to the highest level of arousal and your thoracic and pelvic diaphragms contract. Muscle tension, especially in your abdomen, buttocks, and thighs, but also in your wrists, calves, and feet. When the tension moves in waves through you, your body bows and arches. For some women, in some contexts, this happens in an obvious way. For other women, or in other contexts, it is subtle. Most important, your words. Only you can tell your partner what you want and how you feel. Not all women feel equally comfortable talking about their desire and arousal, but you can shortcut with “yes” or “more.” And remember this, too: It’s not about attending to any specific physiological response, behavior, or other clue. It’s about attending with a kind of broad, receptive vigilance. Suggest that your partner attend to you not with a magnifying glass but with the wrong end of a telescope, or the way a chess master watches a chessboard—looking for large-scale patterns and dynamics. Your partner should attend the way a master chef tastes food—not just for individual flavors, but for the way those flavors combine and create something unique and new and delicious.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Pope and emperor have opposed me and raged against me. Now what have I done that the more pope and emperor raged, the more my gospel spread? I have never drawn a sword or desired revenge. I began neither conspiracy nor rebellion, but so far as I was able, I have helped the worldly rulers—even those who persecuted the gospel and me—to preserve their power and honor. I stopped with committing the matter to God and relying confidently at all times upon his hand. This is why God has not only preserved my life in spite of the pope and all the tyrants—and this many consider a really great miracle, as I myself must also confess—but he has made my gospel grow and spread. Now you interfere with what I am doing. You want to help the gospel and yet you do not see that what you are doing hinders and suppresses it most effectively.24 As it happened—and as Luther rightly observed—those towns and regions where the Gospel had not penetrated were the most inclined to join this angry rebellion. It made sense that those places where the freedom of the Gospel had not been allowed were the more incensed at their oppressive leaders and perceived their condition as worse than those who lived in places where the Reformation ideas had been allowed to exist. Luther thought that if only those who believed in the Gospel and lived in territories where the Gospel was allowed had not joined these other rebels, there would have been hope. Their leaven would eventually spread to these Catholic territories, and in time there would be dramatic progress. But such restraint was not in evidence at present.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  For instance, by 2013, executives at AT&T had concluded that 100,000 of their 280,000 workers were in jobs that would most likely not be relevant in as little as a decade. Like many companies in the technology sector, AT&T faced a future in which its legacy businesses were quickly becoming obsolete. With an industry moving from cables and hardware to the internet, cloud, and data science, AT&T leaders knew the company had to reinvent itself. They communicated the pending challenges with employees and displayed a commitment to try to retrain workers, not wanting to abandon the knowledge and passion their people had. Since 2013, AT&T has spent some $250 million each year on employee education and professional development programs, not to mention more than $30 million annually on tuition assistance. By 2018 the company estimated that half of its employees were actively engaged in acquiring skills for newly created roles. People who’d been retrained were filling half of all technology management jobs and received half of all promotions. Network support specialist Jacobie Davis has been with AT&T for more than twenty years in a variety of positions from sales to 911-line maintenance. Given the transition to a software focus at the company, he repositioned his skills to earn a spot as a product development engineer in cloud-based test environments. He said, “It’s really hard to describe the vast difference between the things we’re moving toward and the types of legacy technology I’ve been working on. It’s like night and day.” (We introduce a Skill Development Model to help with this process in Chapter 4.) Here’s a company that understood that huge layoffs would undermine trust in management, trust that was necessary for employee engagement, innovation, and performance. Since the inception of this talent overhaul, and in large part by communicating truthfully with and retraining its workforce, from 2013 through 2019 AT&T increased revenue from $129 billion to $181 billion, reduced its product-development cycle time while accelerating time-to-revenue, and even made Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the first time. If executives at a company aren’t employing an honest and clear approach like this, team leaders may have limits about what they can share to help reduce uncertainty, but within those limits we find there’s much they can do. In an interview we conducted with Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath, she said this involves managers trying to absorb as much uncertainty as possible, instead of pushing it onto their people (admittedly this might increase managers’ own anxiety levels somewhat, but leaders typically can accept a lot more risk than their people). McGrath cited an example of a product development team at an insurance company she was working with.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Every day was fluid and dynamic. What we were living through was incredibly stressful for everyone and, as the calls unfolded, questions would pour in via chat to the executive team. We would at times interrupt each other and tackle a question on the fly. We had to think fast to respond openly and transparently. In being willing to do this we built trust, confidence, and deep engagement with the team.” Said Verhun, a few weeks in, the executives found that they no longer were the only ones responding to queries. “Our doctors and team began to mentor each other and answer each other’s questions faster than we could read them in the chat. That told us that everybody was helping build solutions and helping to lead collectively to the goals the leadership team had identified for the organization. This was only possible because of the clarity provided up front and the unwavering guiding principles and values our entire team understood that we used to make decisions.” By midyear, FYidoctors clinics were opening back up and the company was reporting its best monthly results and growth in its twelve-year history. One need look no further than the decline of Yahoo for an example of how detrimental a lack of transparency can be to morale during uncertain times. Despite an optimistic outward appearance to investors, employees had begun doubting the company’s viability by the mid-2010s. According to New York Times interviews with Yahoo employees, leaders had embarked on a series of “stealth layoffs.” They called in a handful of people each week and fired them quietly. No one knew who would be safe or who would be gone next, and fear paralyzed many workers. The entire process was confusing and demoralizing to loyal employees who loved the company and believed in its platforms. “We all want to make as much impact as we can and leverage Yahoo’s existing strengths,” employee Austin Shoemaker said at the time, summing up the feelings of many loyal Yahoos. Finally, in March 2015, CEO Marissa Mayer told the staff at an all-hands event that the bloodletting was over. She even darkly joked that no one would be laid off that week. Yet shortly thereafter, more cuts began. Employees were well aware of how fierce Yahoo’s competition was. The company was also struggling with an industrywide drop in display advertising, not to mention a challenge in trying to excel at so many things—from news and sports to web searches and email.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But the second way in which Luther here distinguished himself had to do with his theological insights. He was the one who had put many years of careful study into the Scriptures and who possessed the theological insights that had carried them all to this place, so he could see some of the theological problems that lay behind the more superficial issues. In other words, it was one thing to debate whether images in churches were appropriate, but it was another to understand the theology behind debating theology, to know that not all questions and issues were equal, and to know that this itself was a theologically important point, one that had been missed in the months he had been away. The way Luther framed this was by saying that the underlying laws of freedom and love must obtain over all. So where things were nonnegotiable, yes, one must be firm and clear and uncompromising, but where things were optional, one must be clear that they were indeed optional. And one had to know which were which. So while Karlstadt had said that not to take both elements at Communion was a sin, Luther said no, people were free to do either. Where Karlstadt and Zwilling had insisted that images were clearly forbidden in Scripture, Luther said no. There were cherubim on the ark, and there was a bronze serpent in the wilderness. This was not so simple. Furthermore, just because images or statues might be the occasion of causing people to sin because some people were tempted to pray to the saints did not automatically mean that the images and statues must be abolished. Someone might take overweening pride in a church building. Did that mean we should not build churches? And whatever they did or didn’t do, they must do it slowly. “Give men time,” Luther said. I took three years of constant study, reflection, and discussion to arrive where I now am, and can the common man, untutored in such matters, be expected to move the same distance in three months? Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit wine and abolish women? The sun, the moon, and stars have been worshiped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky? Such haste and violence betray a lack of confidence in God. See how much he has been able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and preach. The Word did it all. Had I wished I might have started a conflagration at Worms. But while I sat still and drank beer with Philip [Melanchthon] and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.9

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The emperor’s letter arrived in Wittenberg on March 26, and because it was a summons from the highest secular authority—and because Worms was infinitely closer (and therefore safer) than Rome—Luther had no qualms about going. “I am heartily glad that His Majesty will take to himself this affair that is not mine,” he wrote, “but that of all Christianity and the whole German nation.”13 In fact, three months earlier, at the end of the previous year, Luther already knew that the next diet would be held in Worms, and suspecting he might be summoned to appear there, he wrote to Spalatin about whether he would do so: Of course I would by all means come, if called, in so far as it would be up to me, even if I could not come by my own power and instead would have to be driven there as a sick man. For it would not be right to doubt that I am called by the Lord if the Emperor summons. Further, if they would employ force in this matter, which is most probable (for they do not want me called there because they want me to learn something), then this matter can only be commended to the Lord. For He who saved the three men in the furnace of the Babylonian king still lives and rules. If he does not want to preserve me, then my head is of slight importance compared with Christ, who was put to death in greatest ignominy—a stumbling block to all, and the ruin of many. We must rather take care that we do not expose the gospel (which we have finally begun to promote) to the derision of the godless and thus give our enemies a reason for boasting over us because we dare not confess what we have taught and are afraid to shed our blood for it. May the merciful Christ prevent such cowardice on our part and such boasting on their part. Amen.14 When Luther at last received the summons from the emperor to appear at the diet, he knew it was something of historical importance. Indeed, in his mind, what would take place there was not less than a clash of the two forces that had been at odds since Eden. Luther is known not to have saved many documents, but this letter he saved, and it was passed down through his family. CHAPTER TENThe Diet of WormsHere I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. —Martin Luther If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. —Martin Luther

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Westwood continued, “You have to prove that you can be trusted. When this pandemic hit, the first thing we did was cut the pay of the executive leadership, including myself. We communicated that early and it sent a message that we were willing to make sacrifices.” Still, three months into the crisis, the CEO and his team realized that they would have to make a few tough cuts. “We held an all-hands meeting with more than five hundred employees around the world, and I told everyone we’d tried to make it through without any layoffs, but we were going to have to, and it would affect about 3 percent of our people.” He explained why the cuts were absolutely necessary—showing the numbers—and Westwood outlined the plan for those who would be affected. “It was amazing how many messages I got later that said, ‘I never feel like I’m going to be blindsided here,’ or ‘I always feel like you’re going to be honest with me.’” The actual reduction in force was only 1 percent by the end because his team rallied and was able to minimize the impact. Openness, especially about delicate matters, is much too rare. As we consult with organizations, we find that many leaders come up short at helping employees honestly understand whether or not they have a solid future within the organization, or at what level their opportunities may top out. At one manufacturing plant, for example, the HR manager had worked for twenty years to receive the proper accreditations and certificates so that he might take over when the vice president of HR retired. When the day finally came and he sent in his application for the big job, he received a one-line email response from the CEO. It read, “We could not support you in this role.” There was no warning. No face-to-face candor. Just twenty years of work and then those eight words that would shape his, his coworkers’, and his family’s perception of the company forever. In contrast, in interviews we conducted at the American Express call centers, we were struck by how each member of Camaraza’s leadership team seemed compelled to be respectfully honest with employees about their development opportunities and career potential, even if they decided to leave because of that clarity. Asking someone to sail blindly into the future is never a good idea—for a team member or the organization. To achieve the kind of transparency we have witnessed in the best teams, workers have to have avenues that allow them to communicate upward—not only with their team leader but with senior leadership—and know they are being heard.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It is vintage Luther that he says that praying over and over is in fact not only utterly useless but actually counterproductive because it demonstrates our lack of faith. By praying in that way, we are only proving that we don’t know to whom we are speaking and are insulting him. It is as though we were to bribe a kindhearted policeman who is already trying to help us, or as though we were to bribe our own dear parents. It would not help the situation but in fact bring them grief and horror to see that we do not know them at all and actually deeply distrust them. It would create distance between us where there had been none, except in our own minds. Much of Luther’s time during this first year back was spent in traveling to nearby towns to preach. He was invited to preach in Zwickau, in Torgau, in Borna, and in Altenburg. He also preached in Erfurt and at the court of Duke John in Weimar. His message of evangelical faith had caught on, but now he must help it spread in a way that was orderly. Over and over in these sermons, he stressed the basics: Christ came down from heaven to make himself known to us. He stepped down into our mire and became a man. But we do not know him, nor do we accept him, who came to help us out of every need and fear. But he who accepts Christ, acknowledges and loves him, he fulfills all things and all his works are good; he does good to his neighbor; he suffers all things for God’s sake.18 Letter to StaupitzOn June 27, Luther wrote to his dear old friend and mentor, Johannes von Staupitz. It had been a long time since they had corresponded, and the impact of the Reformation on the Augustinian order and in general had made things rather difficult for Staupitz. Although he agreed with Luther in many ways, theologically speaking, he could never follow his brightest student along the difficult path that directly challenged the pope and had now led away from the church itself. In fact, having seen the handwriting on the wall in the Augustinian order already in 1520, he resigned his post as vicar-general, being replaced by Luther’s friend Wenceslas Linck. A year later Staupitz left the Augustinians entirely and joined the Benedictines. Luther had heard a rumor that Staupitz was being considered for the abbacy of the Benedictine cloister in Salzburg, which upset him. He also knew that Staupitz had been hearing things about him that were simply untrue.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The oft-quoted credo ut intellegam is not an intellectual abdication. Anselm was not claiming to embrace the creed blindly in the hope of its making sense some day. His assertion should really be translated: “I commit myself in order that I may understand.” At this time, the word credo still did not have the intellectual bias of the word “belief” today but meant an attitude of trust and loyalty. It is important to note that even in the first flush of Western rationalism, the religious experience of God remained primary, coming before discussion or logical understanding. Nevertheless, like the Muslim and Jewish Faylasufs, Anselm believed that the existence of God could be argued rationally, and he devised his own proof, which is usually called the “ontological” argument. Anselm defined God as “something than which nothing greater can be thought” (aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit).30 Since this implied that God could be an object of thought, the implication was that he could be conceived and comprehended by the human mind. Anselm argued that this Something must exist. Since existence is more “perfect” or complete than nonexistence, the perfect being that we imagine must have existence or it would be imperfect. Anselm’s proof was ingenious and effective in a world dominated by Platonic thought, where ideas were believed to point to eternal archetypes. It is unlikely to convince a skeptic today. As the British theologian John Macquarrie has remarked, you may imagine that you have $100, but unfortunately that will not make the money a reality in your pocket.31 Anselm’s God was Being, therefore, not the Nothing described by Denys and Erigena. Anselm was willing to speak about God in far more positive terms than most of the previous Faylasufs. He did not propose the discipline of a Via Negativa but seemed to think it possible to arrive at a fairly adequate idea of God by means of natural reason, which was precisely what had always troubled the Greeks about the Western theology. Once he had proved God’s existence to his satisfaction, Anselm set out to demonstrate the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity, which the Greeks had always insisted defied reason and conceptualization. In his treatise Why God Became Man, which we considered in Chapter 4, he relies on logic and rational thought more than revelation—his quotations from the Bible and the Fathers seem purely incidental to the thrust of his argument, which, as we saw, ascribed essentially human motivation to God. He was not the only Western Christian to try to explain the mystery of God in rational terms. His contemporary Peter Abelard (1079–1147), the charismatic philosopher of Paris, had also evolved an explanation of the Trinity which emphasized the divine unity somewhat at the expense of the distinction of the Three Persons. He also developed a sophisticated and moving rationale for the mystery of the atonement: Christ had been crucified to awaken compassion in us and by doing so he became our Savior.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  One of his first acts after he became district vicar in 1515 was to appoint his old companion and fellow monk Johannes Lang to be prior at Erfurt. 24 A humanist and close friend of Luther, Lang had followed him from Erfurt to Wittenberg in 1511. Sending him back not only helped a friend; it also stamped Luther’s authority on his former community, a mere two years after the bitter correspondence about the doctorate. Lang was about Luther’s age, and his appointment at barely thirty marked the arrival of the new generation of “Staupitz’s boys.” Luther was aware that Lang’s task would not be easy—he knew there would be “grumblings among the brothers”—and he advised him to keep a budget, noting down all income and expenditure, so that he could work out “whether the convent is more of a monastery than a tavern or inn”—a strategy not likely to smooth his friend’s path. 25 Meanwhile, Wenzeslaus Linck, another of Staupitz’s protégés, had been made prior of the monastery at Wittenberg: He would become one of Luther’s lifelong friends. A new circle of friends beyond as well as inside the Augustinian order solidified around him. Georg Spalatin—secretary, librarian, and later confessor to Friedrich the Wise—was one of the most important, as he made the Reformation possible by securing the Saxon ruler’s protection. In the years up to 1525 he became Luther’s most frequent correspondent, and the interlocutor to whom he revealed his daily preoccupations and deepest anxieties. Their friendship began by the circuitous route common among humanist circles: Spalatin knew Johannes Lang, and had him secure an introduction to Luther. As the Elector’s librarian, Spalatin was responsible for the university library and also advised on university policy, so the two men had to work together. 26 Spalatin had unlimited access to the Elector and all correspondence ran through him: He had Latin, whereas the Elector was truly comfortable only in German. 27 This was an era in which individuals were much more important than the formal offices they held and in which politics was intensely personal, so those who had access to a ruler wielded enormous power themselves. Not only did Spalatin give Luther an opening to Friedrich and his court; he also introduced him to a circle of Nuremberg humanists, which provided essential support in the early years of the Reformation. Although Staupitz had long had a group of admirers in Nuremberg, it was Spalatin who introduced Luther to Christoph Scheurl, the powerful civic secretary of the city and a brilliant legal mind, who had also spent time at Wittenberg’s law faculty. This connection to the wealthy south of Germany took Luther for the first time out of the narrow horizons of a world bounded by Erfurt, Mansfeld, and Wittenberg.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Consider this typical well-intended but potentially inflammatory conversation between manager and employee: Jared, you’ve got high standards, just like me. I see that you always try to make sure all the details are attended to and everything is done exactly right. That can be a good thing. Now, as I want you to progress in this organization, let me coach you a little. I’ve had to learn that focusing on improving things from 95 percent to 100 often bogs you down. You can get tunnel vision in getting something perfect that can cost you more than it does to move on to the next project. Let me give you an example of where I saw this with you recently . . . That’s not a terrible conversation. But notice a few subtle differences in the next exchange (in bold), and how the manager personalizes the conversation and deflects blame off Jared to the issue itself. Jared, you’ve got high standards, just like me. I see that you always try to make sure all the details are attended to and everything is done exactly right. That can be a good thing. Now, as I want you to progress in this organization, I’ll tell you something I had to learn. Focusing on improving things from 95 percent to 100 often bogs down opportunities. It’s easy to get tunnel vision in getting something perfect that can cost more than it does to move on to the next project. Let me give you an example I saw where you might have applied this lesson. In both examples, the manager relates to Jared right away, expressing common ground with the issue. She lets him know she understands where he is coming from and explains that they both have high standards. Great. This establishes a sense of comfort and connection. And yet in the first example the phrase “let me coach you” we believe would introduce an elephant into the room, letting Jared know that correction was coming and he might need to protect his feelings. In the second exchange, when the manager says, “I’ll tell you something I had to learn,” it delivers a sense that she’s about to offer wisdom gained in the trenches, and the discussion is an opportunity to learn rather than correct. We can just imagine Jared leaning in. Similarly, in the second example, the manager avoids “you” statements, and refers to the problem with such proclamations as “It’s easy to get tunnel vision” instead of “You can get tunnel vision.”

• From A History of God (1993)

  But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” and he blessed him there. Jacob named the place Peni-El [El’s Face] “Because I have seen El face to face,” he said, “and I have survived.” 14 The spirit of this epiphany is closer to the spirit of the Iliad than to later Jewish monotheism, when such intimate contact with the divine would have seemed a blasphemous notion. Yet even though these early tales show the patriarchs encountering their god in much the same way as their pagan contemporaries, they do introduce a new category of religious experience. Throughout the Bible, Abraham is called a man of “faith.” Today we tend to define faith as an intellectual assent to a creed, but, as we have seen, the biblical writers did not view faith in God as an abstract or metaphysical belief. When they praise the “faith” of Abraham, they are not commending his orthodoxy (the acceptance of a correct theological opinion about God) but his trust, in rather the same way as when we say that we have faith in a person or an ideal. In the Bible, Abraham is a man of faith because he trusts that God would make good his promises, even though they seem absurd. How could Abraham be the father of a great nation when his wife, Sarah, is barren? Indeed, the very idea that she could have a child is so ridiculous—Sarah has passed menopause—that when they hear this promise both Sarah and Abraham burst out laughing. When, against all the odds, their son is finally born, they call him Isaac, a name that may mean “laughter.” The joke turns sour, however, when God makes an appalling demand: Abraham must sacrifice his only son to him. Human sacrifice was common in the pagan world. It was cruel but had a logic and rationale. The first child was often believed to be the offspring of a god, who had impregnated the mother in an act of droit de seigneur . In begetting the child, the god’s energy had been depleted, so to replenish this and to ensure the circulation of all the available mana , the firstborn was returned to its divine parent. The case of Isaac was quite different, however. Isaac had been a gift of God but not his natural son. There was no reason for the sacrifice, no need to replenish the divine energy. Indeed, the sacrifice would make nonsense of Abraham’s entire life, which had been based on the promise that he would be the father of a great nation. This god was already beginning to be conceived differently from most other deities in the ancient world. He did not share the human predicament; he did not require an input of energy from men and women. He was in a different league and could make whatever demands he chose. Abraham decided to trust his god.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Consequently, they lived like the official priestly caste, observing the special laws of purity that applied only to the Temple in their own homes. They insisted on eating their meals in a state of ritual purity because they believed that the table of every single Jew was like God’s altar in the Temple. They cultivated a sense of God’s presence in the smallest detail of daily life. Jews could now approach him directly without the mediation of a priestly caste and an elaborate ritual. They could atone for their sins by acts of loving-kindness to their neighbor; charity was the most important mitzvah in the Torah; when two or three Jews studied the Torah together, God was in their midst. During the early years of the century, two rival schools had emerged: one led by Shammai the Elder, which was more rigorous, and the other led by the great Rabbi Hillel the Elder, which became by far the most popular Pharisaic party. There is a story that one day a pagan had approached Hillel and told him that he would be willing to convert to Judaism if the Master could recite the whole of the Torah to him while he stood on one leg. Hillel replied: “Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you. That is the whole of the Torah: go and learn it.” 77 By the disastrous year 70, the Pharisees had become the most respected and important sect of Palestinian Judaism; they had already shown their people that they did not need a Temple to worship God, as this famous story shows: Once as Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai was coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the Temple in ruins. “Woe unto us!” Rabbi Joshua said, “that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid waste!” “My son,” Rabbi Yohannan said, “be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? It is acts of loving kindness, as it is said: ‘For I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ ” 78 It is said that after the conquest of Jerusalem, Rabbi Yohannan had been smuggled out of the burning city in a coffin. He had been opposed to the Jewish revolt and thought that the Jews would be better off without a state. The Romans allowed him to found a self-governing Pharisaic community at Jabneh, to the west of Jerusalem.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Word had gotten out that Luther was dying, and more people came to stand vigil. Pastor Coeleus remained there, as did Aurifaber, but two doctors had arrived, along with the house’s owner and the Eisleben city clerk, Johann Albrecht, and his wife. At about 1:00 a.m., another pang of pain in his chest woke Luther. He told those present of it and also complained again of a feeling of coldness. He woke his servant Ambrosius and asked him to make a fire, but the room was already quite warm. Luther believed he was dying and with an irrepressible wink even now told Jonas, “I think I will stay here at Eisleben where I was born and baptized.” He then again arose from his bed and again went to the bathroom, again repeating the words from Psalm 31. When he returned, he was once again rubbed with hot towels. At some point, Luther began to sweat, and he understood it to be a sign of his impending death. “This is a cold death sweat,” he said. “I am going to give up the ghost, for I am getting worse.” The two physicians were quickly summoned, and Luther prayed aloud to God, “the God of all comfort, the Father of Jesus Christ,” thanking him that he had revealed to him his son, “whom I have believed, whom I have loved, whom I have preached, confessed, and praised, whom the pope and all the godless revile and blaspheme.” Luther had confidence that he was going to be with God and did not fear as others did in their moments of death that he might now be slipping into the hands of devils to be dragged to hell. He prayed the words of Simeon from Luke 2:29: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Amen.” And then he prayed three times more the words from Psalm 31:5 and then fell silent. They shook him, but he did not respond. Then Countess Anna rubbed his nostrils with a solution of rose vinegar and aqua vitae, but still he was not revived.7

• From A History of God (1993)

  Yet even though these early tales show the patriarchs encountering their god in much the same way as their pagan contemporaries, they do introduce a new category of religious experience. Throughout the Bible, Abraham is called a man of “faith.” Today we tend to define faith as an intellectual assent to a creed, but, as we have seen, the biblical writers did not view faith in God as an abstract or metaphysical belief. When they praise the “faith” of Abraham, they are not commending his orthodoxy (the acceptance of a correct theological opinion about God) but his trust, in rather the same way as when we say that we have faith in a person or an ideal. In the Bible, Abraham is a man of faith because he trusts that God would make good his promises, even though they seem absurd. How could Abraham be the father of a great nation when his wife, Sarah, is barren? Indeed, the very idea that she could have a child is so ridiculous—Sarah has passed menopause—that when they hear this promise both Sarah and Abraham burst out laughing. When, against all the odds, their son is finally born, they call him Isaac, a name that may mean “laughter.” The joke turns sour, however, when God makes an appalling demand: Abraham must sacrifice his only son to him. Human sacrifice was common in the pagan world. It was cruel but had a logic and rationale. The first child was often believed to be the offspring of a god, who had impregnated the mother in an act of droit de seigneur. In begetting the child, the god’s energy had been depleted, so to replenish this and to ensure the circulation of all the available mana, the firstborn was returned to its divine parent. The case of Isaac was quite different, however. Isaac had been a gift of God but not his natural son. There was no reason for the sacrifice, no need to replenish the divine energy. Indeed, the sacrifice would make nonsense of Abraham’s entire life, which had been based on the promise that he would be the father of a great nation. This god was already beginning to be conceived differently from most other deities in the ancient world. He did not share the human predicament; he did not require an input of energy from men and women. He was in a different league and could make whatever demands he chose. Abraham decided to trust his god. He and Isaac set off on a three-day journey to the Mount of Moriah, which would later be the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. Isaac, who knew nothing of the divine command, even had to carry the wood for his own holocaust. It was not until the very last moment, when Abraham actually had the knife in his hand, that God relented and told him that it had only been a test.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Finally Joshua stipulated the terms of the agreement and demanded the formal assent of the assembled people of Israel: So now, fear Yahweh and serve him perfectly and sincerely; put away the gods that you once served beyond the River [Jordan] and in Egypt and serve Yahweh. But if you will not serve Yahweh, choose today whom you wish to serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. 22 The people had a choice between Yahweh and the traditional gods of Canaan. They did not hesitate. There was no other god like Yahweh; no other deity had ever been so effective on behalf of his worshippers. His powerful intervention in their affairs had demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that Yahweh was up to the job of being their elohim: they would worship him alone and cast away the other gods. Joshua warned them that Yahweh was exceedingly jealous. If they neglected the terms of the covenant, he would destroy them. The people stood firm: they chose Yahweh alone as their elohim. “Then cast away the alien gods from among you!” Josuah cried, “and give your hearts to Yahweh, the God of Israel!” 23 The Bible shows that the people were not true to the covenant. They remembered it in times of war, when they needed Yahweh’s skilled military protection, but when times were easy they worshipped Baal, Anat and Asherah in the old way. Although Yahweh’s cult was fundamentally different in its historical bias, it often expressed itself in terms of the old paganism. When King Solomon built a Temple for Yahweh in Jerusalem, the city that his father, David, had captured from the Jebusites, it was similar to the temples of the Canaanite gods. It consisted of three square areas, which culminated in the small, cube-shaped room known as the Holy of Holies which contained the Ark of the Covenant, the portable altar which the Israelites had with them during their years in the wilderness. Inside the Temple was a huge bronze basin, representing Yam, the primeval sea of Canaanite myth, and two forty-foot freestanding pillars, indicating the fertility cult of Asherah. The Israelites continued to worship Yahweh in the ancient shrines which they had inherited from the Canaanites at Beth-El, Shiloh, Hebron, Bethlehem and Dan, where there were frequently pagan ceremonies. The Temple soon became special, however, even though, as we shall see, there were some remarkably unorthodox activities there too. The Israelites began to see the Temple as the replica of Yahweh’s heavenly court. They had their own New Year Festival in the autumn, beginning with the scapegoat ceremony on the Day of Atonement, followed five days later by the harvest festival of the Feast of Tabernacles, which celebrated the beginning of the agricultural year.

• From A History of God (1993)

  How could the Christians explain their faith to the pagan world? It seemed to fall between two stools, appearing to be neither a religion, in the Roman sense, nor a philosophy. Moreover, Christians would have found it hard to list their “beliefs” and may not have been conscious of evolving a distinctive system of thought. In this they resembled their pagan neighbors. Their religion had no coherent “theology” but could more accurately be described as a carefully cultivated attitude of commitment. When they recited their “creeds,” they were not assenting to a set of propositions. The word credere, for example, seems to have derived from cor dare: to give one’s heart. When they said “credo!” (or pisteno in Greek), this implied an emotional rather than an intellectual position. Thus Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia from 392 to 428, explained to his converts: When you say “I engage myself” (pisteuo) before God, you show that you will remain steadfastly with him, that you will never separate yourself from him and that you will think it higher than anything else to be and to live with him and to conduct yourself in a way that is in harmony with his commandments.32 Later Christians would need to give a more theoretical account of their faith and would develop a passion for theological debate that is unique in the history of world religion. We have seen, for example, that there was no official orthodoxy in Judaism but that ideas about God were essentially private matters. The early Christians would have shared this attitude.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) certainly regarded belief in God as an illusion that mature men and women should lay aside. The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind. Science, the new logos, could take God’s place. It could provide a new basis for morality and help us to face our fears. Freud was emphatic about his faith in science, which seemed almost religious in its intensity: “No, our science is not an illusion! An illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give we can get elsewhere.”19 Not all psychoanalysts agreed with Freud’s view of God. Alfred Adler (1870–1937) allowed that God was a projection but believed that it had been helpful to humanity; it had been a brilliant and effective symbol of excellence. C. G. Jung’s (1875–1961) God was similar to the God of the mystics, a psychological truth, subjectively experienced by each individual. When asked by John Freeman in the famous Face to Face interview whether he believed in God, Jung replied emphatically: “I do not have to believe. I know!” Jung’s continued faith suggests that a subjective God, mysteriously identified with the ground of being in the depths of the self, can survive psychoanalytic science in a way that a more personal, anthropomorphic deity who can indeed encourage perpetual immaturity may not.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I sat down and cried. Minutes later I felt large hands slide under my arms, giving a quick tug and pulling me up out of the thick cold wet. Joe slung me over his shoulder, wading out of the deep snow as if he were walking through a mild stream of flowing water. “It’s okay,” he said. I rested my cheek on his shoulder, feeling instantly safe. When I left the Home Place to return to Marin, I had only fond memories of both men. I just couldn’t believe that they would try to murder someone. We watched the recorded broadcast of Joe and Lance, surrounded by reporters, on the wall-mounted TV. An anchorman informed us that they were suspects in a conspiracy to murder an attorney named Paul Morantz, under the executive order of Chuck Dederich. We sat for a few hours, looking at other news clips and listening to various members speak their anger at the injustice being committed against us. “We are the victims. We are the ones who are being attacked.” The adults repeated this refrain over and over to us children. The following year Joe and Lance were found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison. Still, I remained unconvinced of their guilt. Chuck escaped conviction, but was forced to step down as director of Synanon for several years. The politics of the commune and its fight against “outsiders” resulted in a shift toward building power through us children. Boys were encouraged to learn how to shoot guns and maintain them. Some of our sports were substituted with karate, which Synanon called Syndo. The white uniforms were purchased and we were each given an outfit for lessons. We learned kicks, rolls and jabs and how to block an opponent. After karate class we stood in formation, enduring endless lectures on the physical excellence expected of us. A black-belt guest teacher came to one of our karate classes to show us what we could achieve. A large beefy man with hair on his head that advertised his outsider status, he performed a demonstration in which he sliced a stack of bricks cleanly in half with the edge of one of his bare hands. A fine powdery residue of dust clouded the air and sifted slowly to settle on the table where the bricks rested. His skills were impressive, yet the mandatory nature of the martial art instruction dampened my interest. Although I’d watched my share of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris films, I didn’t see myself becoming a master of karate or even accomplishing any level of competence. As if to further highlight the truly quirky nature of the commune, we were also forced to watch the TV miniseries Shogun, all twelve dreary hours of it, while wearing our karate outfits and snacking on revolting, greasy, cinnamon-flavored crisps and apple juice. By the time Shogun ended I had developed a deep dislike for karate and Japan. My dislike would persist for many years.