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Apple's founder and CEO could be a cruel and nasty guy. He was also the greatest chief executive of our time. Don't go thinking those two things are related.
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
Steve Jobs was a visionary, a brilliant innovator who reshaped entire industries by the force of his will, a genius at giving consumers not only what they wanted, but what they didn't yet know they wanted.
He was also a world-class asshole.
Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography of Jobs offers a revealing look at what the author has called "good Steve" and "bad Steve." Good Steve was brilliant, charismatic, a champion for excellence, an alchemist who turned a moribund computer company into gold. Bad Steve was petulant, rude, spiteful, and controlling, a man who thought nothing of publicly humiliating employees, hogging the credit for work he hadn't done, throwing tantrums when he didn't get his way, or parking his Mercedes in handicapped spots. For several years, he even denied the paternity of his daughter so that the child and her mother had to live on welfare.
The ease with which people can possess astonishingly contradictory qualities is one of the mysteries of human nature; indeed, it's one of the things that separates humans from, say, an Apple computer. Every one of the components that makes up an iPad is essential to the work it produces. Remove one part and the machine no longer performs its job, and not even the Genius Bar can fix it. But humans are full of qualities that are in no way integral to their functioning in the world. Some aspects of personality have little or no bearing on whether a person performs well, and not a few people succeed in spite of their darker qualities. You can be a genius and an asshole, but the two aren't necessarily causally linked. In fact, there's a strong body of evidence to suggest that there are plenty of assholes who aren't geniuses at anything other than ... being assholes.
But such subtleties may be lost on CEOs, middle managers and wannabe masters of the universe who are currently devouring the Steve Jobs biography and thinking to themselves: "See! Steve Jobs was an asshole and he was one of the most successful businessmen on the planet. Maybe if I become an even bigger asshole I'll be successful like Steve."
This sort of flawed thinking -- call it asshole logic -- isn't something that's necessarily endorsed by Jobs's biographer.
"(Jobs) was not the world's greatest manager," Walter Isaacson said in a recent interview with 60 Minutes. "In fact, he could have been one of the world's worst managers."
But asshole logic, not surprisingly, tends to ignore facts that don't sanction one's own assholery. This distorted reasoning was already prevalent before Steve Jobs's death, and is only likely to spread as Isaacson's biography closes in on becoming the best-selling book of 2011. Five years ago, when Stanford professor of management science and engineering Robert Sutton was researching his book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, he ran across a disconcerting number of Silicon Valley leaders who believed that Steve Jobs was living proof that being an asshole boss was integral to building a great company.
Sutton's counter-thesis was that assholes--which he defined as those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their hostility on the less powerful--poison the workplace and induce qualified employees to quit and are therefore bad for business, regardless of the asshole's individual talent or effectiveness.
When Sutton published an article in the Harvard Business Review advancing his theory, he was amazed at the reaction. He had published other articles in the Review, many of them longer and better researched, but nothing provoked the response that his asshole article did. Sutton received well over 1,000 emails, and gathered countless horror stories, including one about a worker undergoing chemotherapy whose boss told him he was "a wimp and a pussy."
What an asshole!
Sutton decided to expand the article into a book, and wound up interviewing dozens of Silicon Valley leaders and insiders. When Sutton would advance the notion that assholes are bad for business, one person after another had the same reaction: "What about Steve Jobs?"
"Even people who worked with Jobs told me that they'd seen him make people cry many times, but that 80 percent of the time he was right, " says Sutton. "It is troubling that there's this notion in our culture that if you're a winner, it's okay to be an asshole."
So many people advanced Steve Jobs as evidence that asshole CEOs build better companies that Sutton somewhat reluctantly included a chapter in his book on "The Virtues of Assholes," with Steve Jobs as Exhibit A. There is some evidence that "status displays" by aggressive bosses can motivate workers and give slackers a kick in the pants. And effective jerk bosses usually aren't assholes all the time, they're able to turn on the charm when the situation demands it, something Steve Jobs, by most accounts, was very good at doing. And it helps for companies to have skilled subordinate executives that are good at cleaning up after the Asshole-in-Chief, much like the sad-faced men carrying shovels who walk behind circus elephants.
But Sutton's book makes clear that for the most part, assholes are bad for the bottom line, to say nothing of the human toll they exact. There are plenty of very successful companies that aren't led by assholes - Google, Virgin Atlantic, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines among them. Likewise, there are legions of assholes who lead companies that aren't successful, in part due to their own bad behavior.
With the death and canonization of Steve Jobs and the emergence of the Jobs biography as a kind of sacred text for managers, the ranks of bosses who see Bad Steve's nastier traits as something to imitate is liable to swell. It's unlikely the book will make despots out of thoughtful, fair-minded middle managers. It's far more probable that it will turn bosses who are already assholes into even bigger assholes, raising the temperature of the worst actors so that they become that most combustible of workplace figures, the flaming asshole.
Already, the web is full of articles that hold up Steve Jobs as the model of how to lead and succeed in life, with titles such as "Ten Leadership Lessons from the Steve Jobs School of Management" and "21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs." Most of these works prefer to focus on Good Steve, but it may not be long until business book authors hone in on the timeless lessons to be drawn from Bad Steve's asshole ways. The titles write themselves: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Assholes. The One-Minute Asshole. Who's The Asshole Who Moved My Cheese?
The fact is, Steve Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole. He succeeded because he was Steve Jobs. He had an uncanny sixth sense about what consumers wanted, an unmatched ability to adapt existing technology and turn it into something new, and a commitment to quality that turned ordinary Apple customers into fans for life. Being an asshole was part of the Steve package, but it wasn't essential to his success. But that's not a message most of the assholes in the corner offices want to hear.
Christian education is not the communication of correct views about what the various works and words of Jesus might mean; rather it is the stocking of the imagination with the icons of those works and words themselves.
It is most successfully accomplished, therefore, not by catechisms that purport to produce understanding but by stories that hang the icons, understood or not, on the walls of the mind. We do not include the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, because we understand it, nor do we omit the parable of the Unjust Steward because we can't make head or tail of it. Rather, we commit both to the Christian memory because that's the way Jesus seems to want the inside of his believers' heads decorated. Indeed, the only really mischievous thing anyone can do with the Gospel is insist on hanging only the pictures he happens to like. That's what heresy really is: picking and choosing, on the basis of my interpretations, between the icons provided to me. Orthodoxy, if it's understood correctly, is simply the constant displaying of the entire collection.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has launched its next Mars rover, kicking off a long-awaited mission to investigate whether the Red Planet could ever have hosted microbial life.
The car-size Curiosity rover blasted off atop its Atlas 5 rocket today (Nov. 26) at 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT), streaking into a cloudy sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here. The huge robot's next stop is Mars, though the 354-million-mile (570-million-kilometer) journey will take 8 1/2 months.Joy Crisp, a deputy project scientist for the rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., called the liftoff "spectacular."
"This feels great," she said as she watched the rocket lift off from Cape Canaveral. [Photos: Curiosity Rover Launches to Mars]
Pamela Conrad, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's mission at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said, "Every milestone feels like such a relief."
NASA expected around 13,500 people to watch the liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, with many more viewing from surrounding areas, setting a record for the number of spectators watching an unmanned launch.
"It's a beautiful day," Conrad added. "The sun's out, and all these people came out to watch."
The work Curiosity does when it finally arrives should revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet and pave the way for future efforts to hunt for potential Martian life, researchers said.
"It is absolutely a feat of engineering, and it will bring science like nobody's ever expected," Doug McCuistion, head of NASA's Mars exploration program, said of Curiosity. "I can't even imagine the discoveries that we're going to come up with."
A long road to launch
Curiosity's cruise to Mars may be less challenging than its long and bumpy trek to the launch pad, which took nearly a decade.
NASA began planning Curiosity's mission — which is officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) — back in 2003. The rover was originally scheduled to blast off in 2009, but it wasn't ready in time.
Launch windows for Mars-bound spacecraft are based on favorable alignments between Earth and the Red Planet, and they open up just once every two years. So the MSL team had to wait until 2011.
That two-year slip helped boost the mission's overall cost by 56 percent, to its current $2.5 billion. But today's successful launch likely chased away a lot of the bad feelings still lingering after the delay and cost overruns.
"I think you could visibly see the team morale improve — the team grinned more, the team smiled more — as the rover and the vehicle came closer, and more and more together here when we were at Kennedy [Space Center]" preparing for liftoff, MSL project manager Pete Theisinger of JPL said a few days before launch.
A rover behemoth
Curiosity is a beast of a rover. At 1 ton, it weighs five times more than each of the last two rovers NASA sent to Mars, the golf-cart-size twins Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in January 2004 to search for signs of past water activity.
While Spirit and Opportunity each carried five science instruments, Curiosity sports 10, including a rock-zapping laser and equipment designed to identify organic compounds — carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of life as we know it.
At the end of each lesson for matins, i. e. the night office, is a long responsory which, in its simplest form, is thus made up: first, a biblical text (or an adaptation of one), which is the 'responsory' in a strict sense; on which follows a 'verse', also from Scripture; and after that the second half (or part) of the preceding 'responsory'.
For instance, .... the responsory at the end of the eighth lesson at matins of the first Sunday of Advent:—Responsory: 'Audite verbum Domini gentes, et annuntiate illud in finibus terrae *. Et insulis quae procul sunt dicite: Salvator noster adveniet.' Verse: 'Annuntiate, et auditum facite: loquimini et clamate.' And then comes a repetition of the second half of the 'responsory' proper: * Et insulis quae procul sunt dicite: Salvator noster adveniet.' It is obvious that, with an arrangement of this kind, to be tolerable at all the ' verse' must be such that its last words, when followed by the second half of the 'responsory', will make sense and form a continuous phrase. But the authentic and native Roman method of singing these responsories knew no need for such clever dovetailings; for according to that Roman method the ' responsory' was simply repeated in its entirety after the 'verse'.
R. Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the ends of the earth * And in the isles afar off, and say Our Saviour shall come.
V. Declare it and make it known, lift up your voice and cry aloud.
R. And in the isles afar off, and say Our Saviour shall come.
Those involved in science policy sometimes seem to me to be sleep-walking through the greatest crisis to afflict the West since the Second World War. True, from the point of view of the scientist at the bench, grants continue to flow and results continue to be published. Perhaps this is why wider discourse about science's role in society has hardly budged an inch.
For the past three years, I have grown steadily more impatient with this 'business as usual' approach. Whenever an academy president or research chief stands up to speak in public, I have been waiting for them to explain how they will do things differently. They never do.
At the World Science Forum in Budapest last week, some scientific leaders finally acknowledged the new reality. In particular, representatives of developing countries — which account for a fast-growing share of global science — talked of radical reorientation of research priorities to better match the pressing needs of their populations. And behind the scenes, analysts are mapping out fascinating, and sometimes alarming, possible scenarios for global science after the crash.
Challenged by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to face up to the implications of the economic crisis, prominent Western representatives at the forum, such as William Colglazier, science adviser to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and Chris Llewellyn Smith, former chief of Europe's particle-physics laboratory CERN, failed to do so in their plenary talks. And some speakers were clearly more comfortable discussing the planet's ecological crises than the economic ones currently alarming the general population.
Questions were soon raised, however, when Princess Sumaya bint el Hassan of Jordan's Royal Scientific Society captured the mood of the developing world. “We must ask ourselves why so much scientific research is driven by the consumer needs of a tiny elite,” she said. “We're being naive if we envisage business-as-usual for science in the new century.”
Some things remained unsaid at Budapest: no one criticized science's failure to join engineering groups in highlighting the lack of solid, productive foundations for the two-decades-long boom that ended abruptly in 2008. Nor was there criticism of failure to expose the pseudoscience that underpinned the exotic financial instruments that played such a central part in both the boom and the bust.
But the forum did reveal the beginnings of a serious response by scientific leaders to the tumult ahead. Despite much cosy rhetoric about defending research funding, one uncomfortable but realistic scenario is for it to nosedive, perhaps by one-third in the United States and the United Kingdom in real terms, over the next five years. Even though other nations will spend more money, that sort of change will wreak havoc.
One great danger is that scarce funding will consolidate around single-discipline research — even though everyone knows that the most valuable work is now multidisciplinary. An associated danger, already revealed in the US Congress, is that the social sciences will be expelled from the temple — just when, as Llewellyn Smith pointed out in Budapest, the hard sciences need to invite them in to help public engagement.
But the political outcomes of the crisis aren't yet clear enough to enable scientists to plan around them. That has led the International Council for Science (ICSU) in Paris, the global association of academies and scientific societies, to conduct a foresight exercise that explores how science as a whole might change shape over the next 20 years.
An ICSU task force led by physicist John Marks has been looking at all the drivers of global science and has consolidated them into two overriding forces: engagement with society and globalization (as opposed to nationalism). Plotting these two against each other, Marks told the forum, produces four distinct scenarios for the future — whatever the level of funding.
The first and most sunny, with more globalization and high engagement, would see a series of positive outcomes, including much more interdisciplinary research. The second — more globalization but low engagement — is rather like what we had before the crash, only worse. The ICSU PowerPoint slide for this showed bunches of vainglorious yuppies with mobile phones and portable computers, doubtless creating more gizmos and expensive drugs that most people in the world can't afford. The third scenario would have more nationalism, with high engagement. That might create a series of little Denmarks pulling away from each other to deal with their own problems, with their own research strategies and regulatory regimes.
Finally, and most ominously, there's more nationalism, with less engagement. This predicts old-fashioned, stick-to-your-knitting, single-discipline science, aligned with resurgent nationalism. The slide for this one had a mushroom cloud at one stage, but Marks settled for a barely more reassuring image of some darkly lurking battleships.
The ICSU exercise isn't complete yet and not everyone sees its value. But it outlines the choices that science faces. Scientists have always cultivated globalization, and can keep pushing for it. Engagement is different; a tribal disdain for the social sciences still holds sway in the laboratory, as does a haughty disregard for the views and demands of the general public. Both outlooks need to be jettisoned if science is to contribute and thrive in this new world.
"Step Four: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."
Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires--for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship--are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.
Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.
Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.
Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let's have a closer look at what the basic problem is. Simple examples like the following take on a world of meaning when we think about them. Suppose a person places sex desire ahead of everything else. In such a case, this imperious urge can destroy his chances for material and emotional security as well as his standing in the community. Another may develop such an obsession for financial security that he wants to do nothing but hoard money. Going to the extreme, he can become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself both family and friends.
Nor is the quest for security always expressed in terms of money. How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection. This weak one, failing to meet life's responsibilities with his own resources, never grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and afraid.
We have also seen men and women who go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fellows. These people often throw to the winds every chance for legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.
But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similar uproar. Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the protectors themselves--two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts, too.
Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more passions possible. We have drunk for vain glory--that we might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power. This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.
If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.
If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the opposite. We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested inventory. No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle cut us down. We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety-- first, last, and all the time--is the only thing we need to work for. We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all along, except for our drinking, what need is there for a moral inventory now that we are sober?
We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people--people who really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable--that our resentments are the "right kind." We aren't the guilty ones. They are!
At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsors come to the rescue. They can do this, for they are the carriers of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. They comfort the melancholy one by first showing him that his case is not strange or different, that his character defects are probably not more numerous or worse than those of anyone else in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his own defects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic, stocktaking is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably points out that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted along with his liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidity and encourage balance. As soon as he begins to be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than fearfully, look at his own defects.
The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory are confronted with quite another problem. This is because people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind themselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcely need comforting. The problem is to help them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light of reason can shine.
First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A. members have suffered severely from self-justification during their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink because times were hard or times were good. We had to drink because at home we were smothered with love or got none at all. We had to drink because at work we were great successes or dismal failures. We had to drink because our nation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad infinitum.
We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.
But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.
To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating. Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word "blame" from our speech and thought. This required great willingness even to begin. But once over the first two or three high hurdles, the course ahead began to look easier. For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.
Of course the depressive and the power-driver are personality extremes, types with which A.A. and the whole world abound. Often these personalities are just as sharply defined as the examples given. But just as often some of us will fit more or less into both classifications. Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are. Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to step into them and walk with new confidence that he is at last on the right track.
Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees. To those having religious training, such a list would set forth serious violations of moral principles. Some others will think of this list as defects of character. Still others will call it an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.
To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings--the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses.
All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm at the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.
So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it must seem to every newcomer that more is being asked of him than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat him back every time he tries to look within himself. Pride says, "You need not pass this way," and Fear says, "You dare not look!" But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a complete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene. As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable. These are the first fruits of Step Four.
By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of the worst of these defects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock. Now willing to commence the search for his own defects, he will ask, "Just how do I go about this? how do I take inventory of myself?"
Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly obvious. Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and society. Looking back over his life, he can readily get under way by consideration of questions such as these:
When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me? What people were hurt, and how badly? Did I spoil my marriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize my standing in the community? Just how did I react to these situations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothing could extinguish? Or did I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer, and thus absolve myself? How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters? When denied, did I become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on other people? If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for promiscuity?
Also of importance for most alcoholics are the questions they must ask about their behavior respecting financial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed, possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst. Surveying his business or employment record, almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these: In addition to my drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my financial instability? Did fear and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me with conflict? Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacy by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility? Or by griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional abilities? Did I overvalue myself and play the big shot? Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I double-crossed and undercut my associates? Was I extravagant? Did I recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it was repaid or not? Was I a pinch penny, refusing to support my family properly? Did I cut corners financially? What about the "quick money" deals, the stock market, and the races?
Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally find that many of these questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic housewife can also make the family financially insecure. She can juggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget, spend her afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt by irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.
But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of jobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine themselves ruthlessly to determine how their own personality defects have thus demolished their security.
The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this: Looking at both past and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did these perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.
Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses these same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent have my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions of others are part of the cause, what can I do about that? If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn up the root causes.
But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.
Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with. Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been abashed to find that this is so simply because we have buried these self same defects deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification. Whatever the defects, they have finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.
Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword when taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to write out our questions and answers. It will be an aid to clear thinking and honest appraisal. It will be the first tangible evidence of our complete willingness to move forward.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness: let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Be not very angry, O Lord, neither remember our iniquity for ever:
thy holy cities are a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation:
our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness: let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing,
and we all do fade as a leaf:
our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away;
thou hast hid thy face from us:
and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness: let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen;
that ye may know me and believe me:
I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour:
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness: let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, my salvation shall not tarry:
I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions:
fear not for I will save thee:
for I am the Lord thy god, the holy one of Israel, thy Redeemer.
The Advent Prose is a series of texts adapted from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and said, or more usually sung, in churches during the season of Advent. In its Latin form, it is attributed to Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, who lived in the fourth century. The English translation is traditional. It is most common in high church Anglican or Roman Catholic churches, but no doubt known elsewhere as well. There are several ways of singing it, but a common one is for the Rorate section, shown here with emphasis to be sung as a chorus, and for the choir to take the verses, with the chorus alternating. Although the English text says 'Drop down, ye heavens...', the Latin verb rorare actually means 'to make or deposit dewdrops', a fact which evaded me when I first came to the piece. Similarly, justum in the second line means 'the just man', rather than 'righteousness'.
(Vulgate, text), the opening words of Isaiah 45:8. The text is used frequently both at Mass and in the Divine Office during Advent, as it gives exquisite poetical expression to the longings of Patriarchs and Prophets, and symbolically of the Church, for the coming of the Messias. Throughout Advent it occurs daily as the versicle and response at Vespers. For this purpose the verse is divided into the versicle, "Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum" (Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just), and the response: "Aperiatur terra et germinet salvatorem" (Let the earth be opened and send forth a Saviour"). The text is also used: (a) as the Introit for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, for Wednesday in Ember Week, for the feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin, and for votive Masses of the Blessed Virgin during Advent; (b) as a versicle in the first responsory of Tuesday in the first week of Advent; (c) as the first antiphon at Lauds for the Tuesday preceding Christmas and the second antiphon at Matins of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin; (d) in the second responsory for Friday of the third week of Advent and in the fifth responsory in Matins of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin. In the "Book of Hymns" (Edinburgh, 1910), p. 4, W. Rooke-Ley translates the text in connection with the O Antiphons:
"Mystic dew from heaven
Unto earth is given:
Break, O earth, a Saviour yield —
Fairest flower of the field".
The exquisite Introit plain-song may be found in in the various editions of the Vatican Graduale and the Solesmes "Liber Usualis", 1908, p. 125. Under the heading, "Prayer of the Churches of France during Advent", Dom Guéranger (Liturgical Year, Advent tr., Dublin, 1870, pp. 155-6) gives it as an antiphon to each of a series of prayers ("Ne irascaris", "Peccavimus", "Vide Domine", "Consolamini") expressive of penitence, expectation, comfort, and furnishes the Latin text and an English rendering of the Prayer. The Latin text and a different English rendering are also given in the Baltimore "Manual of Prayers" (pp. 603-4). A plain-song setting of the "Prayer", or series of prayers, is given in the Solesmes "Manual of Gregorian Chant" (Rome-Tournai, 1903, 313-5) in plain-song notation, and in a slightly simpler form in modern notation in the "Roman Hymnal" (New York, 1884, pp. 140-3), as also in "Les principaux chants liturgiques" (Paris, 1875, pp. 111-2) and 'IRecueil d'anciens et de nouveaux cantiques notés" (Paris, 1886, pp. 218-9).
Pray along with~Compline (Night Prayer) Gregorian
The Order for Compline
ACCORDING TO THE HOLY RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT
AND THE BREVIARIUM MONASTICUM
1963/65/ still in use by many traditional minded catholic Benedictine monasteries today!
Produced for 'Full Screen' mode.
chant by http://www.prinknashabbey.org/ 1985
Almost contemporary with [the above acclamations] are the acclamations found in our English Egbert Pontifical (probably compiled before 769) which with other English manuscripts has preserved to us the earliest detailed account of a coronation in the West. The text is a little uncertain, but probably should read as follows:Anglicans do not, in fact, officially celebrate Christ the King in the first place; for us, it's simply the Last Sunday after Pentecost. (Stephen Gerth of St. Mary the Virgin in New York explains the historical tradition of celebrating Christ as King at Epiphany; he says that "In origin, [the feast day of] Christ the King wasn’t about Christ; it was about the pope." There's more about that at the link; the holiday initially was set, in 1925, for the last Sunday in October, and the pope's encyclical stated that it was specifically in order to fight "anti-clericalism." I agree with Fr. Gerth that the compilers of the 1979 BCP did a really good thing by ignoring the origin of the Feast and moving the celebration of the Kingship of Christ to the last day of the Church Year - and without actually celebrating it as feast day. Nicely done indeed! It's a great day, I think - and I do like that Anglicans take the focus off the earthly "rulers," and put it entirely on Christ alone.)
Then let the whole people say three times along with the bishops and the priests; 'May our King, N., live for ever' (Vivat Rex N. in sempiternum). And he shall be confirmed upon the throne of the kingdom with the blessing of all the people while the great Lords kiss him, saying: 'For ever. Amen, amen, amen.'There is also in the Egbertine ritual a sort of litany closely resembling the imperial acclamations just referred to, and this may be compared with the elaborate set of laudes, technically so called, which belong to the time of Charlemagne and have been printed by Duchesne in his edition of the Liber Pontificalis, II, 37. In these imperial laudes the words Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands), nearly always find a place. It should be added that these acclamations or some similar feature have been retained to this day in the Eastern coronation rituals and in a few of Western origin, amongst others in that of England. Thus for the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902 the official ceremonial gave the following direction:
When the Homage is ended, the drums beat and the trumpets sound, and all the people shout, crying out: 'God save King Edward!' 'Long live King Edward!' 'May the King live for ever!'
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.Hatchett's Commentary has this about the collect:
This is a somewhat free translation by Capt. Howard E. Galley of the collect of the Feast of Christ the King in the Roman Missal. Christ is portrayed as the king who frees those who are bound and unites under His gracious rule all who are divided.Not sure at all who "Capt. Howard E. Galley" is, though! The original collect for this day - this one's from the 1549 BCP - is the "Stir up" collect now used, in amended form, on Advent 3:
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.)The St. Thomas Choir also sings a lovely setting of Dignus Est Agnus, the Introit for the day (I posted on that this past week), by Malcolm Williamson. That one's not on YouTube, so go have a listen to the service to hear it.
Crown Him With Many Crowns
Crown Him with many crowns,
The Lamb upon His throne;
Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns
All music but its own!
Awake, my soul and sing
Of Him who died for thee,
And hail Him as thy matchless King
Through all eternity.
Crown Him the Lord of life,
Who triumphed o’er the grave,
And rose victorious through the strife
For those He came to save.
His glories now we sing,
Who died and rose on high,
Who died eternal life to bring
And lives that death may die.
Crown Him the Lord of Lords,
Who over all doth reign,
Who once on earth, the incarnate Word
For ransomed sinners slain
Now lives in realms of light
Where saints with angels sing
Their songs before Him day and night,
Their God, Redeemer, King.
Crown Him the Lord of heaven,
Enthroned in worlds above;
Crown Him the King to whom is given
The wondrous name of Love.
Crown Him with many crowns
As thrones before Him fall;
Crown Him, ye kings, with many crowns
For He is King of all.
"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him"
Practicing Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription. It reads: "This is the way to a faith that works." In the first two Steps we were engaged in reflection. We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but we also perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself, is possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require action; they required only acceptance.
Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God--or, if you like, a Higher Power--into our lives. Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We can have faith, yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore our problem now becomes just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three represents our first attempt to do this. In fact, the effectiveness of the whole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to "a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."
....
Then it is explained that other Steps of the A.A. program can be practiced with success only when Step Three is given a determined and persistent trial. This statement may surprise newcomers who have experienced nothing but constant deflation and a growing conviction that human will is of no value whatever. They have become persuaded, and rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will not yield to a headlong assault powered by the individual alone. But now it appears that there are certain things which only the individual can do. All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness. When he acquires willingness, he is the only one who can make the decision to exert himself. Trying to do this is an act of his own will. All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will.
It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a most wonderful revelation. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us. To make this increasingly possible is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens the door.
Once we have come into agreement with these ideas, it is really easy to begin the practice of Step Three. In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done."
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.The Introit for the Day, Dignus Est Agnus, comes from Revelation 5:
The Lamb who has been slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour; let glory and dominion be his for ever and ever. Endow the King with your judgment, O God, and the King's son with your righteousness.Handel set this text, too, of course, as the last movement (along with "Amen") of Messiah:
34:11 For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.
34:12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.
34:13 I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land.
34:14 I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
34:15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD.
34:16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
34:20 Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.
34:21 Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide,
34:22 I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.
34:23 I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.
34:24 And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken.
Psalm 42. Quemadmodum
LIKE as the hart desireth the water-brooks : so longeth my soul after thee, O God.
2. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God : when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
3. My tears have been my meat day and night : while they daily say unto me, Where is now thy God?
4. Now when I think thereupon, I pour out my heart by myself : for I went with the multitude, and brought them forth into the house of God;
5. In the voice of praise and thanksgiving : among such as keep holy-day.
6. Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul : and why art thou so disquieted within me?
7. Put thy trust in God : for I will yet give him thanks for the help of his countenance.
8. My God, my soul is vexed within me : therefore will I remember thee concerning the land of Jordan, and the little hill of Hermon.
9. One deep calleth another, because of the noise of the water-pipes : all thy waves and storms are gone over me.
10. The Lord hath granted his loving-kindness in the day-time : and in the night-season did I sing of him, and made my prayer unto the God of my life.
11. I will say unto the God of my strength, Why hast thou forgotten me : why go I thus heavily, while the enemy oppresseth me?
12. My bones are smitten asunder as with a sword : while mine enemies that trouble me cast me in the teeth;
13. Namely, while they say daily unto me : Where is now thy God?
14. Why art thou so vexed, O my soul : and why art thou so disquieted within me?
15. O put thy trust in God : for I will yet thank him, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.
Bishops Open ‘Religious Liberty’ Drive
Archbishop Timothy Dolan spoke at the annual Fall assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore on Monday.
BALTIMORE — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened a new front in their fight against abortion and same-sex marriage on Monday, recasting their opposition as a struggle for “religious liberty” against a government and a culture that are infringing on the church’s rights.
The bishops have expressed increasing exasperation as more states have legalized same-sex marriage, and the Justice Department has refused to go to bat for the Defense of Marriage Act, legislation that established the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.
“We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said in a news conference Monday at the bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore. He added that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were trying “to push religion back into the sacristy.”
Archbishop Dolan also came prepared to answer questions about the sexual-abuse scandal at Penn State University, which has reminded so many observers of the Catholic Church’s own abuse scandal. He said that the accusations against a former university football coach were a reminder that sexual abuse is a universal problem that affects most institutions.
“Every time that once again takes over the headlines we once again bow our heads in shame,” the archbishop said. “We know what you’re going through, and you can count on our prayers.”
The bishops are struggling to reclaim the role they played in the 1980s and into the ’90s as a nationally recognized voice on the moral dimension of public policy issues like economic inequality, workers’ rights, immigration and nuclear weapons proliferation. Since then, however, they have reordered their priorities, with abortion and homosexuality eclipsing poverty and economic injustice.
But as the sexual-abuse scandal largely overshadowed their agenda in the last decade, their pronouncements on politics and morality have been met with indifference even by many of their own flock. The bishops issue guidelines for Catholic voters every election season, a document known as “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” which is distributed in many parishes. But the bishops were informed at their meeting on Monday that a recent study commissioned by Fordham University in New York found that only 16 percent of Catholics had heard of the document, and only 3 percent had read it.
Nevertheless, the bishops remain a forceful political lobby, powerful enough to nearly derail the president’s health care overhaul two years ago over their concerns about financing for abortion. Last week, the White House, cognizant of the bishops’ increasing ire, invited Archbishop Dolan to a private meeting with President Obama, their second. Archbishop Dolan said they talked about the religious liberty issue, among others.
“I found the president of the United States to be very open to the sensitivities of the Catholic community,” Archbishop Dolan said in the news conference. “I left there feeling a bit more at peace about this issue than when I entered.”
But in an impassioned address to the prelates, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., the chairman of the bishops’ newly established committee on religious liberty, said the church would urge priests and laypeople to take up the religious liberty cause. Bishop Lori said that in states like Illinois and Massachusetts, and in the District of Columbia, Catholic agencies that received state financing had been forced to stop offering adoption and foster care services because those states required them to help same-sex couples to adopt, just as they helped heterosexual couples.
Bishop Lori said in his speech, “The services which the Catholic Church and other denominations provide are more crucial than ever, but it is becoming more and more difficult for us to deliver these services in a manner that respects the very faith that impels us to provide them.”
The bishops have also been lobbying the Department of Health and Human Services to expand the religious exemption to the mandate in Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul that requires private insurers to pay for contraception. The exemption, as currently written, would still require Catholic hospitals and universities to cover birth control for most of their employees — which the church says is a violation of its religious freedom.
Some liberal Catholic commentators have criticized the bishops’ priorities, saying they are playing into the culture wars. John Gehring, Catholic outreach coordinator with Faith in Public Life, a liberal religious advocacy group in Washington, said, “The bishops speak in hushed tones when it comes to poverty and economic justice issues, and use a big megaphone when it comes to abortion and religious liberty issues.”
First came the atrocity, then came the vanity. The atrocity is what Jerry Sandusky has been accused of doing at Penn State. The vanity is the outraged reaction of a zillion commentators over the past week, whose indignation is based on the assumption that if they had been in Joe Paterno’s shoes, or assistant coach Mike McQueary’s shoes, they would have behaved better. They would have taken action and stopped any sexual assaults.
Unfortunately, none of us can safely make that assumption. Over the course of history — during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the street beatings that happen in American neighborhoods — the same pattern has emerged. Many people do not intervene. Very often they see but they don’t see.
Some people simply can’t process the horror in front of them. Some people suffer from what the psychologists call Normalcy Bias. When they find themselves in some unsettling circumstance, they shut down and pretend everything is normal.
Some people suffer from Motivated Blindness; they don’t see what is not in their interest to see. Some people don’t look at the things that make them uncomfortable. In one experiment, people were shown pictures, some of which contained sexual imagery. Machines tracked their eye movements. The people who were uncomfortable with sex never let their eyes dart over to the uncomfortable parts of the pictures.
As Daniel Goleman wrote in his book “Vital Lies, Simple Truths,” “In order to avoid looking, some element of the mind must have known first what the picture contained, so that it knew what to avoid. The mind somehow grasps what is going on and rushes a protective filter into place, thus steering awareness away from what threatens.”
Even in cases where people consciously register some offense, they still often don’t intervene. In research done at Penn State and published in 1999, students were asked if they would make a stink if someone made a sexist remark in their presence. Half said yes. When researchers arranged for that to happen, only 16 percent protested.
In another experiment at a different school, 68 percent of students insisted they would refuse to answer if they were asked offensive questions during a job interview. But none actually objected when asked questions like, “Do you think it is appropriate for women to wear bras to work?”
So many people do nothing while witnessing ongoing crimes, psychologists have a name for it: the Bystander Effect. The more people are around to witness the crime, the less likely they are to intervene.
Online you can find videos of savage beatings, with dozens of people watching blandly. The Kitty Genovese case from the ’60s is mostly apocryphal, but hundreds of other cases are not. A woman was recently murdered at a yoga clothing store in Maryland while employees at the Apple Store next door heard the disturbing noises but did not investigate. Ilan Halimi, a French Jew, was tortured for 24 days by 20 Moroccan kidnappers, with the full knowledge of neighbors. Nobody did anything, and Halimi eventually was murdered.
People are really good at self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don’t. We inflate our own virtues and predict we will behave more nobly than we actually do. As Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel write in their book, “Blind Spots,” “When it comes time to make a decision, our thoughts are dominated by thoughts of how we want to behave; thoughts of how we should behave disappear.”
In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside. These vocabularies made people aware of how their weaknesses manifested themselves and how to exercise discipline over them. These systems gave people categories with which to process savagery and scripts to follow when they confronted it. They helped people make moral judgments and hold people responsible amidst our frailties.
But we’re not Puritans anymore. We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it — like the culture of college football, or some other favorite bogey. People look for laws that can be changed so it never happens again.
Commentators ruthlessly vilify all involved from the island of their own innocence. Everyone gets to proudly ask: “How could they have let this happen?”
The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.
As regular readers know, I help lead a bible study at a local prison. The prison is about twenty minutes from home and because you can't take a cell phone into the prison I'm out of contact for about two and half hours while inside. So when I get out I call Jana and we talk as I make the drive home, catching up with what has gone on with her and boys while I've been at the study. And Jana will also ask about the study and how it went that night.
Well, a couple of weeks ago we had this conversation."So how'd the study go?" Jana asked.Outside of the prison, in the bible class I help lead at our church, I don't think people would sit still long enough to listen to a lot of the bible read aloud. And because of that I spend a lot of time adding things to the text, bringing in a lot of outside commentary, my own thoughts and observations, to make the text interesting or palatable. Outside the prison the biblical text is either too boring or too scandalous. Either way, the bible doesn't "fit."
"Good. I'm noticing something interesting."
"What's that?"
"Well, for my part of the study I find myself reading the bible quite a bit. Reading aloud long passages."
"That doesn't sound so bad."
"No, it's not. But I'm doing it because I don't feel that I can add anything. The best thing that can be said is said by just reading the bible. I can't improve upon it. So I just read the text."
But inside the prison I experience just the opposite. I find my attempts to "spin" or "supplement" the biblical text to be ineffective and distracting. The text seems to work all by itself. It fits.
Why is this so? I'm not sure, but my initial hypothesis is that the bible really only makes sense out on the margins, where life is desperate, where the metal meets the bone.
Consider Psalm 56 (the psalm I mentioned yesterday). Listen to these words:Psalm 56.1-7My sense is that a lot of Christians will struggle with this text. We don't often feel afraid because we are hounded by enemies who are slandering and boldly attacking us. We don't feel that enemies are plotting against us, spying on us, seeking to kill us.
O God, have mercy on me,
for people are hounding me.
My foes attack me all day long.
I am constantly hounded by those who slander me,
and many are boldly attacking me.
But when I am afraid,
I will put my trust in you.
I praise God for what he has promised.
I trust in God, so why should I be afraid?
What can mere mortals do to me?
They are always twisting what I say;
they spend their days plotting to harm me.
They come together to spy on me—
watching my every step, eager to kill me.
Don’t let them get away with their wickedness;
in your anger, O God, bring them down.
And because of this, we don't get, in our liberal sensitivities, the last sentiment: "in your anger, O God, bring them down."
So what we end up doing on the outside with texts like these is to feel embarrassed or worried about that last bit. We don't want intolerant Christians running around using texts like these to bash people. So we add a lot of meta-level commentary to make the text "fit" our context.
But imagine reading Psalm 56 in a prison. Nothing needs to be added. The text fits that context perfectly. All I need to do is read it. Without embarrassment or commentary. More, the text is absolutely riveting! Every line is an explosion of recognition, a word directly aimed at the lived experience of the audience. It's like looking into a crystal ball or a mirror.
And I don't do a thing. I just read Psalm 56. The Word does the rest.
I'm reminded in all this about how William Stringfellow came to be completely dominated by the biblical text, reading it almost exclusively late in his late. The categories of the bible, the way the bible described the world, took on greater and greater relevance for him, the most truthful and accurate way of describing the world. I always considered that to be a curious detail about a theologian I greatly admired and didn't give much thought about why that happened to him. But more and more, though I'm still embarrassed by the text at times, I think I'm starting to see what he saw.
Even if we do no more than confine ourselves to chapter 13 of Matthew, its string of shortish parables of the kingdom develops mightily the mysterious themes sketched in the Sower. If we toss in the parables of grace as well, we find the mystery of the kingdom more and more closely identified with Jesus himself (the parable of the Watchful Servants in Luke 12:35-48). If we include the parables of judgement, we find him saying that the final constitution of the kingdom rests entirely on relationship with him - and on that relationship as operative in the mystery of his catholic presence in all human beings (the parable of the Great Judgement, Matt. 25:31-46). And finally, if we take in the rest of his words and deeds, we find him claiming at the Last Supper that the cup is the New Covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20). In short, we find him asserting that in himself - in his death, resurrection, and ascension - whatever is necessary for the fullness of the kingdom has been accomplished purely and simply by what he has done.
The idea of the catholicity of the kingdom - the insistence that it is at work everywhere, always, and for all, rather than in some places, at some times, and for some people - is an integral part of Jesus' teachings from start to finish....Not only does he resort, as in the parable of the Leaven (Matt. 13_33), to the occasional illustration that quite literally uses the word "whole" (the holon in Catholic); far more often, he sets up his parables in such a way that by their very terms they cover nothing less than the whole world....
Consider some instances. In the Sower, the four kinds of ground listed clearly meant to cover all sorts and conditions of human beings; there no cracks between them into which odd cases might fall, and there is no ground beyond them to which his words do not apply. In the parable of the Weeds, he simply says that "the field is the world" (Matt 13:38). In the Net (Matt 13:47), he says the kingdom catches all kinds. And in his later parables, he develops this technique of including everybody into something close to an art form. Let me give you a handful of random examples. In the parable of the Forgiving Father (Luke 15:11-32), the whole human race's relationship to grace is neatly divided between the prodigal and the elder brother. Likewise, in the story of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18_9-14) there is no one in the world who can't be comprehended under one or the other character. And in the parable of the Feast for the King's Son's Wedding (Matt.22:1-14), there is not a single kind of response to grace that is left out: the characters in the parable - whether they are graciously invited or compelled to attend, whether they accept or reject the King's party - are plainly intended as stand-ins for the great, gray-green greasy catholic mass of humanity with which God insists on doing business.
In the case of the parable of the Sower, however, there is still another, if more subtle, indication of the note of catholicity. Jesus' parables, even when there were not spoken to anyone outside the small group of the disciples, were set forth, as I have said, in a context of highly parochial ideas about God's relationship with the world. If you have any feeling for the way narrow minds work, you will realize that the Sower, as told, would immediately strike such minds as reeking of the catholicity they had spent their entire religious lives deploring....
At the end of his interpretation of the Sower, Jesus adds a few remarks (Mark 4:21-25 and parallels). All of them, it strikes me, are rather edgy. He does not sound like a cool rabbi who has delivered an unexceptionably pious lesson; instead he sounds like someone who has just said something he knows is offensive but who is bound and determined to make it stick.
The first remark - "Does anyone ever bring in a lamp and put it under the bed?" - seems to me roughly equivalent to "What am I supposed to do, hide the truth just because people don't like it?" His second - "There is nothing hid, except to be made manifest" - has to have been offensive to those who believed that God has already disclosed, to them, everything really mattered. His third, - "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" - sounds like nothing so much as "I dare you think about all these implications that are terrifying you." His fourth - "Watch how you hear; the measure out judgment will be the way it's measured out to you, and even more severely" - practically makes my case all by itself. And his final remark, in which he repeats his preface to the interpretation of the Sower - "To him who has, more will be given; and from him who not, even what he has will be taken away" - is entirely too vague about the identity of the several "whos" to be of much comfort to anybody.
But the real clincher of the case the catholicity of the Sower is the collection of parables following in Matthew 13:24-52 (and parallels) that so clearly develops the catholicity of the kingdom. The synoptic writers plainly feel that all this material is of a piece: even if one or the other of the notes I have listed is merely adumbrated in the parable of the Sower, each of them, as the succeeding parables unfold, is given its turn at a full-dress exposition.
