Grace and Redemption in Cymbeline

Years ago my young son and I were listening to a modern Scottish folk song called “Knock Knock Knock.” Daniel wasn’t following the song’s plot, so he asked me what it was about. I told him, “Well, this noble Scotswoman’s husband goes off to war, and she tells a page to bring her news of how the battle goes. If her husband survives, the page is to knock twice; if he’s killed, the page is to knock three times. The husband survives, but the page gets killed, and no one else knows about the knocking code. Whoever brings the lady the news knocks three times, and in despair she throws herself out the window to her death without ever answering the door.”

Daniel thought about this, then said, “You know…if the people in these songs would just stop and think things through before taking action, they’d be a lot better off.”

He was right. But the nature of tragedy requires that characters not think things through. At the end of a tragedy the reader or audience is left with a lot of if-only’s. If only they’d waited. If only he’d kept control of his temper. If only she’d been more patient. If only they hadn’t been so unyielding or hasty or impetuous or ambitious or prideful. If only they’d allowed time for further developments or revelations to manifest, or simply for that first overwhelming wave of raw emotion to pass.

Tragedy can be defined as a drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances. Indeed, a tragic hero is ultimately someone unable to cope. He cannot or will not learn or adapt or conceive of possibilities beyond some all-encompassing obsession. He may have many admirable qualities, but his character is narrow in scope. He is defined primarily by a few unyielding and overweening characteristics such as jealousy, impetuosity, or pride, and ultimately these cramp and stunt his better qualities. He is like that person we all know who has so much going for him but can’t escape the power of some flaw or addiction—the one who makes us think, I have seen people just like you do exactly what you are doing and fail spectacularly, bringing shame and misery on themselves and everyone close to them. You think you’re different, you think you’re strong enough, but you’re not. And unless you turn from the path you’re on, you’re going to come to a bad end.

The thing about tragedy that works us up emotionally is the feeling that it didn’t have to be this way. All through the unfolding of the plot, we’re thinking, Don’t do it! Don’t send that letter. Don’t insult that person. But the hero does. And that action leads him to a different set of choices, where, again, there’s still a chance to do the right thing—which the hero fails to do. And the further the plot progresses, the more the character’s range of choices diminishes. Early on it’s possible to salvage a lot of future happiness; later, not so much. But right up until the final choice is made, there’s still time for the hero to at least be saved from utter ruin and find a measure of peace. After that, his doom is sealed. There are storms you can’t weather and falls you can’t get up from.

But sometimes, in art and in life, somewhere along that path of destruction the hero chooses rightly. Yes, he’s been morally compromised to a greater or lesser degree, but he still has many opportunities before him, and his experience has taught him wisdom and appreciation for things of value. This is the nature of grace, to be pulled back from the precipice, rescued, rehabilitated, and fitted for a full and productive and joyful life.

It’s also the nature of the romance plot. Romance is tricky to define because the word is used for wildly different applications, but dramatic romance might informally be thought of as a potential tragedy in which the hero stops and thinks, to good effect.

There’s a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy and his father are trapped in a stone chamber with no way out. Indy starts beating himself senseless against a wall trying to force a way through, but Henry Senior calmly takes a seat and says, “I find that if I just sit down and think…” Before he’s finished the words, a hidden staircase opens up, triggered by Henry’s weight on the chair. Henry finishes up cheerfully, “…a solution presents itself!”

So the hero in a dramatic romance stops and thinks, and learns, and grows, and triumphs. He moves from a tragic hero’s narrow focus to a place of wisdom and perspective and maturity.

The designation of dramatic romance is a relatively modern one. Shakespeare himself didn’t use the term. Seven years after his death, when thirty-six of his known thirty-seven plays were published in the First Folio, they were all categorized as tragedies, comedies, or histories. Of the plays that were later reclassified as romances, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale were called comedies in the First Folio, Pericles of Tyre wasn’t included at all, and Cymbeline was listed as a tragedy.

Dramatic romance does have much in common with tragedy on the one hand and comedy on the other. (An Elizabethan dramatic comedy is primarily defined by its happy ending and usually includes greater emphasis on situation than character, wordplay humor, multiple intertwining plotlines, mistaken identity, separation and reunion, and lovers who triumph in spite of opposition.) A contemporary of Shakespeare’s, John Fletcher, actually used the term tragicomedy to define the emerging genre that united tragic and comedic elements.

It wasn’t until 1875 that Irish critic and poet Edward Dowden proposed that Shakespeare’s late plays—The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Pericles of Tyre, and Cymbeline—should be classed as dramatic romances. Dowden argued that these plays resembled late medieval and early modern romances—which, interestingly, had gone out of fashion by the time Shakespeare wrote his late plays. Miguel de Cervantes was satirizing medieval romances in Don Quixote around 1600; Shakespeare’s romance plays were probably written between 1608 and 1612. Other critics agreed with Dowden that the late plays represented a more complex kind of comedy and ought to have a special designation of their own. Romance is just a label, but a useful one here.

Like a comedy, a dramatic romance has a happy ending involving the reunion of long-separated lovers or family members. A dramatic romance also contains a contrast of scene, courtly and pastoral, and often exotic; magic and other fantastical elements; and the presence of pre-Christian, masque-like figures. In The Tempest we have Prospero summoning goddesses; in Cymbeline, which takes place in pre-Christian, Roman-ruled Britain, we have an actual appearance by Jupiter (though there is some question as to the authenticity of this scene).

Most significantly, the plotline of a romance is described as redemptive. And where there’s redemption, there’s some egregious badness from which characters need to be redeemed, a potential tragedy caught in time before all is lost.

The romance Cymbeline shares some similarities of plot with Romeo and Juliet and Othello, which are tragedies, but with significant differences. A woman wakes from a death-like sleep beside a corpse that she believes to be her husband’s. Juliet stabs herself and dies, but Innogen, though she grieves and loses consciousness from shock, doesn’t commit suicide or consider doing so. A gullible man is persuaded by a scheming Italian that his wife is unfaithful to him. Othello goes right to work killing Desdemona with his bare hands, but Posthumus engages a very unreliable assassin, and his later ruminations make it evident that he didn’t expect the assassin to follow through. Later, Posthumus gets word that Innogen is dead; he’s tormented by grief and self-loathing, but unlike Romeo and Othello, he doesn’t kill himself. He joins a battle, and hopes and expects to meet death while fighting for his country.

Robert Heilman writes,

Different conventions are at work…those of tragedy…those of dramatic romance. As it is used here, convention does not mean a formula, stereotype, or constricting rule, but rather a certain point of view, a way of perceiving human behavior, of understanding it and responding to it emotionally….The tragic convention interprets life as a clash between, on the one hand, transcendent principles of order and, on the other, urgencies of desire and intensities of feeling that, once they are in play, lead inevitably to destructive encounters and somber catastrophes. The convention of romance approaches life in terms of the ultimate reconcilability of desires and circumstances; though ambitions and needs may be great, they tend to fall within a realm of moral possibility; and circumstances, though they may be antagonistic for a long period, eventually yield to meritorious humanity. The tragic involvement is total, reckless, irremediable; the protagonist is wholly committed to a situation which seems to enfold all of life’s possibilities. In contrast, in the convention represented in Cymbeline the personal impulse does not become identical with, or aspire to dominate, all of reality; beyond the individuals there is an independent life that makes legitimate claims or offers alternative possibilities.

This is not to imply that romance is “tragedy lite.” Heilman also writes,

Romance is not watered-down tragedy; it is another way of looking at conduct and experience. It is equally aware of serious dangers to life and well-being and of preventives, safety devices, the means of return from the shadows. It does not fall short of something that might be expected of it; rather it adopts a different perspective, and the better the individual romance is, the greater its ability to persuade us of the validity of its perspective.

Shakespeare’s tragedies currently enjoy greater popularity than his romances—The Tempest is probably the only one of the romances familiar to modern audiences—but at one time the romance Cymbeline was very popular. It was a favorite of literary critic William Hazlitt and of John Keats. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s favorite Shakespearean line is from the final scene of Cymbeline.

The hero of Cymbeline is Posthumus Leonatus. The title character, Cymbeline, is mostly a figurehead; he errs and is redeemed, but the play is primarily concerned with Posthumus and with Cymbeline’s daughter Innogen.

Twenty years before the play’s action begins, a British ruler and warrior called Sicilius Leonatus loses two grown sons in battle and dies of sorrow before the birth of his youngest son, who is therefore called Posthumus Leonatus. Postumus’s mother dies while in labor with him; he’s born by Caesarian after her death. From the very beginning of his life, Postumus is alone in the world.

The baby is adopted by Cymbeline, a Briton king. Like Posthumus’s father, Cymbeline has lost two sons, taken from him at two and three years of age by a courtier named Belarius, whom Cymbeline wrongly accused of treason. Cymbeline lavishes Posthumus with the care and education he would have given his own sons. Posthumus thrives in this environment and grows into a beloved and respected man.

Cymbeline has another child, Innogen, a daughter of excellent character and intelligence. Innogen and Posthumus, raised together from childhood, fall in love. But Cymbeline, like many widowed kings in stories, has chosen badly in his second marriage, and his second wife disapproves the match. The queen is self-serving, murderous, and manipulative, and her son from her first marriage, Cloten, is as wicked as his mother and just clever enough to be dangerous. With Cymbeline’s own sons missing for twenty years and presumed dead, Innogen is the heir to the kingdom. The queen wants the throne to pass to her own son, so she persuades Cymbeline to make Innogen marry Cloten.

The character of Innogen is considered one of this play’s greatest strengths. Heilman writes,

Even allowing for the susceptibility of male critics to so charming and devoted a creature as Innogen, whose attractions, ranging as they do from sweetness of affection to sharpness in repartee, from blind fidelity to keen insight into motives and character, from cookery to courage, make her virtually a dream girl, there is no doubt that she is one of the most substantially characterized, and hence convincing, of Shakespeare’s romantic heroines.

Innogen is innocent (the similarity of sound is probably no accident) but shrewd. She isn’t fooled as her father is by the counterfeit charms of the queen. She loves and respects her father but she doesn’t mince words when telling him of her contempt for Cloten, and when Cymbeline insults Posthumus she talks back and defends Posthumus in no uncertain terms. In the opening scene, one unnamed gentleman fills in another on Posthumus’s history.

The King he takes the babe

To his protection, calls him Posthumus Leonatus,

Breeds him and makes him of his bedchamber,

Puts to him all the learnings that his time

Could make him the receiver of, which he took

As we do air, fast as ’twas minist’red,

And in’s spring became a harvest, lived in court—

Which rare it is to do—most praised, most loved,

A sample to the youngest, to th’ more mature

A glass that feated them, and to the graver

A child that guided dotards. To his mistress,

For whom he now is banished—her own price

Proclaims how she esteemed him and his virtue.

By her election may be truly read

What kind of man he is (I, i, 47-61).

After giving Posthumus a glowing commendation, the gentleman winds up by saying that the highest praise he can offer of Posthumus is to say that Innogen loves him.

Innogen and Posthumus marry in secret and exchange jewelry as tokens—a bracelet for her, a diamond ring for him. After learning of their elopement, Cymbeline banishes Posthumus on pain of death and imprisons Innogen to coerce her into marrying Cloten anyway.

Meanwhile, the queen goes to work compounding a poison, planning to murder both Innogen and Cymbeline after Innogen’s wedding to Cloten. She asks Cornelius, the royal physician, for the ingredients. Cornelius finds this just a little suspicious and supplies her instead with a potion that will give the temporary appearance of death without causing permanent harm.

The banished Posthumus goes to Rome and meets an Italian named Iachimo. After hearing Posthumus praise Innogen’s virtue, Iachimo challenges him to a wager. If Iachimo can go to Britain and seduce Innogen, Posthumus will give Iachimo the diamond ring that Innogen gave him. If Innogen remains true, Iachimo will give Posthumus ten thousand ducats and meet Posthumus in combat.

The idea of giving some yahoo you just met (or anyone else) permission to go to Britain to try to seduce your wife while you stay behind in Italy is obviously insane to a modern reader, but according to the conventions of the time it’s perfectly reasonable behavior. Posthumus and Iachimo even draw up a written contract to formalize the arrangement.

Even when viewed from a more modern sensibility, Posthumus’s actions in this scene are not as bad as they might be. The scene is a good one, lively and quick-paced, and Posthumus shows himself courteous, well-spoken, and intelligent. He adores his wife and is quick to feel any slight to her honor. Once her virtue is questioned, it must be vindicated. At this stage Posthumus never doubts her; he wants to see her rightly honored. His faith in her is an excellent thing in itself but ought to be balanced by foresight and self-control. Like a typical tragic or near-tragic figure, Posthumus is too narrowly focused.

Posthumus underestimates Iachimo’s cunning and his determination to win at any cost. Perhaps judging Iachimo by his own character, Posthumus unconsciously expects his adversary to play fair. Much is made in the play of Latin cunning versus British forthrightness; the contrast between Iachimo’s scheming and Posthumus’s naïveté is the most striking example. Heilman describes Iachimo as “an Italian rascal, a conventional source of agreeable shudders in Renaissance England.”

Iachimo presents himself to Innogen as a friend of Posthumus’s from Rome. She’s eager for news of her husband, and Iachimo tells her that Posthumus is very well, very well indeed, not despondent at all; in fact he’s known in Rome as the Briton reveller and spends himself on prostitutes. Iachimo tells this as if reluctantly, saying that Innogen’s beauty and obvious good character compel him to make the painful truth known. At this point Innogen is distressed but not fully convinced. And once Iachimo professes his own admiration for her and offers himself as a lover so she can be revenged on Posthumus, her response is swift and certain.

Away, I do condemn mine ears that have

So long attended thee. If thou wert honorable,

Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not

For such an end thou seek’st, as base as strange.

Thou wrong’st a gentleman who is as far

From thy report as thou from honor, and

Solicit’st here a lady that disdains

Thee and the devil alike (I, vi, 141-8).

But Iachimo is not called an Italian rascal for nothing. Here is his response.

O happy Leonatus! I may say

The credit that thy lady hath of thee

Deserves thy trust, and thy most perfect goodness

Her assured credit. Blessèd live you long,

A lady to the worthiest sir that ever

Country called his, and you his mistress, only

For the most worthiest fit. Give me your pardon.

I have spoke this to know if your affiance

Were deeply rooted, and shall make your lord

That which he is, new o’er; and he is one

The truest mannered, such a holy witch

That he enchants societies into him.

Half all men’s hearts are his (156-68).

Clever Italian! He says he propositioned Innogen only to test her virtue, because he thinks so highly of her husband! Now he rejoices that he can give Posthumus a good report. Innogen, herself a forthright Briton, believes him.

Then Iachimo asks a favor. He’s carrying a chest full of treasures for a gift to the Emperor and wants to keep it safe. Might Innogen be willing to hide it for him overnight? Innogen agrees to stow the chest in her own bedchamber.

That night, after Innogen goes to sleep, Iachimo climbs out of the chest. He writes down a description of the arrangement of Innogen’s bedroom, examines her naked body, makes note of a distinctive mole under her left breast, and removes from her arm the bracelet that Posthumus gave her. Then he climbs back into the chest to wait for morning. This is villainy on a high order, something that Posthumus and Innogen in their innocence would never have guessed.

In the morning, Cloten urges Innogen to forget Posthumus and take him instead. Weary of his odious advances, she rejects him soundly in terms that demonstrate that though naturally courteous, she’s quick in repartee and willing to be blunt when necessary. Then Cloten insults Posthumus and mocks him for being an orphan dependent on the charity of Innogen’s father. Innogen replies,

Profane fellow!

Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more

But what thou art besides, thou wert too base

To be his groom. Thou wert dignified enough,

Even to the point of envy, if ’twere made

Comparative for your virtues to be styled

The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated

For being preferred so well (II, iii, 124-130).

Cloten responds by calling down a curse on Posthumus, and Innogen continues,

He never can meet more mischance than come

To be but named of thee. His meanest garment

That ever hath but clipped his body is dearer

In my respect than all the hairs above thee,

Were they all made such men (132-6).

Suddenly Innogen notices that her bracelet, which she’s certain she was wearing last night, is missing. While she’s puzzling over this, Cloten, stunned by her rejection, keeps repeating, “His garment?” and “His meanest garment?”

Meanwhile, Iachimo returns to Rome and tells Posthumus that he seduced Innogen without much effort at all. Iachimo describes Innogen’s bedchamber in detail; Posthumus replies that this is insufficient proof. Then Iachimo produces the bracelet, saying Innogen gave it to him. The final blow is Iachimo’s description of the mole under Innogen’s breast, which he dwells on with particular alacrity. Posthumus, convinced and devastated, hands over his ring.

Posthumus writes to Innogen, telling her to meet him in Milford Haven. He also writes to Pisanio, a servant he left behind in Britain, telling him to kill Innogen. Pisanio, baffled and distressed and knowing Innogen to be innocent of the unfaithfulness Posthumus charges her with, keeps quiet for the time being and takes Innogen to Milford Haven. There he shows her Posthumus’s letter and tells her not to return to court but to remain at Milford disguised as a man while they figure out what to do next. He also gives her a box of medicine given to him by the queen, which he says and believes will cure her of any indisposition she might suffer while away from home.

Meanwhile, Lucius, a representative from Rome, travels to Britain to collect tribute. Cymbeline, prompted by the queen, refuses. Lucius warns that this means war; Cymbeline cordially encourages him to bring it.

Lucius goes to Milford Haven to prepare for war against the rebellious Britons. Cloten, still stung by Innogen’s latest rejection of him and her preference of Posthumus’s meanest garment to his entire person, finds out that Innogen has gone to meet Posthumus at Milford Haven. Cloten obtains the same suit of clothes Posthumus wore when Innogen last saw him and announces his intention of finding the lovers in Milford Haven, murdering Posthumus in front of Innogen, and raping Innogen in the presence of Posthumus’s dead body while wearing Posthumus’s clothes.

Innogen, disguised as a young man, takes the name Fidele. Near Milford Haven, she meets Belarius, her father’s banished courtier, and her two brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus, who are living under different names given to them by Belarius, who has raised them as his own sons and kept their origins secret. The brothers are strangely drawn to Fidele/Innogen and invite him/her to stay with them at their cave and cook and keep house for them.

Belarius and the brothers go hunting, leaving Innogen alone at the cave. Innogen, worn out with travel and sorrow and living outdoors, takes the tonic given to her by Pisanio, not knowing that it was given to him as poison by the queen, who in turn did not know that Cornelius tricked her by supplying a harmless but death-like coma-inducing potion.

Meanwhile, Cloten, still wearing Posthumus’s clothing, meets Belarius and the brothers. Cloten attacks Guiderius, and Guiderius kills Cloten and cuts off his head with Cloten’s own sword. After Belarius recognizes Cloten as the queen’s son, Guiderius throws the head into the creek so Cloten’s body can’t be identified. Arviragus returns to the cave, where he finds Fidele/Innogen apparently dead and carries her body out to the other two. The brothers sing a song of mourning for Fidele/Innogen, then lay her and Cloten out for burial, cover them with herbs and flowers, and depart.

Innogen awakes beside a decapitated corpse dressed in her husband’s clothing and assumes the worst. She deduces that Pisanio forged the letters from Posthumus and conspired with Cloten to kill them both. She throws herself on Posthumus’s supposed body and faints. Later she is revived by Lucius, who assumes she is a page whose master has been slain. Lucius takes Fidele/Innogen under his protection.

Guiderius and Arviragus, aware of the coming battle between Britons and Romans, resolve to leave the forced seclusion Belarius has kept them in since childhood and fight on Britain’s side. Belarius, seeing their determination, joins them. Meanwhile, Posthumus, in Milford Haven as part of Lucius’s company, has received word from Pisanio that Innogen is dead. Filled with remorse, Posthumus disguises himself as a British peasant and leaves the Romans to fight on the British side, pledging to fight so recklessly that he can’t possibly survive.

Posthumus meets Iachimo in battle and vanquishes but does not kill him. Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Posthumus fight valiantly and save the life of the king. At this point Posthumus and Belarius both have reason to resent the king but fight for him anyway, though their identities are concealed and neither one expects a reward. To Guiderius and Arviragus, Cymbeline is a stranger; they have no idea it’s their father they’re defending.

The young princes rally some terrified British troops, restoring their courage and turning the tide of the battle. Posthumus, unable to find death in combat and aware that the Britons have won the day, surrenders himself to the Britons, claiming to be a Roman.

While awaiting execution, Posthumus falls asleep, and his cell is visited by the ghosts of his father, mother, and brothers, who express their love for him and rail against Jupiter for bringing such misfortune on him. Then Jupiter “descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle,” and throws a thunderbolt. He rebukes the ghosts, telling them he has plans for Posthumus and Innogen that they know not of.

Posthumus wakes to find Jupiter and the ghosts gone. A jailer takes him away to be hanged.

Cymbeline praises Guiderius, Arviragus, and Belarius for their valor in battle and knights them, not knowing them for his long-lost sons and former courtier. Cornelius, the royal physician, arrives and tells Cymbeline that the queen has died in a fit of madness brought on by her anxiety over Cloten’s disappearance. Before her death, she unrepentantly confessed her abhorrence of Cymbeline and her plans to murder him and Innogen by slow-acting poison and make Cloten king.

The prisoners of war, including Lucius, Iachimo, Fidele/Innogen, and Posthumus, are brought to Cymbeline prior to execution. Lucius asks Cymbeline to spare the life of Fidele/Innogen, and Cymbeline, strangely drawn to her just as her brothers were, does so. At this point, almost all the characters who are still alive are together but largely unknown to each other; most of them are wearing disguises and/or using assumed names.

Innogen sees Posthumus’s ring on the hand of Iachimo and demands to know where he got it. Iachimo, full of remorse, confesses his villainy against Posthumus and Innogen, not realizing that both are present. Posthumus, now aware of the deception practiced on him, raves against Iachimo and himself and confesses to the murder of Innogen. Innogen throws herself into his arms, and he, not recognizing her in man’s attire, thrusts her roughly away from him. Pisanio recognizes Innogen and tries to help her, but she accuses him of having tried to poison her. Then Cornelius speaks up and tells Pisanio the truth about the supposed restorative he had from the queen. Innogen and Posthumus embrace, and Cymbeline makes peace with his daughter. Pisanio reveals that Cloten left home in Posthumus’s clothes in search of Posthumus and Innogen, Guiderius reveals that he killed Cloten in a fair fight, and Belarius reveals that Guiderius and Arviragus are the king’s own sons. Cymbeline, humbled and wiser, issues pardons all around and pledges to voluntarily pay tribute to Rome as before.

It’s quite the plot—all those characters running around with their various schemes and deceptions and misconceptions, meeting and parting, instinctively loving or hating and sometimes beheading one another. In spite of all the subplots things never get confusing. The final scene is particularly well-paced with revelation after revelation after revelation, each given at the proper time, with characters giving appropriate reactions in brief asides. Not one of these revelations is a surprise to the audience. We’ve had the information all along. But we enjoy watching as the characters make their disclosures and assemble the full truth together.

Heilman writes,

In both tragedy and romance human beings are reservoirs of strong passions. Yet romance has a greater sense of limits—of the decorum or principle or rational endowment or even pragmatic awareness that balances off the passion and holds it back from the irretrievable.

It’s in the final scene—which, along with the character of Innogen, is commonly considered one of Cymbeline’s greatest strengths—that we see this balance fully restored. Iachimo’s confession speech is an emotionally satisfying piece of histrionic remorse. Like Iago, he is a theatrical villain, but unlike Iago, he repents. He tells Cymbeline,

Upon a time—unhappy was the clock

That struck the hour!—it was in Rome—accursed

The mansion where!—’twas at a feast—O, would

Our viands had been poisoned, or at least

Those which I heaved to head!—the good Posthumus—

What should I say? He was too good to be

Where ill men were, and was the best of all

Amongst the rar’st of good ones—sitting sadly,

Hearing us praise our loves of Italy

For beauty that made barren the swelled boast

Of him that best could speak; for feature, laming

The shrine of Venus or straight-pight Minerva

Postures beyond brief nature; for condition,

A shop of all the qualities that man

Loves woman for; besides that hook of wiving,

Fairness which strikes the eye—(V, v, 153-68)

Impatient, Cymbeline interrupts, saying, “I stand on fire. Come to the matter.” But Iachimo is not going to have his scene rushed. He replies,

All too soon I shall,

Unless thou wouldst grieve quickly. This Posthumus,

Most like a noble lord in love and one

That had a royal lover, took his hint,

And not dispraising whom we praised—therein

He was as calm as virtue—he began

His mistress’ picture; which by his tongue being made,

And then a mind put in’t, either our brags

Were cracked of kitchen trulls, or his description

Proved us unspeaking sots (169-178).

Again Cymbeline interrupts, saying, “Nay, nay, to th’ purpose.” Iachimo goes on,

Your daughter’s chastity—there it begins.

He spake of her as Dian had hot dreams

And she alone were cold; whereat I, wretch,

Made scruple of his praise and wagered with him

Pieces of gold ’gainst this which then he wore

Upon his honored finger, to attain

In suit the place of’s bed and win this ring

By hers and mine adultery. He, true knight,

No lesser of her honor confident

Than I did truly find her, stakes this ring;

And would so, had it been a carbuncle

Of Phoebus’ wheel, and might so safely, had it

Been all the worth of’s car. Away to Britain

Post I in this design. Well may you, sir,

Remember me at court, where I was taught

Of your chaste daughter the wide difference

’Twixt amorous and villainous. Being thus quenched

Of hope, not longing, mine Italian brain

Gan in your duller Britain operate

Most vilely; for my vantage, excellent.

And, to be brief, my practice so prevailed

That I returned with similar proof enough

To make the noble Leonatus mad

By wounding his belief in her renown

With tokens thus and thus; averring notes

Of chamber hanging, pictures, this her bracelet—

O cunning, how I got it!—nay, some marks

Of secret on her person, that he could not

But think her bond of chastity quite cracked,

I having ta’en the forfeit. Whereupon—

Methinks I see him now—(179-209)

He does indeed. Posthumus advances on him, saying,

Ay, so thou dost,

Italian fiend! Ay me, most credulous fool,

Egregious murderer, thief, anything

That’s due to all the villains past, in being,

To come! O, give me cord or knife or poison,

Some upright justicer! Thou, King, send out

For torturers ingenious. It is I

That all th’ abhorred things o’ th’ earth amend

By being worse than they. I am Posthumus,

That killed thy daughter—villain-like, I lie—

That caused a lesser villain than myself,

A sacrilegious thief, to do’t. The temple

Of virtue was she; yea, and she herself.

Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set

The dogs o’ th’ street to bay me; every villain

Be called Posthumus Leonatus, and

Be villainy less than ’twas! O Innogen!

My queen, my life, my wife! O Innogen,

Innogen, Innogen (209-27)!

Posthumus spends less than one full line rebuking Iachimo and seventeen rebuking himself. He has matured; he has gained perspective.

Heilman writes,

In adopting the genre of romance, then, Shakespeare exploits all its potential variety, at one level by an always lively movement of scene and plot, and in a more fundamental way by examining characters with either an amused detachment or a fullness that stops just short of tragic complications….The characters who survive have not been merely lucky; they have been modified, have learned somewhat better or wiser ways of confronting the unexpected.

The most notable passion to be modified in Cymbeline is the desire for quick revenge: Cymbeline against Belarius, Cymbeline against Posthumus, Posthumus against Innogen, even Britain against Rome. The resolution is marked by forbearance, generosity, restoration, and grace. The pivotal point appears to be when Cymbeline observes Innogen during the tranquil scene. He notes,

Posthumus anchors upon Innogen,

And she like harmless lightning throws her eye

On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting

Each object with a joy; the counterchange

Is severally in all (393-7).

Then Cymbeline immediately turns to Belarius and says, “Thou art my brother; so we’ll hold thee ever.”

Iachimo, realizing that Posthumus spared his life in the recent battle, kneels before him, saying,

I am down again,

But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee,

As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you,

Which I so often owe; but your ring first,

And here the bracelet of the truest princess

That ever swore her faith (412-7).

Posthumus replies,

Kneel not to me.

The pow’r that I have on you is to spare you;

The malice towards you to forgive you. Live,

And deal with others better (417-20).

Then Cymbeline says,

Nobly doomed!

We’ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law:

Pardon ’s the word to all (420-2).

With so much to be humbly thankful for, hostility is not worth holding onto. Characters who have themselves been the recipients of saving grace pass the grace along. Magnanimity is the order of the day.

In dramatic romance, redemption is key. Characters are flawed but have intrinsic worth, and when they err they are given a second chance. Catastrophe is followed by good news. Someone thought dead is alive; someone lost is found. A relationship that seemed irrevocably broken is restored, instantly, with the need for forgiveness scarcely even noted by the offended party. The overall mood is like that in the parable of the prodigal son, whose father is in full celebration mode before the son can deliver his rehearsed confession speech. Potential tragedy is arrested by grace, which generates a richly happy ending made all the more satisfying for the brush with disaster.

The play closes with a pledge by Cymbeline to forestall future bloodshed by continuing to pay tribute to Rome, though the Britons have won today’s battle. The peace that’s been restored in Cymbeline’s family will be extended to the entire kingdom. The king concludes with the words,

Never was a war did cease,

Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace (483-4).

Rattus Schmattus

This comic is more poignant to me than Scott Adams probably intended. The power of words to harm or heal, and the futility of trying to change hearts by changing labels, are nailed by these three pithy little panels. No matter what you call yourself, haters gonna hate.

Several months back, during the presidential debates, Ann Coulter called President Obama “the retard” on Twitter and implied that he was trying to secure “the retarded vote.” The use of “retard” and “retarded” as offensive slang is now so common that some young people might be justly surprised to learn that the words have any other meanings. I consulted some online dictionaries to check the status of the word “retarded” in contemporary usage. Merriam-Webster gave a primary definition of slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress; The Free Dictionary filled the number-one slot with affected with mental retardation but added the qualifier, often offensive. The traditional definition is slipping, but still far from obsolete.

The use of these words as insults rather than descriptive terms is meant to be funny, and it often succeeds. “Retarded” has an edge that “stupid” lacks, precisely because of that other, primary definition hovering around the edge of the conscious mind. I often laugh myself when I hear it used that way, when I’m caught off guard and the delivery is clever. But I’m always ashamed afterwards, because I always think of my oldest brother, who was what might nowadays be referred to as “cognitively impaired.” In spite of his disability, Magoo, as he was called, had a strong people-sense that transcended cognition. I never knew him, but growing up I was fascinated by the stories about his surprising displays of intuition, compassion, affection, and humor. Like the time at the amusement park when he held back his younger brothers and sisters to let another group of children go first on the rides. It turned out this group was from a school for the deaf. No one had told Magoo that, but on some level he knew these kids deserved special consideration and took it upon himself to give it to them. Or the time when, standing in the grocery checkout line with Dad, he became so enchanted with a nearby baby in a carriage, who happened to be black, that he unselfconsciously kissed the child. (This probably happened somewhere in or around San Antonio in the early 1960s. The child’s mother was so frightened by the possible reactions of other customers to the little white boy’s innocent affection that she grabbed her baby and fled the store, abandoning her groceries. So this did not work out so well for her, which is a shame; but I still like my brother’s lack of constraint.) Later Magoo befriended and showed special kindness to a young burn victim, also black, at the hospital where he ultimately lost his life at age ten.

“Retarded” is the word my siblings and I were taught for his condition. At that time the word was not meant offensively; it was merely a useful descriptive term. At the simplest level the word means slow; the musical term “ritardando” comes from the same root.

No one needs to lecture me about the fluid, dynamic nature of language. I know the difference between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics; I know about pejoration and amelioration and how they occur; I know that the definitions of words, as well as spelling and grammar, change over time. I’m well aware that the English we speak today is a far cry from the English of Chaucer’s day and an even farther cry from that of the Beowulf-poet. Even the English of Shakespeare’s plays would be difficult for us to understand if we heard it pronounced as it was when it was penned, and some of Shakespeare’s puns don’t make sense to modern ears because the words have altered. (The English of Shakespeare’s plays and of the 1611 King James Bible, by the way, is properly called Early Modern English, not Old English. Old English is the English of Beowulf and indecipherable to anyone who hasn’t studied it. The English of Chaucer’s day is Middle English. Please don’t say that the King James Bible and the works of the Bard are written in Old English. Just please don’t.)

Old English, FTW.

Pejoration and amelioration are ways in which words alter over time in terms of ethical or moral value. When a word’s meaning becomes more negative, we say that it has pejorated. When it becomes more positive, we say that it has ameliorated. The words nerd and geek have ameliorated wonderfully over my lifetime, and in my opinion this is one of the triumphs of the modern age.

Pejoration, however, is the more common process. Maybe this is because of entropy; I don’t know. When words pejorate badly enough, they become taboo, and we replace them with euphemisms, which over time also pejorate and become taboo in turn. Where we see this process occur most often is with words associated with death and with race or ethnic identity. Undertakers/morticians/funeral directors are constantly updating the words of their trade—though, to paraphrase Thomas Pyles, a loved one in a casket is just as dead as a corpse in a coffin. Likewise, pejoration of ethnic words is a quick business, often occurring in less than a generation’s time. It’s a sad business, as well; witness plucky little Ratbert’s attempt to alter people’s perceptions of him by replacing rat with rattus, only to see the more dignified term become instantly defiled.

Sometimes the reaction against pejoration is overblown. Most of us have scoffed at silly euphemisms contrived by people being overly sensitive or exaggerating their own importance. We ought to resist caving to foolish whims; otherwise the language will lose force, nuance, and clarity. But there’s more to it than that—like showing consideration, and respecting the differences among us, and choosing to use words in a way whose overall effect is to build up rather than tear down. And all that is done from a position of strength.

The issue is similar to the biblical one of meat sacrificed to idols. A first-century Christian who engaged in idol worship prior to his conversion might intellectually know that meat sacrificed to idols is just meat and not inherently evil, but feelings are subjective and don’t always obey intellect. And eating that meat—which technically he is free to do—hurts his conscience. The experience is like that of hearing a song you associate with a bad time in your past. The melody bypasses reason and taps directly into emotional memory, putting you in a funk that might last all day, hampering productivity and throwing a wrench in current relationships. If the association between meat and idol worship is as strong as all that, it’s best to abstain. In some cases, the person doing the eating might be perfectly easy in his conscience but keeping company with others who are less bold in their liberty. Here, again, it’s best to abstain, for the sake of another’s conscience instead of one’s own.

I know we can’t stop the tide of linguistic change. It may well be that a century from now, “retarded” will be just a synonym for “stupid” and its earlier definition will be forgotten. My aim is not to stifle change or hamstring the development of the imagination. I speak to individuals, not the great anonymous tide of English-speaking humanity. We can do better. We can respect each other’s feelings in matters like this. We can be kind.

Doing this sometimes comes at a cost. We may want to use a particular word because it has a punch which a less offensive synonym lacks. Giving it up might involve a genuine loss of power in our written or spoken speech.

I’m not advocating a wholesale emasculation, flattening, or dumbing-down of language into some nicey-nice collection of mealy-mouthed phonemic units that never offend anyone or mean much of anything. Words are tools. Some are soft and light, like dust cloths. Some have edges, like knives. Words with edges are useful but dangerous; they should be respected and kept away from small children. I wouldn’t stand by and let some well-meaning busybody remove all the knives from my house just because they are capable of hurting people. The very quality that makes them dangerous is also what makes them useful. Sometimes you need to cut things, and neither a dust cloth nor even a spatula will serve. Likewise, sometimes words ought to cut. Graft, greed, oppression, sloth, negligence, and perversion ought to be called out—sometimes with direct cutting language, sometimes with oblique slashes of satire, sometimes with hyperbole.

There are few hard-and-fast rules that will work here. Mostly we have to go case by case. But I think there are a few word usages we would do well to eliminate altogether—not because we have to, but of our own free will, in generosity of spirit. A good general guideline is that if my use of a word is likely to hurt an innocent person or erode his dignity in the eyes of others, I should abstain. Inflicting harm, deliberately or carelessly, and then excusing the action by claiming the immunity of liberty, is a poor practice.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Proverbs 18:21

Showers and Sunshine and April Faces

There are few sights more beautiful than an April face, in which laughter and tears mingle. Pure, tremulous joy following on the heels of despair—seeing that is such sweetness. It happened a lot when my kids were small. They’d come to me with some calamity—a rip in the seam of a favorite dress, a dismembered toy—cradling the broken thing in their hands, weeping and appalled, without hope but instinctively turning to me in their grief. And often what seemed irreparable to them was something I could easily set right with glue, needle and thread, or practical knowledge. “Look, honey, that head’ll just pop right back on again. See? Good as new.” “I know it looks like a horrible stain in your gauzy costume skirt, but the fabric’s so thin it’ll rinse right out.” And just like that, all was well. My kid was ecstatic, and I looked like a genius. I liked that. I liked it a lot.

Besides mending the broken, I was also in the business of retrieving the lost. Many a mile have I driven back to various locales to search for stuffed animals and action figures that were left behind. Gwendolyn, Emilie’s furry little jointed stuffed biped of indeterminate species, was lost and found many times. So was Brownie Bear. With what anxious tension did we scan the area where the lost thing had last been seen, and how great was our rejoicing when it was recovered!

But it didn’t always work out that way. Sometimes, try though we might, we couldn’t get the lost things back. It was like they’d just vanished into a void, which was maddening because I knew they really hadn’t. They were out there, somewhere; I just couldn’t get to them. I am haunted by losses—Daniel’s beloved collection of model dinosaurs, a stuffed dinosaur of Anna’s, Emilie’s first rag doll that I made her for Christmas when she was three.

Do I take these things too seriously? I don’t think so. We’re not purely spiritual beings; we have to do with matter and space and time. God made us that way. And when a child becomes attached to an object, investing it with a history and a personality, he gives it an imputed value that exceeds its intrinsic value. The loss of a favorite toy foreshadows future losses of health, opportunity, innocence, and life.

Children grow older, and their problems get more complex. They stop toting stuffed animals around with them, but they don’t stop breaking and losing things, both tangible and intangible. And you can’t always fix that. Sometimes it’s not desirable to rescue them from the consequences of their mistakes; sometimes it’s not even possible. Some things, once lost, are lost indeed and can never be recovered. Some things, once broken, can never be made whole. You want to—God, you want to. You would give your life blood to make things right. But almighty as parents appear in the eyes of small children, we have our limits. Much as I wish I could, I can’t be that genius with the glue gun all the time. Truth be told, I haven’t been that person in years.

Many of my friends, like myself, are the parents of grown and nearly-grown children raised in an atmosphere of love and reverence for God and his Word. Sometimes I look around at all of us and wonder, do we even know what we’re doing? I think in many cases we’re making it up as we go, responding to situations we could never have foreseen when our children were small, praying desperately for wisdom. I say this as one who so far has been spared a lot of heartbreak. And I say it with fear and trembling, because the past is no guarantee of the future. You can’t confer some special immunity on your kid, and you can’t assume that because you’ve escaped major trouble so far, you’re all clear. You never reach a point of being all clear from earthly calamity until death takes you.

But there is hope. More than I ever was as the mother of small children, God is in the business of finding and mending things. I don’t say this in resignation, like those who sigh and say, “Ah well, it’s in God’s hands now. All we can do is pray.” God is the beginning of hope, not the end of it. He’s the one who formed the human body and breathed life into it in the first place, the only one who knows how it’s truly supposed to function in a state free from death and decay. Corruption of mind and body was never part of our original design. It doesn’t belong; it’s an alien parasitic thing whose presence grieves God even more than it does us. And he can defeat it. Those who have fled to him for the cleansing of his blood have access to the full power of his redemptive work. His desire is to restore all, and he can do it. I’ve seen him do it for people I would have given up on and discarded. His restoration defies all human understanding of how the world operates. It’s as if entropy starts working backwards. The new life he promises us isn’t some sorry halfhearted thing limping its way along, crippled by history and habit. New life pushes through in audacious vigor, refusing to be smothered by past failures, seeking light and air and open spaces, growing and blossoming and reproducing. The past is crowded out; there is no room for it.

Of course we shouldn’t forget the grief and failures of the past or what they’ve taught us. There is most certainly a place for genuine fear in the heart of a Christian—fear of real consequences to sin, set up by a just and holy God. But our lives should be characterized by bold joy because of the enormous scope of his mercy and grace and the power of the new life in us. We should have both together, and wear an April face as we walk with him.

Working the Work of God

“Man, am I tired,” the young schoolteacher said at the end of a hard day.

His father, a lifelong rancher, scoffed. “You’re not tired. You sit in a classroom all day. You don’t do any work.”

We may well take issue with the rancher’s paternal manner, but he raises a legitimate question. What is “work”? Is it defined by effort or result? Is it necessarily physical? Must it produce something useful? Am I “working” when I tap away at a computer making a story or a blog post? Are athletes “working” when they train to pursue or propel a ball in accordance with a complicated set of arbitrary rules? Is my daughter “working” when she studies Latin? How about when she draws? What is the proper answer when a stay-at-home mother is asked with a condescending half-smile, “Do you work?”

Or condescending evil sneer.

My dictionary’s first definition of “work” is exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. A narrower definition farther down is productive or operative activity. Narrower still is employment, as in some form of industry, esp. as a means of earning one’s livelihood. The physics one, which I do not understand in the slightest, is force times the distance through which it acts; specifically, the transference of energy equal to the product of the component of a force that acts in the direction of the motion of the point of application of the force and the distance through which the point of application moves. The theological definition is simply righteous deeds.

Science.

I posit that the most basic work a person can do under ordinary circumstances (as opposed to extraordinary circumstances like climbing a tree before this wild boar gores me, or building a fire before I freeze to death) would be work that produces or processes food, because in the absence of food all other work becomes a nonissue. Clothing and shelter come close behind; after that things get blurry. But food is tops.

Most civilizations have a staple food, usually a grain. People-groups that cultivate grain are more stable than hunter-gatherers, and stability is foundational to civilization. (By “civilization,” I mean an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached, as opposed to simply a group of people living together in basic subsistence.) But a truly essential thing, something that simply must exist before a civilization can develop, is a food surplus.

Without a food surplus, people spend most of their time and energy scratching up a daily living. There’s nothing left to pursue art, science, or philosophy. Even basic craftsmanship can’t progress much when you’re always working for your next meal.

Thus.

A food surplus changes all that. Suddenly you have time to ponder things beyond subsistence, and members of your community can afford to specialize. After you get past the apprenticeship period involved in learning any new skill, this leads to greater efficiency in industry as well as the cultivation of the finer things in life. Metallurgy, written language, civil engineering, even a formal priesthood, all can flourish in the presence of a food surplus.

Another prerequisite for a civilization, or something that grows up along with it, is the building of walls. When you build walls, you commit yourself to staying in one place and protecting that place from predators, animal and human. And once you have those walls, you need to man them. You need an army.

Seriously.

It’s been said that an army marches on its stomach. Herodotus’s mind-blowing account of the march of the army of Xerxes from Persia to Greece contains some wild numbers which many modern historians find simply unbelievable, but I don’t think anyone has disputed the proportions—that is, that adding support personnel to combat personnel basically doubled the army’s size. Transporting a large army—whether 500,000 or 2.5 million—from Persia to Greece with supplies and equipment, on foot or by horse, and feeding them on the journey to keep them fit to fight when they get there, would be a logistical challenge in the modern or ancient world.

And I’m sure it looked just like this.

I recently read an article that said for every modern combat soldier, there are 2.5 support people keeping him going. My son, a soldier for the National Guard, estimates it’s more like 5.

This is only reasonable. A soldier, as the apostle Paul said, doesn’t concern himself with civilian affairs; he commits himself to a different task. He isn’t raising food or making clothing or constructing shelter. Someone else must bear the burden of feeding, clothing, and sheltering him, and fashioning weapons for him to carry, vehicles to transport him, and tools for him to use. His “work” is to defend the civilization he represents—to keep that civilization, with its livestock and its commerce and its written language and its codified system of government, and its walls, and its food surplus, safe from marauders who would otherwise pillage and burn it all to heck. He’s doing a necessary job, vital to our survival, and yes, we do want him on that wall.

(I’m of course aware that a military may abuse its citizenry and that not all wars are just, but the idea is still sound. Most pacifism is the indulgence of a coddled and sated society. Its adherents cannot understand what it would truly mean to lay down arms, forever, in a fallen world. Few of us can. We’re so far removed from the edge of annihilation, so deep in our security, that we’re like fish who don’t know what “wet” is.)

In summary, then, a food surplus is necessary both to building a civilization and to defending it.

Which brings us to the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.

The chapter begins with Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee. A multitude that earlier saw him heal the sick now follows him at some distance. Unlike the army of Xerxes, this multitude has no supply train. These are just a lot of regular people following an itinerant rabbi to who knows where. When they started the journey, they probably had no idea how long the trek would be. If they packed provisions at all, they’ve run out by now, because it’s implicit in the text that they have nothing to eat. They’re like several vanloads of unexpected guests pulling into the driveway right at dinnertime.

What happens next is so familiar to many of us that it may have lost its shock value. Jesus takes five barley loaves and two fishes and uses them to feed a crowd that’s well in excess of five thousand. After the meal is finished, twelve basketfuls of leftover bread fragments are collected.

Think about how this must have appeared to the crowd. Without expending significant time or observable energy, Jesus somehow generated an enormous quantity of food. Just transforming five loaves into twelve baskets of bread would have been a huge deal in itself, but that’s merely what’s left over after the multitude ate and was satisfied. How did Jesus do it? He didn’t wear out any equipment. He didn’t plant any seed—always an inherently risky venture, because seed can be eaten instead of planted, and once in the ground may or may not bring forth a good yield. Neither did he reap a crop, grind grain, or knead and bake dough. The bread simply appeared as he willed it to.

Imagine what a civilization could do if it had not just a food surplus, but an unlimited supply of work-free food! Think of the possibilities for advancement in art, literature, architecture, science!

And if you are a tiny nation oppressed by a conquering empire, and if your sustainable energy source—your anthropomorphic arc reactor technology, let us say—has been foretold by the prophets and anointed by God himself…well! Think of the power of your revolution! Watch out, Rome, it’s about to get real.

But wait! Not only can your uber-guy produce unlimited supplies of food, but he can also heal the sick! Your wounded soldiers will be instantly returned to service, no worse for wear! Your army is proof against both siege and assault. That alone makes it well-nigh unstoppable. And that’s not even counting any other superpowers Jesus may have up his sleeve. If he can do all this, imagine what’ll happen when you put a weapon in his hand!

Something like this guy, without the personality disorders.

The significance of all this is easily lost on twenty-first century Americans. Our economy is such that we see little connection between our labor (such as it is) and the food we eat. The expenditure of energy goes through a lot of intermediary channels between our jobs and our food supply, and most of us have far more than enough anyway. If someone presented me with twelve baskets full of bread fragments, I would be frantically visualizing my limited freezer space and wondering how we would ever finish it all before it went bad. Not so for a first-century working-class Israelite. Abraham’s descendants remembered how God fed their ancestors with manna in the wilderness when they were too nomadic, and too stuck in a desert, to cultivate grain. God had supplied their lack by a completely supernatural, previously unheard-of means: bread from heaven itself. It didn’t grow on any plant of the field; it just appeared on the ground, ready to eat as-is or be baked or otherwise cooked as the people pleased.

By producing bread out of almost nowhere, Jesus did essentially the same thing, only more so. What an unmistakable mark of authority from on high! No wonder some of the men present said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world. No wonder they decided to take him by force and make him king.

It’s easy to criticize Jesus’s contemporaries for not getting it, for expecting a tangible political redemption and not perceiving that Jesus was accomplishing much more. This is the historian’s fallacy, blaming the decision-makers of the past for failing to perceive things that seem obvious from our retrospective vantage point. The truth is, political redemption was a pretty reasonable thing for them to expect, because that was the shape their redemption had always taken in the past. Certainly the prophets gave indications of greater things to come, but a game-changer this big takes time to sink in.

Through a clever game of evasion, Jesus escapes the zealous king-making crowd. Eventually they do catch up with him, and he addresses them. And boy, do they get an earful.

Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

Labour not for the meat which perisheth–the stuff that fills the children’s bellies and provides a layer of protection against social and political chaos, or seems to; the stuff of prosperity and stability. This is an extraordinary thing to say. To “labour not” is to invite famine and dearth.

Perhaps wondering what possible alternative there could be, the people ask Jesus, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?

Jesus answers, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

This is the crux of the matter. The work of God is believing on the one he has sent. Not generating an endless food surplus or making a king of a guy who can; not stockpiling weapons or righteous deeds. Believing on Jesus. The only “work” that Jesus calls “the work of God” is an act of faith.

Does this sound too easy? Easy or not, people fail at it. Most of Jesus’s listeners at the time did. First they hedged by asking, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. (Notice how they still can’t get away from the word “work.”)

Jesus answers, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.

The true bread from heaven—the bread of God—is no mere physical substance, but a person, body and soul, who gives life unto the world.

A long back-and-forth follows, with the crowd getting increasingly irritated by Jesus’s insistence that rather than being merely the source of the bread of life, he is the bread of life.

It finally comes to this.

I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

This is understandably disturbing. I wouldn’t fault any earnest disciple for asking Jesus for clarification. He’s spoken in figures of speech before, and he’s always explained himself to those who made sincere inquiries. He’s a teacher, after all. Maybe the Twelve do ask for clarification later; John doesn’t say. But the crowd at large evidently doesn’t. After some more back-and-forth in a similar vein, many of his disciples–not the Twelve, but actual followers of Jesus, not random lookers-on–say, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?

Then Jesus asks, Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

Jesus isn’t talking about some crude cannibalistic ritual. It is the spirit that quickeneth. His words have import beyond the physical.

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

Among those who remain are the Twelve. Were they quicker on the uptake than those who left? Perhaps they were just as puzzled as the deserters about all this eat-my-flesh-and-drink-my-blood business but had sufficient faith in Jesus to believe that whatever he meant, he’s right, because he is who he is.

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, will ye also go away?

There are no words for the poignancy of this question, or of Peter’s reply.

Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.

Isn’t this what Jesus meant when he said that the work of God was to believe on the one he had sent? This is faith not just in his food-generating abilities or his healing powers, but in him. This is the way to partake of the bread of life. This is the work of God.

Of Errant Dogs and the Grace of God

These are two of our dogs, Avalon and Erin. They are sisters, half Lab and half Australian shepherd. They are not quite two years old. Greg brought them home from the shelter, where they were sharing one kennel after being surrendered by a previous owner.

Sister dogs.

It’s commonly agreed in our household that Erin, though very pretty and sweet, is not the cleverest of dogs. Avalon is a bit brighter, or seems so by the tilt of her eyes and the cock of her ears. Tara, the goofy, puling, lolloping Lab-Spaniel mix, now seems a sedate, responsible, grown-up dog in our canine hierarchy.

A dumb dog.

A smarter dog.

A downright brilliant dog.

Sometimes Erin and Avalon do dumb things, like submerging their front legs and heads in their water pail when getting a drink. (The bottom of the water pail has a perpetual layer of humus from their paws and coats.) Sometimes they chew things, like antique books or Christmas ornaments or scrap lumber or their own dog beds. Often Avalon will suddenly start barking at a visitor who’s been in the house for hours, and on more than one occasion Erin has been witnessed attempting to eat a rock.

And sometimes they get out of the yard when we don’t want them to. This was a big issue when we first brought them home over a year ago; they found escape routes that had been ignored by our older, less adventuresome dogs, and as soon as we’d block one—with barbed wire, bits of old roofing, scraps of hog wire, whatever we could scrounge—they’d find another. Eventually all the gaps were mended, and we enjoyed a long period of yard-boundary sanctity.

But not long ago, they started getting out again. At first we didn’t know how or where. Then one day I happened to be looking out my bedroom window just as Erin was slithering her way under the side gate through a gap that appeared no wider than a few inches. Undaunted by the narrowness of the space or the strand of barbed wire looped around the bottom of the gate, she contorted her slender body into unbelievable narrowness, yipping occasionally when the barbed wire snagged her. Avalon stood and watched until her sister had wormed her way out, then followed suit.

In “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost questions the necessity of fences in a place where property owners keep only trees, which are not likely to trespass, and challenges the oft-repeated adage, “Good fences make good neighbors.” But when animals are involved, there are sound reasons for these structures to exist—reasons like highways and railroad tracks and livestock. Dogs at large can do mischief and get hurt. In property as in life, boundaries generally exist for the well-being of people and animals.

One nice thing about these sister-dogs of ours is that when we call them home, they come instantly and gladly. I know the right way to call an errant dog: in a welcoming, encouraging, well-nigh joyous tone of voice. Anger and condemnation would be counterproductive; if you yell at him, he’ll just run away in confusion and fright.

So when I call Erin and Avalon back to the safety of the yard, I call them eagerly, lovingly. At the sound of my voice they turn, their mischievous plans forgotten, and run to me in an all-out, wide-eyed, ears-streaming-back, tongue-lolling lope. I continue to call encouragement, praising their obedience and cleverness. Alternatively, I might tell them how dumb they are in a nice tone of voice; it’s all the same to them. But mostly I say what they most want to hear—“Good dog.” No matter how annoyed I am, or how badly they have inconvenienced me, I call them with love and acceptance, never condemnation. And they come.

And every time it happens, I think, The grace of God is exactly like this.

I need the reminder. My default idea of God, the one that comes unbidden to my mind before I have a chance to recollect myself, is of someone calculating and skeptical and visibly underwhelmed by any inclination of mine to return to the yard after I’ve strayed. Certainly not yelling, but far from welcoming—arms crossed, foot tapping, with a cynical twist to the mouth and an unspoken expectation that it’s only a matter of time before I make a hash of things again.

This is an absolutely unbiblical view of God, the Enemy’s lie. It is he, not God, who is called the Accuser, who whispers reminders of past failures and insinuates that our repentance won’t count until it has proven itself. He would steal the joy of salvation and substitute dry, lifeless, prudent behavior modification plans for wacked-out grace. Mysteriously enough, it is precisely this wacked-out, unconditional grace that contains the power for true, lasting change in the human heart.

The Greek word metanoia (μετάνοια), translated in the New Testament as “repentance,” has the sense of a change of mind in both time and direction. The old is past and behind; the new is ahead, spatially and temporally. My errant dogs repent when they turn away from the wrong course and set their faces for home. There is no looking back. There is no cowering under the disapproving stare of the gatekeeper. There is no probationary period, no conditional acceptance, no recital of past wrongs. It’s truly a fresh start.

“Good dogs!” I tell them. And I mean it. They’re good dogs. They’re my dogs. And they’re home.

Waiting for the Moving of the Water

  1  After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

  2  Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.

  3  In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

  4  For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

  5  And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

  6  When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?

  7  The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

  8  Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

  9  And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked….

John 5:1-9

How often did the restorative stirring of the water occur? The passage doesn’t say. Perhaps there was no predictable pattern, and that’s why those who wanted healing had to wait there at the site. What a constricted existence that would be, constantly waiting on an event you have no power to accelerate or affect in any way. You would be forever focused on the water, watching for ripples, with nothing but your own pain and infirmity to compete for your attention. The primary definition of impotent is still “lacking physical strength or vigor,” but the word has an additional meaning today, and to modern eyes its use in the passage adds a layer of humiliation to an already bad situation. Perhaps this is not so inappropriate. Chronic illness always has an element of humiliation. All the things you would like to do—perform useful work, move around by yourself, enjoy a meal—are trumped by the words I can’t.

The man has been in this state for thirty-eight years. We don’t know how much of that time has been spent at the pool, but it’s been long enough for him to observe a pattern. The healing at the pool doesn’t work by queue. It doesn’t matter who’s been waiting longest; once the water is stirred, whoever gets in first is healed, and the sick people don’t take turns. There is typically such desperation about serious illness. All you want is to feel better. Your mind has no room for thoughts of equity or fairness, much less generosity. If you let the guy with the thirty-eight-year infirmity go ahead of you, who knows how long would pass before the angel troubled the water again, if ever? And the guy probably wouldn’t make it anyway because he had no one to help him. Someone else would beat him, and you’d have given up your chance for nothing. Your most prudent option is to stay vigilant and be ready to get into that water the moment its surface starts to stir.

So the sick came and went, while this man slowly became a fixture, an institution, all his mental and emotional energy fixated on an impossible dream of restoration and health.

Jesus asks him, Wilt thou be made whole? This is a straightforward, yes-or-no question. And the man can’t answer it in kind. He says, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. He is so focused on the perceived means of his deliverance that he can’t separate it in his mind from the deliverance itself. “Getting to the pool” has replace “getting healed” as his aim.

I can’t say that I blame the guy. I don’t have anything like his excuse, but I often get fixated on some intermediary thing that has become so closely associated with what I really need that they appear to be one and the same. Then God causes me to step back and reassess. Every fixation has some legitimate, God-given desire at the back of it—sometimes so far back that you have to chisel through years of habitual misguided thinking to find it, but still there. That is the need God wants to fill.

Jesus was present at creation, and without him nothing was made that has been made. He has the power to restore what is broken, to cut directly to the heart of what we need without following what we perceive as the necessary steps. He can heal without the pool. He made this man to begin with, put together his genetic code in all its potential for health and strength before sickness ever cast its shadow. He made the angel who stirs the water. He configured the molecular structure of all the water in the world. He is master of all creation, and as such he has authority.

And here’s the really beautiful thing. He has compassion as well. He doesn’t point out the faults in this man’s perspective. He just heals him. There will be time later for the man to reflect on legitimate needs versus felt needs and to ponder the sufficiency of God; now is the time for him to be made whole. He’s already demonstrated faith by staying at the pool day after day when his case appeared hopeless rather than giving in to bitterness and despair. That faith is enough, and Jesus honors it.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench (Isaiah 42:3). These words bring a sting of tears to my eyes every time I hear or read or think them. I am a bruised reed and a smoking flax, and if God’s intervention in my life is dependent on my own right understanding or on some lofty level of obedience or faith, I’m sunk. Praise be to God that it’s not.

Of Interposition

Most of the time, most of us live in something we think of as ordinary life. (We’re wrong about that, but never mind.) We earn money, eat food, drive our kids around, enjoy a little recreation; and nothing much happens to disturb our routine beyond some mild annoyances. Then something—violence, natural disaster, sickness, accident—reaches down like a tornado finger out of the sky and wrecks it all to pieces, leaving us stunned, bereft, hurt.

And most of us aren’t really prepared for that. We don’t practice coping with disaster the way we practice driving a car or playing the cello. So our society has built up entire vocations of people whose jobs are to deal with those awful blindsiding events. That’s pretty remarkable when you think about it. Something horrific happens and a third party, someone with absolutely no personal involvement, interposes himself in the situation to do what must be done—to put out fires not on his property, to administer medical care to strangers, to deal with the aftermath of a fatality, whatever the case may be. Yes, it’s his job and yes, he gets paid for it, but I think we all know his salary is far from proportionate to his personal risk and potential psychological cost.

These vocations have their procedures. Some might seem boneheaded to outsiders, and perhaps some are, but many are just good sense. They have been forged in the fires of necessity to keep bad situations from getting worse, whether that means preventing more accidents at the scene of a collision or simply maintaining an element of order and dignity for those who suffer and grieve. These services may or may not be noticed by those being served, but I hate to think of what would ensue if they weren’t being performed.

Of course emergency workers, law enforcement, and military personnel have to undergo specialized training to operate weapons, put out fires, get people breathing again after they’ve stopped, and so on. But beyond this, there’s a psychological hardening that simply must occur for any of that other training to do any good—a hardening that enables these people to function in situations that would send most folks into an emotional tailspin.

There’s an episode of Angel where some police officers are forced to undergo sensitivity training. At first the officers scoff at the trainer, but soon they begin to open up, communicate their feelings, and express empathy to one another in a way that seems positive. But the emotional openness escalates, and soon things are being said which should not be said, or at least not at that time or in that place or before that audience. Before long the entire police force has lost all emotional control, and the officers cannot perform their jobs. They can’t bring themselves to subdue aggressors by force or even break windows to pursue wrongdoers. It transpires that the sensitivity trainer was a sort of shaman hired by a recently arrested local crime boss to incapacitate the police force so that he, the crime boss, could escape incarceration and exact some vengeance on particular officers without fear of retribution. Like most episodes of Angel and of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this one takes an observable societal principle, exaggerates it for effect, and follows it to its logical, though overblown, conclusion.

My point here is not that all self-restraint is good or that all emotional expression is bad, whether in law officers, emergency workers, military personnel, or members of any vocation. What has really struck me lately is simply that there is a cost to serving in this manner, and that there are individuals willing to pay it. Often they are young. Often they have small children at home in need of a tenderness that’s at odds with that whole psychological hardening thing. Yet these people choose to interpose themselves into dangerous or emotionally damaging situations for the sake of the rest of us. I find this extraordinary.

This word interpose is a good one. Its simplest definition is “to place between.” Whenever I hear it I think of the line in “Come Thou Fount” that runs, “He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.” Talk about physical risk and psychological cost! Even in a resurrected and glorified state, Jesus has scars. The fact that he is omniscient and eternal and that God the Father raised him from the dead and restored him to his former glory does not nullify or cheapen his suffering and death. They happened. They hurt. They matter. They did for me what I could not do for myself, and for that I am grateful.