“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t really care.”
“What do you mean? You’re supposed to care when I apologize!”
“But I don’t. I just want you to take your ice cream dish from your room without me having to ask three times.”
“But I’m sorry I didn’t do it!”
“Yeah, and your apology means nothing if I keep having to ask you to do it. I don’t want apologies; I want you to change your behavior.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Arrrgh.”
“But I am!”
[Dad exits]
“Did you hear any of that? Us talking about her constant apologies?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s driving me crazy. Since she came over in CoronaWorld it’s been non-stop.”
“Uh-huh. Let me ask you: Where do you think she learns it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t recognize any pattern of behavior here?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s right. You’ve never in our relationship apologized for things you have no reason to apologize for. We’ve never talked about the weird Catholic guilt you carry around. I’m glad you’ve been able to erase that from your mind.”
“Well. I’m sorry.”
“Exactly.”
“Let me ask you something. Why aren’t you walking around with a big bag of guilt? Jews are supposed to be good at guilt, too.”
“My brain’s not organized like that. It’s not like I never apologize.”
“But it’s not an instinctual reflex.”
“It’s not.”
“Yeah. I understand intellectually how a brain can be organized like that. But on some level — somatically, maybe — I don’t really get it. It’s not like I’ve never worked on my guilt. A half-dozen therapists. Twelve-step. And it’s not like I’ve made no progress. I understand it's cultural. Even though my parents left the church, they still thought like Catholics. But it feels hard wired. Pre-conscious.”
* * *
Paul (Romans 5:12-14): “It was through one man [Adam] that guilt came into the world; and, since death came owing to guilt, death was handed on to all mankind by one man. (All alike were guilty men; there was guilt in the world before ever the law of Moses was given. Now it is only where there is a law to transgress that guilt is imputed, and yet we see death reigning in the world from Adam’s time to the time of Moses, over men who were not themselves guilty of transgressing a law, as Adam was.) In this, Adam was the type of him who was to come.”
* * *
Augustine: “Man's nature, indeed, was created at first faultless and without any sin; but that nature of man in which every one is born from Adam, now wants the Physician, because it is not sound. All good qualities, no doubt, which it still possesses in its make, life, senses, intellect, it has of the Most High God, its Creator and Maker. But the flaw, which darkens and weakens all those natural goods, so that it has need of illumination and healing, it has not contracted from its blameless Creator--but from that original sin, which it committed by free will.”
* * *
Augustine: ”In carnal generation, original sin alone is contracted; but when we are born again of the Spirit, not only original sin but also willful sin is forgiven.”
* * *
Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz (Conservative): “In the Book of Genesis we read that ‘The devisings of man’s mind are evil from youth’ (Genesis 8:21). The rabbis, in effect, reinterpreted this notion by positing that human beings are born into this world neither carrying the burden of sin committed by our ancestors nor tainted by it. Rather, sin, het, is the result of being human. People are born with a potential, a yetzer. Our challenge in life is to channel our yetzer so that we make good choices and do good.”
* * *
Rabbi Gershon Winkler (Independent): “We love sin. Without it we could not transform, improve or ennoble ourselves. … The opportunity to make mistakes gives us the opportunity to repair them, in the process of which we learn, grow, and become more of who we are. Why do you think we were ‘set up’ in the Garden of Eden? Let’s face it—it was pure entrapment, clearly designed to get us in trouble, to open up the possibility of sin. The love of the father for the child who is constantly struggling to come home to him is far greater than for the child who is already at home. … One major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Judaism does not perceive the journey back to God as so arduous and steep that it requires the aid of a redemptive savior. The journey to Canaan may have taken us 40 years, but the journey back to God is as close ‘as is your ear to your mouth’ (Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachot 13a).”
* * *
Rabbi Peter Schweitzer (Humanist): “Not all Jews think alike about these matters. The ‘textbook’ answer doesn’t work for the secular, cultural, or humanistic Jews who comprise half the Jewish population. For us, there is no commanding deity who has issued a set of commandments for us to uphold or neglect. Rather, mitzvot are the commandments we place upon ourselves. Sins and transgressions—which we regard as God-connected notions—are not a standard part of our vocabulary. We talk instead about wrongdoings, the errors of our ways, the missteps and bad choices we make. We don’t turn to a God for forgiveness or atonement. We need to look inside for that. And most important, we need to consider how we can change our ways for the good, knowing full well that we will fall short over and over.”
* * *
Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson: “What is [the alcoholic’s] basic trouble? . . . are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, our self-pity? Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”
* * *
Bill Wilson: “Depart[ing] from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth . . . is the measure of our character defects, or if you like, our sins. . . . Must AA’s spend most of their waking hours drearily rehashing their sins of omission or commission? Hardly. The emphasis on inventory is heavy only because a great many of us have never really acquired the habit of accurate self-appraisal.”
* * *
Therapist Brené Brown: “I believe that there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful – it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort.
“I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.”
* * *
Therapist Thomas Moore: “I make a distinction between guilt, and feeling guilty as a symptom for what is lacking or what we need. ‘Guiltiness’ can be a kind of phony guilt, a vague feeling of ‘I’m guilty’—but we don’t really know what we’ve done wrong. Perhaps we’ve broken a cultural rule that doesn’t mean much to us personally.
“ ... At the same time, there’s nothing bad about genuine guilt—we all need to feel responsible when we’ve done something wrong. One thing I learned from the Catholic Church is that a kind of liberation comes from the act of confession, which has a real genius to it. So I’d like to borrow from the Church and say that to be able to confess is a very good way of dealing with guilt. We all do things we wish we hadn’t. If we could confess them instead of hide them, it would help us to re-join our community, and to be straightforward in our dealings with other people.
“I try to be a confessing person and to acknowledge, in a very sober and simple way, that I’ve got these imperfections, and that I need to confess them regularly.”
* * *
“Dad, have you noticed?”
“Noticed what?”
“That I’m not apologizing as much any more.”
“Really? I’m not sure I have.”
“Arrrgh. Then why am I even doing it?”
“Wait. It can be hard to notice the absence of a thing. If you’d filled a bag with bricks and then took them all out, I’d notice. But if you only took out one or two, I might not. You still apologize some.”
“That’s true.”
“Why do you think you’re apologizing less?”
“My apologies annoy you.”
“Any other reason?”
“Momma doesn’t think it’s good to always apologize. She says it can be anti-feminist, like I’m apologizing for taking up space. But that’s not really what I’m doing.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s like: When I was little and I watched a comedy, I didn’t usually understand the jokes. So I liked shows with laugh tracks, because even if I didn’t get the joke I’d know it was time to laugh. And I don’t think I’ve always had a good sense of social intelligence. I mean, I don’t always know if I’ve done something bad or hurt someone’s feelings. So if I thought I had, I’d apologize just in case. And then it became a reflex.”
“So your apologies to me are sometimes a reflex?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Let me ask: Now do you like shows with laugh tracks?”
“Oh my god. They’re the worst.”
“So, if I can summarize your analogy …”
“Dad, don’t give paternal lectures. You’re really bad at them.”
(New York state numbers on Monday: 291,996 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 1.4 percent; 337 dead, to a total of 17,303, up 2 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 1,275, to a total of 50,352, up 2.5 percent.)
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