Bitterness

On a June afternoon in 2018, a man named Mickey Barreto checked into the New Yorker Hotel. He was assigned Room 2565, a double-bed accommodation with a view of Midtown Manhattan almost entirely obscured by an exterior wall. For a one-night stay, he paid $200.57.

But he did not check out the next morning. Instead, he made the once-grand hotel his full-time residence for the next five years, without ever paying another cent.

In a city where every inch of real estate is picked over and priced out, and where affordable apartments are among the rarest of commodities, Mr. Barreto had perhaps the best housing deal in New York City history. Now, that deal could land him in prison.

The story of how Mr. Barreto, a California transplant with a taste for wild conspiracy theories and a sometimes tenuous grip on reality, gained and then lost the rights to Room 2565 might sound implausible. Just another tale from a man who claims without evidence to be the first cousin, 11 times removed, of Christopher Columbus’ oldest son. But it’s true.

In jail before he was released on his own recognizance, Mr. Barreto said he used his one phone call to dial the White House, leaving a message about his whereabouts. There was no reason to believe the White House had any interest in the case or any idea who Mickey Barreto was. But you could never quite tell with Mickey — he’d been right once before.

Whatever his far-fetched beliefs, Mr. Barreto, now 49, was right about one thing: an obscure New York City rent law that provided him with many a New Yorker’s dream.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Satan; Temptation - Like a bad tenant who won’t leave an apartment, we allow sin to overstay it’s welcome in our lives; (2) Resentment or Anger—People in recovery often say, “Don’t let that person live rent free inside your head”—which means don’t hold on to your resentments over people who have hurt you. Let the hurt go.

For Uwe Holmer, a German pastor, the question wasn’t simple. But it was clear.

The one-time East German dictator Erich Honecker was asking for his help. Honecker had long been an enemy of the church, who had also personally harried and harassed Holmer’s own family for years.

But now the Communist leader had been pushed from power, driven from his home, turned out of a hospital onto the street—and he was asking the Lutheran church to take him in. At one point, Holmer found himself praying for Erich Honecker. He knew how much power the Communist leader had, how he was praised everywhere he went, and how bad that must be for his soul.

Holmer had to decide what he believed. He knew what the answer was.

“Jesus says to love your enemies,” he explained to his neighbors at the time. “When we pray, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us—“we must take these commands seriously.”

The evangelical minister accepted the deposed dictator into his home in January 1990 and cared for him and his wife Margot for two and a half months. The action shocked Germans, East and West. The 40-year division of the country had just collapsed, and as the Cold War came to a surprising end, the German people didn’t know how they should treat those on the other side.

The until-then unknown pastor offered one bold answer: forgiveness and hospitality. Bitterness, Holmer said, is “not a good starting point for a new beginning among our people.”

Protestors arrived to yell at the minister and demand punishment for Honecker. “No grace for Honecker!” one sign said. Holmer reminded his neighbors of a statue of Jesus in town with Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary … and I will give you rest.” He reminded them of the Lord’s Prayer, asking God to forgive them as they forgave others.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, telecom companies have left behind a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that stretches across the US. The toxic lead exists under the water, in the soil, and on poles overhead. As the lead degrades, it is ending up in places where Americans live, work, and play.

The lead can be found on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the Detroit River in Michigan, the Willamette River in Oregon, and the Passaic River in New Jersey. The metal has tainted the soil at a popular fishing spot in New Iberia, Louisiana, at a playground in Wappingers Falls, New York, and in front of a school in suburban New Jersey.

There’s a hidden source of contamination—more than 2,000 lead-covered cables—that hasn’t been addressed by the companies or environmental regulators. These relics of the old Bell System’s regional telephone network, and their impact on the environment, haven’t been previously reported.

Lead levels in sediment and soil at more than four dozen locations tested exceeded safety recommendations set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. At the New Iberia fishing spot, lead leaching into the sediment near a cable in June 2022 measured 14.5 times the EPA threshold for areas where children play. “We’ve been fishing here since we were kids,” said 27-year-old Tyrin Jones who grew up a few blocks away.

For many years, telecom companies have known about the lead-covered cables and the potential risks of exposure to their workers, according to documents and interviews with former employees. They were also aware that lead was potentially leaching into the environment, but haven’t meaningfully acted on potential health risks.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, unconfessed and unaddressed sin or wounds from our past can leach toxins into our body and into the body of Christ.

In 2019, David and Ina Steiner were running a newsletter called CommerceBytes. The newsletter reported on a lawsuit by online retailer eBay alleging that its rival Amazon had poached many of its third-party sellers. The Steiners probably knew the story would anger officials at one or both of the tech companies, but had no idea how far they might go to retaliate. As it turns out, they went too far. Way too far.

The intimidating harassment included bizarre and unexpected deliveries of items to the Steiners’ home, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said, "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct.”

James Baugh was eBay’s senior director of safety and security at the time. Prosecutors called him the ringleader of the harassment, citing an email where he called Ina Steiner “a biased troll who needs to be burned down.”

The company announced in January it will pay a fine of $3 million to resolve criminal charges levied against several of its employees in connection with a campaign of harassment against the Steiners.

The CEO of eBay, Jamie Iannone, called the employee behavior “wrong and reprehensible.” He went on to say, “since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company, and eBay has strengthened its policies and training. EBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Uncontrolled anger and a thirst for revenge can lead to many costly mistakes, both in the business world and in a person’s private life.

A research study examined data from millions of plane flights to determine possible indicators for incidents of air rage—when passengers become unruly or violent in some way. The study found that flights that have a first class or business class cabin and a separate economy class section are more likely to report incidents of air rage than flights with only one class of seats.

The study also showed that when flights board from the rear of the aircraft, rather than inviting first class passengers aboard first, there were fewer incidences of unruly behavior. When people walk past passengers in the first class or business class cabin and see them swilling champagne and eating caviar, they feel as if they have been treated unequally and unjustly.

The envy and jealousy make passengers more prone to feel justified losing control and acting rudely or violently.

Tim Keller, told the following story about a man named Hasheem Garrett, who learned the art of forgiveness. Hashim was a 15-year-old, living with his mother and hanging out on the streets of Brooklyn with a gang, when he was shot six times and was left paralyzed from the waist down.

For most of the next year he lay in a New York City hospital, fantasizing about revenge. He later wrote: “Revenge consumes me. All I could think about was, just wait, till I get better; just wait till I see this kid.”

But when he was lying on the sidewalk immediately after his shooting, he had instinctively called out to God for help, and, to his surprise, he had felt this strange tranquility. Now during his rehabilitation, a new thought, struck him, namely, that if he took revenge on this kid, why should God not pay him back for all his sins? He concluded, “I shot a kid for no reason, except that a friend told me to do it, and I wanted to prove how tough I was. Six months later, I am shot by somebody because his friend told him to do it.”

That thought was electrifying … He could not feel superior to the perpetrator. They were both fellow sinners who deserved a punishment—and needed forgiveness.

Hasheem said, “In the end I decided to forgive. I felt God had saved my life for a reason, and then I had better fulfill that purpose … And I knew I could never go back out there and harm someone. I was done with that mindset and the life that goes with it … I came to see that I had to let go and stop hating.”

In the early days of World War II, the stress of the war began to take its toll on Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England. His wife Clementine grew alarmed. A member of Churchill’s inner circle told her that Churchill’s sarcastic and over-bearing manner was starting to discourage his inner circle of leaders. Clementine decided to speak the truth in love.

“My darling Winston,” she began in a letter, “I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; and you are not so kind as you used to be.” She cautioned that in possessing the power to give orders and to sack anyone and everyone, “he was obliged to maintain a high standard of behavior—to combine kindness and if possible Olympic calm.” She reminded him that in the past he had been fond of quoting a French maximum, meaning, essentially, “one leads by calm.”

She continued: “I cannot bear that those who serve the country and yourself should not love you as well as admire and respect you.” But she warned, “You won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness. It will breed either dislike or a slave mentality.” She closed the letter with these words: “Please forgive your loving, devoted and watchful Clementine.”

Apparently, the letter got through to Winston. The next day people reported that he seemed remarkably at ease. He lay in bed, propped up by his bed rest as he gazed adoringly at his cat, Nelson, sprawled out peacefully at the foot of the bed.

There is a powerful scene near the end of Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter. Hannah, the main character of the book, experienced profound mistreatment from her stepmother, Ivy. Hannah held onto the resentment for years until one day she encounters Ivy as an older woman in a grocery store. Wendell Berry writes:

Ivy was wearing a head scarf and a dress that hung on her as it would’ve hung on a chair. She was shrunken and twisted by arthritis and was leaning on two canes. Her hands were so knotted they hardly looked like hands. She was smiling at me. She said, “You don’t know me, do you?”

I knew her then, and almost instantly there were tears on my face. I started feeling in my purse for a handkerchief and tried to be able to say something. All kinds of knowledge came to me, all in a sort of flare in my mind. I knew for one thing that she was more simple-minded than I had ever thought. She had perfectly forgot, or had never known, how much and how justly I had resented her. But I knew in the same instant that my resentment was gone, just gone. And the fear of her that was once so big in me, where was it?

“Yes, Ivy, I know you,” I said, and I sounded kind.

I didn’t understand exactly what had happened until the thought of her woke me up in the middle of that night, and I was saying to myself, “You have forgiven her.” I had. My old hatred and contempt and fear that I kept so carefully so long, we’re gone, and I was free.

Taylor Swift was quite the romantic when she burst on the scene in 2006. She sang about the ecstasies of young love and the heartbreak of it. But her mood has hardened as her star has risen. Her new album, Midnights, plays upon a string of negative emotions—anxiety, restlessness, exhaustion, and occasionally anger.

It turns out Swift is part of a larger trend. Researchers analyzed more than 150,000 pop songs released between 1965 and 2015. Over that time, the appearance of the word “love” in top-100 hits roughly halved. Meanwhile, the number of times such songs contained negative emotion words, like “hate,” rose sharply.

Pop music isn’t the only thing that has gotten a lot harsher. Other researchers analyzed 23 million headlines published between 2000 and 2019 in the United States. The headlines, too, grew significantly more negative, with a greater proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust, and sadness.

If misery levels keep rising, what can we expect in the future? According to the Global Peace Index, civic discontent—riots, strikes, anti-government demonstrations—increased by 244 percent from 2011 to 2019. We live in a world of widening emotional inequality. The emotional health of the world is shattering.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The only hope for our sad, harsh, and divided world is Jesus, the Prince of peace (Isa. 9:6). “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).

Marcus Doe used to dream of revenge against his father’s killer. Then he came to faith in Christ. He writes:

We had heard the distant gunshots for a few weeks. But that morning they were close. By mid-morning we were all lying face down in the house, listening as bullets whizzed through the air. In the lull between bursts of gunfire, we could hear voices shouting instructions. If they found out my name, they would kill me.

I was born in Liberia, West Africa, where my father served in the Special Security Service of President Samuel Doe (no relation), who had come to power through a violent military coup. The “freedom fighters” had come to remove him, and killing anyone who worked in Doe’s government.

At that time, Marcus was only 11-years-old. He had already lost his mother to illness and now his father’s life was in danger. The rebels were ruthless, murdering innocent people on the barest of suspicions. So, his father sent him to live with his brother, Roosevelt, and his wife.

Later that year, Marcus and his brother left on a ship for neighboring Ghana. He felt that life was just returning to normal when he received word that his father had been killed. He was now an orphan.

My life’s goal was to find the soldier or soldiers who made me an orphan and make them pay. Then my brother and his wife came to America as refugees, and in 1993 we arrived. In quiet times, I daydreamed of revenge. I cried myself to sleep most nights.

After Marcus graduated from high school, Roosevelt had a sudden heart attack at age 38. Marcus said, “In that darkness, I turned to God. I had one question: ‘Why?’ I listed all the things that I blamed him for: Ma, Pa, the war, separation from family, their suffering — and now my beloved brother. I blamed God. Why?”

Guilt overwhelmed me. I had chosen to nurse my desire for vengeance. I realized that I could relinquish them once and for all. I begged God to forgive me. I would let go of revenge and rage. I asked God, from the sincerest and deepest part of my heart, to save my brother.

Four days later, he got the news that Roosevelt would recover. That answered prayer was the first step in his journey to faith. He says, “I began truly walking the road of forgiveness. I decided that I wanted to find my father’s killer. I practiced saying, ‘I forgive you.’”

In 2010, almost 20 years after I had left, I made my way back to Liberia. But I did not meet my father’s killer. He had died in the fighting. Even so, I forgave him. Today, I hope to share this hard-won peace and hope with fellow Liberians, so many of whom suffered greatly during our country’s brutal civil wars. But more important, I’ll strive to bring gospel healing. Because wherever Jesus’ words of forgiveness are spoken, the future is bright with hope.

In CT magazine, Greg Stier shares his journey from a violent dysfunctional family background to the salvation of his extended family:

To my five-year-old self, it was a perfect afternoon. No gunshots, no gang-filled cars creeping by looking for trouble as they often did in our neighborhood. Everything was good that day—at least until a shiny, new car pulled up. It was Paul, one of the men my Ma had married. He had up and left us without warning, and we hadn’t heard from him in months.

Ma caught sight of him out the kitchen window. Cursing like a sailor, she hunted down our baseball bat. Charging out of the house, she started swinging at the headlights and the windshield. When he peeled off, I knew we’d never see him again.

Instantly, I realized two things: One, I would never disobey Ma again. And two, something had ignited a rage in her that consistently led to incidents like this. Years later, my grandma told me what that something was.

Ma was a partier, and I was a result of one of the parties. She got pregnant. Instead of facing her conservative Baptist parents, Ma drove from Denver to Boston, under the pretense of visiting my uncle Tommy and aunt Carol. But she was really there to get an illegal abortion. Tommy and Carol talked her out of it.

Until my grandma told me I was almost aborted, I had wondered why Ma would often cry when she looked at me while reproaching herself: “I’m a bum. I’m nothing but a no-good bum.” But after I learned her secret, I understood—not only her tears, but her rage toward men. It was a shame-fueled rage.

My entire family was filled with rage. Ma had five bodybuilding, street-fighting brothers, whom the North Denver mafia nicknamed “the crazy brothers.” You know it’s bad when even the mafia thinks your family is dysfunctional.

My Baptist grandparents took me to church, and one day in “big church,” everything suddenly made sense. The preacher shared how Jesus died for our sins and rose again. He said that if we put our faith in him, we would be saved. At the age of eight, I trusted in Christ as my Savior.

Miraculously enough, at around the same time, God was working renewal within my family as well. A hillbilly, church-planting preacher nicknamed Yankee reached out to Uncle Jack, the toughest of the “crazy brothers,” on a dare. When Yankee knocked on the door, Jack had a beer can in each hand. Surprisingly, he listened to Yankee’s gospel presentation.

“Does that make sense?” Yankee asked Jack. “H***, yeah!” was his sinner’s prayer. In just one month, Jack brought 250 people to church, wanting them to hear this same good news that gave him hope. One by one, all my uncles came to Christ. But the person most on my heart was Ma.

When I tried telling her about Jesus, she would shut me down. She’d say, “God can’t forgive me. You don’t know the things I’ve done.” Finally, at the age of 15, I marched into the kitchen and made Ma listen to the gospel. “You mean to tell me that if I trust in Jesus, he forgives me for every sin?” she asked. “Even the really bad ones?” “Yeah, Ma. That’s why he died on the cross,” I explained.

She took a drag of her cigarette, stared off into space for a moment, and said, “I’m in.” And when my Ma said she was in, she was in.

At age eight, I had met the Father I’d never known, the Father who would never leave me nor forsake me, the Father who changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of my whole family.

Editor’s Note: Greg Stier is the founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries. He is the author of Unlikely Fighter: The Story of How a Fatherless Street Kid Overcame Violence, Chaos, and Confusion to Become a Radical Christ Follower.

Stephen Olford tells the story of Peter Miller, a Baptist pastor during the American Revolution. Miller, lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and one of his dearest friends was General George Washington. In the town of Ephrata there also lived a spiteful troublemaker named Michael Wittman who did all he could to oppose and humiliate Miller.

One day, Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to death. When he heard the news, Miller set out to Philadelphia to plead for the life of his enemy. After walking seventy miles—on foot—Miller petitioned his friend, General Washington, to spare Wittman’s life.

“No, Peter,” General Washington said. “I cannot grant you the life of your friend.”

“My friend?” exclaimed the old preacher. “He’s not my friend. In fact, he is the bitterest enemy I have.”

“What?” cried Washington. “You’ve walked seventy miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the matter in different light. I’ll grant your pardon.” And he did.

That day, Miller and Wittman walked back home to Ephrata together. When they arrived home, they were no longer enemies. They were friends.

Revenge really is a dish best served cold--as people who feel wronged by someone else can take up to a year to exact retribution, according to new research. Instant retaliation is uncommon, say Dutch psychologists, who found that only about one person in ten strikes back immediately after being offended.

Study co-author Maartje Elshout said, “Our results show that revenge takes place after some time. Real-life revenge is not so much focused on deterrence, but on restoring self-esteem or a sense of power. The act of revenge does not need to be instantaneous nor proportional.”

In the study, Dr. Elshout and her team quizzed nearly 2,000 people aged 16 to 89 about their experience of revenge. Results show that 14 percent took revenge immediately, within a minute. About 36 per cent took up to a week, with 23 percent striking one to four weeks later. Some 21 percent hit back between one month and a year later, and around five percent took more than a year to get their own back. Dr. Elshout said, “Our findings suggest that revenge is typically delayed.”

Revenge acts admitted by participants in the study include infidelity, damaging a car, disclosing secrets, making false accusations, and trying to get someone fired. Other ways of taking revenge included humiliating someone, gossiping, lying, and breaking a promise.

Did you know that cats can’t taste the flavor of sweetness? That’s right. Felines cannot taste sweet. It’s like their tongues are color blind to sugar. No wonder cats are so grumpy all the time! They can taste sour, bitter, saltiness, and meatiness, but not sweetness.

Are you a cat? Maybe you should get a dog in your life. Maybe when dogs are barking at cats, they’re just trying to cheer them up! If you’re a dog, use your bark to cheer up a cat. And if you’re a cat who struggles to taste the sweetness of life, find a dog to be your friend. I know dogs can be really annoying but they’re good for your soul.

Possible Preaching Angles:

A humorous way to encourage people who are down.

It was late at night and a group of Jewish teenagers were on a walk around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir in Massachusetts. Boston College Police Officer Carl Mascioli was on patrol on May 17, that night. "As I approached them, two of them ran up to my car," said the patrolman. They said, "There was a body in the water."

Mascioli ran down the embankment and found a man partially submerged and not moving. He said, “While I was pulling him out of the water, I observed that he had a swastika on his hand ... It turned out the man the Jewish boys helped save had a tattoo of the Nazi symbol. I … let the gentlemen know sometimes some deeds have a funny way of turning around. Their good deed had a little bit of a twist to it.”

The students, who study at a nearby Yeshiva high school in Brighton, were not permitted to speak with reporters about the incident. But they had a message for the officer to share with the man they helped rescue. Mascioli recalled, “They wanted just to let him know that it was four young Jewish boys that helped save his life.” He said the students had no regrets about helping a man with an anti-Semitic tattoo. “A good deed is a good deed and that's part of life. We should be helping everybody out.”

It's unknown how the man ended up in the water. But police say he didn't have much time left, and if it hadn't been for the teenagers, the patrolman likely wouldn't have seen him. The man is expected to recover.

One-third of Americans say they lie awake at least a few nights a week. You can try meditation or medication, but according to a study published in the Journal of Psychology and Health, there’s another practice you could consider instead: forgiveness.

Researchers asked 1,423 American adults to rate themselves on how likely they were to forgive themselves for the things they did wrong and forgive others for hurting them. They also answered questions about how they had slept in the past 30 days.

The results suggest people who were more forgiving were more likely to sleep better and for longer, and, in turn, have better physical health. Forgiveness may help individuals leave the day’s regrets and offenses in the past and promote sound sleep. Otherwise, as many troubled sleepers have experienced, we might have too much on our minds to get any rest.

People who don’t forgive, researchers explain, tend to linger on unpleasant thoughts and feelings, such as anger, blame, and regret. This can involve painful rumination—repetitive thoughts about distress. That resentment or bitterness could be detracting from sleep quality and well-being, the study suggests.

Possible Preaching Angles: This study offers a new perspective on forgiveness as a key factor in achieving healthy sleep. So while it isn’t guaranteed to resolve your sleeping issues, forgiveness could be something to try out. Letting go of lingering difficult thoughts and feelings may help you not only avoid that stare-down with your clock tonight, but also feel better tomorrow.

In a classroom full of students, a professor asked: “If you had $86,400.00 and someone stole $10.00 from you, would you throw away the $86,390.00 you still have to try and get your $10.00 back? Or would you just let it go?” The students all said they would let it go.

Then he told them, “You have 86,400 seconds every single day and this time is much more valuable than money. You can always work for more money, but once a second passes you can never get it back.”

“Every time someone upsets us, it probably took 10 seconds, so why do we throw away the other 86,390 seconds worrying about it or being upset. We all make this mistake and it is time to start letting the little things go."

It is impossible to imagine what it’s like to be accused of a crime you didn't commit, be sentenced to death, and then wait on death row for 30 years. There was no help for Anthony Hinton until Attorney Bryan Stevenson, after years of fighting the Alabama justice system, won his freedom.

When Hinton was first arrested for murder he was certain justice would prevail. He was employed at a factory where employees were locked in during their night shift. There was incontrovertible physical evidence he couldn’t have been anywhere near the crime. Later he recounted protesting his innocence to the arresting officer. The response was: “I don’t care whether you did or didn’t do it. In fact, I believe you didn’t do it. But it doesn’t matter, if you didn’t do it, one of your brothers did. And you’re going to take the rap."

Thirty years later he was freed without any apology or compensation from the government for having stolen thirty years of his life. Hinton’s well-written book, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, is heartbreaking and heartrending. But in spite of his soul crushing years without hope, he came out a man determined not to allow bitterness to control his life. He has forgiven his enemies because, as he says, “I forgive because I have a God who forgives. “

Patrick Stewart, the British-born actor and star of the X-Men films, spent much of his boyhood stepping between his mother and his abusive, alcoholic father, Alfred Stewart. The turmoil dictated Stewart's childhood, and like many children of alcoholics, he became a "the perfect son."

But in 2007, Stewart began investigating his dad's life and was surprised to discover a clipping from the local paper heralding his father's return in 1940, and mentioning in a brief aside that he was suffering from severe shell shock. Then Stewart made a trip to France where he found that his father's army unit had been rushed to the front as the Germans slashed through France. Alfred Stewart and his men were caught between a marsh and a bridge, pinned down by bombing for hours. The train conductor uncoupled the engine and drove away, leaving the troops stranded.

Stewart and his men spent the next month on the run from the Germans before being evacuated. Then, despite his shell-shocked status, Alfred Stewart volunteered for the paratroopers. During August 1944 he played a significant role in the liberation of the country he had watched crumble four years earlier.

Patrick Stewart, who knew nothing about his father's military heroism and agony, said, "I was brought face-to-face with the knowledge that he was a man with experiences I was unaware of … There were reasons why he was an alcoholic and depressed at times. I've talked to people who understand post-traumatic stress disorder and described my father's behavior, and they've said, 'Absolutely classic PTSD behavior! No doubt about it.'"

After hearing the real story of his father's life, Patrick said, "My anger toward him was dissolving anyway."

Born in 1949, singer Bruce Springsteen was the eldest of three children, and the only son, in a working-class family in Freehold, New Jersey. The house in which Springsteen spent his early childhood was literally a ruin, the walls slowly collapsing. A subsequent house lacked running hot water, so the family filled the single tub with pots heated downstairs on the gas stove; the kids took turns bathing in the same water. Family relationships lacked stability. Bruce's grandmother was devoted to him, and his mother was loyal to her brooding and unstable husband, but rules were nonexistent. At five and six, Bruce was staying up until three in the morning and sleeping until three in the afternoon. He ate when and whatever he wanted. In his memoir Springsteen writes, "It was a place where I felt an ultimate security, full license and a horrible unforgettable boundary-less love. It ruined me and it made me."

Later in his life, Springsteen writes that he started therapy, probing the "mess that he was," to borrow the phrase he uses for his father. As he describes his habit of cutting off romantic relationships after a couple of years, he's clearly still wrestling with that "horrible unforgettable boundary-less love" from the past:

I wanted to kill what loved me because I couldn't stand being loved. It infuriated and outraged me, someone having the temerity to love me—nobody does that … and I'll show you why. It was ugly and a red flag for the poison I had running through my veins, my genes. Part of me was rebelliously proud of my emotionally violent behavior, always cowardly and aimed at the women in my life.

Possible Preaching Angles: God's Love; Christmas; Incarnation—In the Incarnation God came close to us so he could say and show "I love you'—even when we can't stand being love by him.