Verse Eight

Seventy Times

Chapter 19: Verse Eight

Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do.

Ezra read the verse and paused at the word order.

He paused because the word created a problem in the room that the room had not had before, which was the problem of authority — who had it, who used it, who chose not to use it, and what the choosing-not cost.

"Paul could command," Ezra said. "He has the authority. He's an apostle. He planted the church where Philemon worships. He has every right to say: This is what you will do. And he doesn't."

"Why not," Jerome said.

"That's the question."

"Because commanding is easy," Ray said. "Commanding lets you off the hook. You give the order, the other person obeys, the transaction is done. Nobody has to feel anything. Nobody has to choose. The authority does the work and the people involved just execute."

"And that's bad?" Tyrell asked.

"That's management," Ray said. "Not love."

The distinction landed in the room with the weight of a thing that the men had experienced from both sides — the managed and the managing, the commanded and the commanding, the particular architecture of authority that the Bureau of Prisons had perfected into a system where every interaction was structured by who had the power to order and who had the obligation to comply.

"Paul has power," Khalil said. "And he sets it aside. In Islam this is called hilm — forbearance. The strength to act combined with the choice not to. It is not weakness. It is the hardest kind of strength, because it requires you to possess the authority and then decide, with full knowledge of what the authority could accomplish, that the authority is not the tool for this situation."

"What's the tool, then," Curtis B. said.

"The next verse," Ezra said.

He read it.

Yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.

The word love entered the room the way it always entered this room — not as an abstraction but as a weight, because in a room where men had been separated from everyone they loved by the specific mechanism of their own actions, the word carried the full measure of what had been lost and what remained and the distance between the two.

"Appeal," Darnell said.

The men looked at him.

"Not command. Appeal. Paul isn't telling Philemon what to do. He's asking. And the asking — " He stopped. His hands were on the Bible. The hands were still, the way his hands had been still every Sunday, the stillness of a man who maintained his physical composure the way the facility maintained its schedule — through discipline rather than ease. "The asking means Philemon can say no."

"Can he?" Ray said. "Can you say no to Paul?"

"You can say no to anyone," Darnell said. "You can say no to God. People do. The freedom to say no is what makes the yes mean something."

Ezra heard this.

He heard it the way he heard everything Darnell said in the study — with the double hearing of a chaplain attending to a participant's theology and a man attending to the words of the person connected to his brother's death. The double hearing was exhausting. It required Ezra to be two people simultaneously — the chaplain who received every man's contribution with equal weight and the brother who heard every word through the filter of March and the convenience store and the orange juice on the shelf.

But what Darnell had said was true.

The freedom to say no was what made the yes mean something.

Paul could have commanded. He chose to appeal. The appeal created the possibility of refusal, and the possibility of refusal was the condition that transformed obedience into love, because love was not the thing you did when you had no choice. Love was the thing you did when you had every choice and you chose the one that cost the most.

"Chaplain," Jerome said.

"Yes."

"You have authority in this room. Right? You run the study. You choose the text. You decide who's in and who's out."

"Within the regulations, yes."

"Have you ever used it? The authority. Have you ever ordered someone to do something in this room?"

"No."

"Why not."

Ezra looked at the circle. Nine men. Nine chairs. The table with the coffee and the sugar and the Bibles open to a letter about the choice between commanding and appealing.

"Because the room doesn't work that way," he said. "If I ordered you to speak truth, the order would destroy the truth. Truth in this room is voluntary. It comes when it's ready. It comes from the man who decides, on his own, that the thing he's carrying is too heavy to carry alone and that this room is safe enough to set it down. That decision cannot be commanded. It can only be invited."

"So you appeal," Jerome said.

"I appeal."

"On the basis of love."

Ezra was quiet.

The word love was a word he used carefully in this room. He used it in the theological sense — agape, the unconditional, the divine, the love that was not contingent on the beloved's worthiness. He did not use it in the personal sense, because the personal sense was a territory the chaplain-inmate boundary did not permit him to enter, and the boundary existed for reasons that were both institutional and wise.

But Jerome had asked whether the appeal was on the basis of love, and the honest answer was yes, and the honest answer included a complication that Jerome could not have intended, which was that the love was not only for the seven men Ezra had known for years but for the ninth man in the ninth chair, and the love for the ninth man was the most complicated love Ezra had ever been asked to carry, because it was a love the text demanded and the heart resisted and the room required regardless of what the heart preferred.

"Yes," Ezra said.

One word. The same word Darnell had used in the corridor when he told Jerome that the chaplain knew. One word that carried more than a word was built to carry, which was the condition of most words in this room and the reason the room existed — to hold the words that were larger than the mouths that spoke them.

They finished the verse. They discussed authority and love and the space between them. They discussed what it meant to have power and set it aside. They discussed Paul's strategy — whether the appeal was manipulative, whether gentleness could be a tactic, whether there was a difference between choosing love because it was right and choosing love because it was effective.

Darnell said, "If love is only effective it isn't love. Love that calculates its results is management with better language."

Ray said, "But love that ignores results is sentimentality. Paul wants something. He wants Philemon to receive Onesimus. The love is real and the want is real and the verse holds both."

At nine-thirty Ezra closed the Bible.

"Next week. Verse ten."

He skipped verse nine. He did not explain the skip. Verse nine repeated the appeal — yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love — and the repetition was Paul's emphasis, but the study had already held the word love for longer than most rooms could sustain it, and Ezra's judgment was that the room needed to move forward.

The men stood.

The room emptied.

Ezra stood alone with the verse and the word and the question Jerome had asked — on the basis of love? — and the answer he had given, which was yes, which was true, which was the hardest true thing he had said in this room since Darnell Washington walked through the door and sat in the ninth chair and changed the room into a place where truth and love and the impossible demand of Philemon converged on a chaplain who had every authority to command and no ability to do anything except appeal.

On the basis of love.

The basis held.

Barely.