A Matter of Perspective

I'm currently reading Home by Marylinne Robinson, which is a sequel (or rather, a companion volume) to her novel Gilead, which is one of my favorite novels ever. Gilead is written as an extended letter from a man to his son in a small town in Iowa in 1956. The man, John Ames, is an elderly Congregationalist minister who has learned that he has a terminal heart condition. Everyone who reads it seems to have a different idea what it's about, but I would say that it is about loving this world, while knowing that it is transient. There's no disputing that it's a slow read, but it is a profound meditation on history, death, family, forgiveness, death, the kind of sadness that isn't unhappy, hope, vocation, death, pastoral care, plumbing, friendship, sacramentality, and death. Much of the plot of Gilead involves the best friend of the protagonist and his family, particularly his wayward son. Home takes place at the same time as Gilead, and relates some of the same events, but it is told from the perspective of the Boughton household. I was a bit skeptical of this idea when I first heard about it, and it's definitely not as good as Gilead and every bit as slow. But I'm only two thirds in, and I've heard the book is building up to something. At any rate, I find the book valuable, if for no other reason, than that it shows how a character we come to love a great deal in Gilead, Rev. Ames, might plausibly be experienced in a very different way. We know him to be kind, thoughtful, intelligent, humorous, and caring. We also know from Gilead that a certain action he takes is a casual remark in passing that is instantly regretted, but we learn in Home that it is received as deliberate, and does great harm, and the character we know to be otherwise is perceived as judgmental and aloof.

This got me thinking, of course, that so much of what we say and do can be experienced as very different than we intend, and this is also true of how we experience other people. This could of course be a lesson about "every thoughtless utterance," but I'm thinking more about "judge not, lest ye be judged." The tragic fact is that even if we are very deliberate and thoughtful in all we say and do, it may still have the intended effect or be received in the way we'd intended. This thought bothered me, particularly in light of a recent interview in which I'm pretty sure several of the people interviewing got an impression of me that I don't think is quite fair. And the question that then occurred to me, with regard to John Ames and to myself, is this: does God judge us and our actions as they are experienced by other people, or as we experience and intend them? And the answer, of course, is neither. God of course knows us better than we know ourselves, and certainly better than others know us. The mitigating circumstances are known, the good intentions are known, as are the self-delusions. But God's judgment is based entirely on grace. We are created by grace, we are reckoned righteous by grace. It is not our righteousness that ultimately matters, but Christ's. I've never been a fan of the more legal metaphors of salvation, but I'm getting at the same thing as imputed righteousness.

Empathy goes a long way in this life, perhaps getting us as close as we can come to grace. But grace goes beyond empathy. I expect that the next sermon I preach will probably be about the similarity and also the radical difference (sorry for breaking my own rule about the use of the word 'radical'). It will hopefully make the point I'm hovering around better than this post.