Marilynne Robinson - Home

Boughton said, “If there is one thing the faith teaches us clearly it is that we are all sinners and we owe each other pardon and grace. ‘Honor everyone,’ the Apostle says.”

“Yes, sir. I know the text. It’s the application that confuses me a little.”

Ames said, “I think your father has shown us all a good many times how he applies that text.”

Jack sat back and held up his hands, a gesture of surrender. “Yes, sir. Yes, he has. For which I have special reason to be grateful.”

Ames nodded. “And so have I, Jack. So have I.”

There was a silence. Her father averted his face, full as it was of vindication and conscious humility.

Lila came up the walk. Jack saw her first and smiled and stood. Ames turned and saw her and stood, also. When she came through the screen door, Boughton gestured toward his friend and his son and said, “I’d stand up, too, my dear, if I could.”

“Thank you, Reverend.” She said, “I can’t stay. I just come to tell John I fixed a supper for him. It’s cold cuts and a salad, so there’s no hurry about it.”

Boughton said, “Join us for a few minutes. Jack will get you a chair.”

Jack said, “Please take mine, Mrs. Ames. I’ll bring one from the kitchen.” And he seated her beside his father with that gallantry of his that exceeded ordinary good manners only enough to make one wonder what was meant by it.

Glory thought Jack might have made an excuse to have a word or two with her about how she thought things were going, so she went into the kitchen after him. She was ready to tell him it might be time to mention the weather, baseball, even politics. But he pointedly did not meet her gaze and went out to the porch again.

Ames said to his wife, “We were just talking about the fact that the way people understand their religion is an accident of birth, generally speaking. Where they were born.”

Jack said, “Or what color they were born. I mean, that is a subject of the article. Indirectly. It seems to me.”

Lila could never really be drawn into these conversations, though Ames tried to include her. She seemed more interested by the fact that people talked about such things than she was by anything they talked about, and she watched the currents of emotion pass among them, watchful when they were intent and amused when they laughed.

Boughton said, “Yes, that’s very interesting.” Then he fell back on his experience of Minneapolis, his closest equivalent to foreign travel. “Mother and I went up to the Twin Cities from time to time, and we saw Lutheran churches everywhere. Just everywhere. A few German Reformed, but the Lutherans outnumber them twenty to one, I believe. That’s an estimate. Minneapolis is a large city. There may be Presbyterians in areas we didn’t visit.”

Jack said, rather abruptly, “Reverend Ames, I’d like to know your views on the doctrine of predestination. I mean, you mentioned the accident of birth.”

Ames said, “That’s a difficult question. It’s a complicated issue. I’ve struggled with it myself.”

“Let me put it this way. Do you think some people are intentionally and irretrievably consigned to perdition?”

“I’m afraid that is the most difficult aspect of the question.”

Jack laughed. “People must ask you about this all the time.”

“Yes, they do.”

“And you must have some way of responding.”

“I tell them there are certain attributes our faith assigns to God — omniscience, omnipotence, justice, and grace. We human beings have such a slight acquaintance with power and knowledge, so little conception of justice, and so slight a capacity for grace, that the workings of these great attributes together is a mystery we cannot hope to penetrate.”

“You say it in those very words.”

“Yes, I do. More or less those very words. It’s a fraught question, and I’m careful with it. I don’t like the word ‘predestination.’ It’s been put to crude uses.”

Jack cleared his throat. “I would like your help with this, Reverend.”

Ames sat back in his chair and looked at him. “All right. I’ll do my best.”

“Let’s say someone is born into a particular place in life. He is treated kindly, or unkindly. He learns from everyone around him to be Christian, say. Or un-Christian. Might not that have an effect on his — religious life?”

“Well, it does seem to, generally. There are certainly exceptions.”

“On the fate of his soul?”

“Grace,” his father said. “The grace of God can find out any soul, anywhere. And you’re confusing something here. Religion is human behavior. Grace is the love of God. Two very different things.”

“Then isn’t grace the same as predestination? The pleasanter side of it? Presumably there are those to whom grace is not extended, even when their place in life might seem suited to — making Christians of them.” He said, “One way or the other, it seems like fate.”

Jack had put his glass down and sat slumped, with his arms folded, and he spoke with the kind of deferential insistence that meant he had some intention in raising the question.

His father said, “Fate is not a word I have ever found useful.”

“It is different from predestination, then.”

“As night and day,” his father said authoritatively. Then he closed his eyes.

Glory thought she saw trouble looming. Ames and her father had quarreled over this any number of times, her father asserting the perfect sufficiency of grace with something like ferocity, while Ames maintained, with a mildness his friend found irksome, that the gravity of sin could not be gainsaid. Could Jack have forgotten? She stood up. She said, “Excuse me. I hate this argument. I’ve heard it a thousand times and it never goes anywhere.”

Her father said, “I hate it a good deal, too, and I’ve never seen it go anywhere. But I wouldn’t call it an argument, Glory.”

She said, “Wait five minutes.” She looked pointedly at her brother. He smiled. She went into the house. Then she heard him say, “I was thinking about your sermon last Sunday, Reverend. A fine sermon. And it seemed to me another text very relevant to your subject would have been the story of David and Bathsheba.”

Glory thought, Dear God in heaven.

There was a silence while the old men pondered this. Then Ames said, “Robby, you’d better run along. Go find Tobias. Take your tractor now, and run along.”

There was another silence. Jack cleared his throat. “As I read that story, the child died because his father committed a sin.” Glory thought she heard an edge in his voice.

Ames said, “He committed many grave sins. Not that that makes the justice of it any clearer.”

“Yes, sir. Many grave sins. Still. I’m not asking about the justice of it. I’m asking if you believe a man might be punished by the suffering of his child. If a child might suffer to punish his father. For his sins. Or his unbelief. If you think that’s true. It seems to me to bear on the question we were discussing before. Predestination. The accident of birth.” Jack spoke softly, carefully, touching the tips of his fingers together in the manner of a man whose reasonableness approached detachment. Glory thought, Either he has forgotten that Ames also lost a child all those years ago, or he is implying that Ames was being punished when he lost her, that he was a sinner, too. Jack’s impulse to retaliate when he felt he had been injured was familiar enough, and it always recoiled against him. She coughed into her hand, but he did not look up.

After a moment Ames said, “David’s child returned to the Lord.”

Jack said, “Yes, sir. I understand that. But you do hope a child will have a life. That is what David prayed for. And you hope he will be safe. You hope he’ll learn more than — bitterness. I think. You hope that people will be kind.” He shrugged.