“I am persuaded for the moment that this is in fact the basis of community. I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of--who knows it better than I?--people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.” --Marilynne Robinson, “Imagination and Community,” When I Was a Child I Read Books, 21.
When most of us think of fiction, we probably don’t think of God. Religious faith is a harrowing topic for the contemporary novelist precisely because we find so much God-language coopted by lazy or unscrupulous writers looking for a fast track to somber tone or a niche audience with a big hankering for kitsch. This contemporary reticence to speak of matters of the soul once led The New Yorker’s James Wood to describe Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead as “one of the most unconventional conventionally popular novels of recent times.” (Last October, she also gained the distinction of becoming the only author who ever kept this blogger up literally all night with a new book release.)
Robinson, a devoted member and former lay preacher of the United Church of Christ, has never been shy about her Christian faith. “It’s too exhausting and demanding to write,” she told RNS’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “I would never write about anything I didn’t really want to write about…. Faith is one of the great structuring elements in civilization. It has fascinated the best minds of many centuries. If it happens to fascinate yours also, there is no reason to be afraid. Of what? A bad review?”
Robinson’s work certainly hasn’t garnered many of those. In 2005, she received the Pulitzer Prize for her second novel, Gilead. In 2012, she received the National Humanities Medal, and just last week, President Barack Obama used her words in his eulogy for the for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney.
For Robinson, the theological concept of the imago Dei is at the absolute center of both literary production and the civic life. “I believe very strongly that this world,” she once said in an interview with The American Conservative, “these billions of companions on earth that we know are God’s images, are to be loved, not only in their sins, but especially in all that is wonderful about them.” Reading her work has convinced me that the power of language is quite truthfully a sacramental power, making the presence of Christ, the Word made flesh, evident even in absence. I am not sure I believe all the claims bandied about that literary fiction makes us more empathetic (some of the very nastiest people I have ever met have held graduate degrees in literature), but I do believe, like President Obama, that Robinson’s writing has changed me for the better.
Over the next few months, this Groupthink series will introduce (or reintroduce) readers to her life and thought, her theological impact and influences, her social convictions, and her brilliant contribution to the life of the church. I hope, in the weeks to come, that I can pique each reader’s curiosity enough to pick up every one of Robinson’s books for herself. Along the way, we will engage critically with the work of theologians from John Calvin to James Cone to Fanny Howe. Ultimately, I hope every one of you will come to share my conviction that, in the words of John Ames, the narrator of Gilead, “It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I can find words for.”
Hi. My name’s Joe. I’m an addict, and it’s been 10 minutes since my last fix.
“True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution. Real relationships with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature. Today’s media do enable us to communicate and to share our knowledge and affections. Yet at times they also shield us from direct contact with the pain, the fears and the joys of others and the complexity of their personal experiences.” – Pope Francis in his Encyclical, Laudato si’
“Silence precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. We cannot just see it as an accident, or as something unnecessary. But unless we learn how to live there, go there, abide in this different phenomenon, the rest of things – words, events, relationships, identities – all become rather superficial, without depth or context. They lose meaning. All we search for is a life of more events, more situations which have to increasingly contain even higher stimulation, more excitement, and more color, to add vital signs to our inherently bored and boring existence.” – Richard Rohr in Silent Compassion
“Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms” – Motto of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair
If you’ve read the passages above, I assume you’ve gathered what we’re talking about by now. I know you’ve been through all this before. Culture sucks, technology is evil, et cetera, et cetera. You’ve seen the Facebook posts questioning the role of social media in our lives. You’ve seen the YouTube videos telling you to put down your phone and talk to people. You’ve seen the articles and blog posts talking about our culture and its need for constant stimulation. We’ve all been there done that. Maybe you did wind up putting your phone in your pocket. Perhaps you took that social media fast your friends were all doing. You may have even left your business or place of residence to talk an unexpected walk, pleasantly invigorated by the world around you. “Man, this is good,” you think.
Your phone rings. You get a text. You have an appointment. You walk back to work. Your fast ends. Whatever the reason, you’re back in. To be fair, you’ve probably changed something. For a while, I bet you don’t spend nearly as much time on Facebook or Twitter. Netflix might not see your face for a week or two, and you may even go as far as only using your phone as the ancient contraption it’s named after. This is all well and good, but has anything really changed? Has your heart changed at all? What about your thinking on technology (and I mean what you really think, not the kind that you tell your friends about and forget in a week)? Did you really get a glimpse of what a life without technological stimulation was like? If we’re being honest, probably not. In this day and age, it’d be nearly impossible. But as good old Walt Disney said, “it’s kinda fun to do the impossible.”
So let me tell you what this isn't going to look like. I’m not going to try and guilt trip you. I won’t call you names, make judgments about you, or anything else of that matter. I’m not going to talk to you like I have answers, because I don’t. I’m not going to throw science at you to try and impress or overwhelm you, although small amounts of science might be involved from time to time. I’m also not going to bury you in quotes (my apologies for above), philosophies, or theological ideas nobody really cares about. I want this to be helpful. I hope there can be change. I am going to ask questions that need to be asked, trying to get you to think about what you’re doing. I want to find and address the source, not the symptoms. I want this to be accessible, readable, enjoyable, and maybe even a little edible.
Because I’m nobody special. I don’t have any special right or paper saying I get to say this stuff to you. I’m just as immersed in this culture as you are, and perhaps even more. I check social media forty to fifty times a day, more when I post or share something. I run to my phone when there’s a lull in conversation or the passing of time. I run to my phone even faster when I’m uncomfortable or stressed. My friends have had to hold near-interventions to get me to get off my phone and engage with them. I stare at my phone for an hour in bed before I sleep and I have no idea why. Technology is my crutch I use to avoid dealing with small problems. Technological stimulation is my drug, too.
Hi. My name is Joe. I’m an addict, and it’s been 0 minutes since my last fix.
