Following up on my rather depressing post of yesterday about the emotional temperature of politics, this morning I came across a nice piece by Nicholas Kristoff in the NYTimes that points me to a book I'd looked at but not really read (knowing about books, even knowing what's in them, without having read them, is a professional danger for academics), namely, Victor Tan Chen's book Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy (U California Press, 2015). Kristoff points out the importance of the book's contrast between a zero-sum "meritocratic morality" and a "morality of grace".
Chen's book has a lot of great detail, both statistical and in terms of ethnography-bordering-on-reporting, about the crisis that became known as "deaths of despair" especially among the white working class (though he goes beyond that group). That is what I had noticed about the book before. But what got me this time is the, as it were, theological frame that encompasses that data. Chen points out that he's a secular thinker, but he can find no better way of proposing a rival way than by borrowing language, and perhaps attitudes, from religious traditions.
Chen argues that the crisis in jobs for working class people is a larger cultural crisis, and to address it in a way that will actually do better, we need a kind of revolution in values, provoked by "a kind of political organizing devoted to bringing about a less judgmental and materialistic ethos in society" (p. 10). We need, he thinks, a "morality of grace" (pp. 11, 26, ff).
This connects up with one of my all-time favorite books on America, Karen Halttunen's Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination. In that book, Halttunen studies the development of understandings of evil in America through different representations of the murderer. Her conclusion is that our contemporary moral psychology is far too narrow and brittle to accommodate the idea that a murderer could finally be a human, but must somehow be a monster--someone radically other than decent folks like you and me. That book both confirmed some things I was inchoately thinking, and gave me some new thoughts, and also challenged some of my intuitions as well. It also showed me how you could host what is effectively a moral, and perhaps theological, argument on a straightforward historical and cultural-studies narrative.
Each of these books has many things to teach us. But for this post, I take one lesson from both of them: grace, mercy is what we lack, and grace and mercy are not structurally supported by our social institutions, and grace and mercy are so much more than immediate forgiveness. The attitude that produces grace and mercy is part of a picture of the world that encompasses both the disastrous self-unmaking of the Prodigal Son, and the earnest, righteous striving of his brother, and the tragically undone, and undoing, and yet finally ultimately sustaining, indeed revivifying, love of their father. Today many of us, most of the time, are in the position of the brother; sometimes, much more rarely, we are in the position of the Prodigal or his father. How can we learn to be a better brother?
Look, it's Sunday. Go back to Luke 15 and read the parable again. Here, I'll cut and paste it for you below.
Luke 15: 11-32
11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25 “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”