God's Love and Marilynne Robinson

Bound by her own passionate loneliness, over and over in her writing Robinson insists on what essentially divides us, which again has nothing to do with what we believe or where we stand on the issues, but is a function of the fact that my mind generates my experience and your mind generates yours. She finds books fascinating, she’s said, “because they bring you one step closer.” In a religious sense, or for believers like Robinson (and perhaps like me), this sympathy evokes respect for the human being as the image of God. In the democratic sense, the political sense, this sympathy evokes respect for the human being as the image of oneself. In a final, humanistic sense, it evokes respect for the human being as an expression — perhaps the definition — of what I call love, which requires effort in both the imagination and the world.