The Sandusky trial: Marilynne Robinson
Monday, June 25, 2012
After reading the news stories about the atrocious abuse tolerated for years at Penn State (to give just one example of many others that are coming to light), I dug up this quotation from the wise and far-seeing Marilynne Robinson., author of Homecoming and Gilead. The elderly pastor who is the narrator of Gilead is musing about his sermons on the stories of Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham and Isaac:
About the cruelty of these narratives I said that they rendered the fact that children are often victims of rejection or violence, and that in these cases too, which the Bible does not otherwise countenance, the child is within the providential care of God…I have always worried that when I say the insulted or the downtrodden are within the providence of God, it will be taken by some people to mean that it is not a grave thing, an evil thing, to insult or oppress…So I quoted the words of the Lord: “If anyone offends these little ones, it would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he were cast into the sea.” That is strong language, but there it is.
