Religion in the Balance has been in winter hibernation while Ribeye Films has been hard at work on our film “Atwood.” Apparently I can’t sustain both at the same time.
At 800-and-something pages, George Eliot’s Middlemarch has required an investment of time– usually late at night– as well. I always wondered what the fuss was about this novel. Now I know. Frank Kermode calls it a “masterpiece,” and he’s right. Eliot is as penetrating into the complex motivations of human beings, as any writer I know. She masterfully creates a world in which her characters are forced into crises; these crises, in turn, refine and wisen, deepen, and sometimes defeat her protagonists and foils. It’s real life refined to its essence: in other words, it’s art.
Here’s one of many passages I marked for its insight into human psychology. It’s about the way we are susceptible to flattering self-deception when it comes to religious belief. Bulstrode is the character she’s describing:
“There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. [Emphasis added] If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.”
Religion in the Balance 