In the last pages of Hernan Diaz’s novel “Trust,” Mildred Bevel, a woman dying of cancer, notes in her journal that she received a visit from a priest. Her sole comment is, “God is the most uninteresting answer to the most interesting questions.”
That response is her only recorded thought on religion in a book that is largely concerned with the mystery of who this woman was. One of two books that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2023, “Trust” presents the reader with multiple portrayals of Mildred, as seen through the eyes of others and her own journal entries.
After Mildred’s death, her husband, a Wall Street tycoon working on his autobiography, manipulates his late wife’s image, presenting her as no more and no less than his dutiful companion. He dismisses what he doesn’t like, edits her character and adds fictional details that reflect well on him.
For centuries, Christians and non-Christians alike have done the same to Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson famously produced his own book about Jesus because he was dissatisfied with the biblical narratives. Taking a razor to the four Gospels, he cut and pasted a single story that reflected his admiration for Jesus as a moral teacher but eliminated anything that contrasted with his deistic outlook.
Jefferson seemed to undertake the project for his own spiritual benefit and didn’t allow the book, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” to be published in his lifetime. In contrast, others have long used distorted views of Jesus to support their politics, their cultural identity or national pride, their business practices or any number of other interests.
In a 2022 interview with journalist Jane Coaston, the evangelical Protestant leader Russell Moore discusses church-goers whose political passions supersede their faith and basic understanding of who Jesus is, even causing them to contradict his teaching. He complained, for example, about “supposedly Christian leaders saying something along the lines of, we’ve got to stop this weak lack of fighting. We can’t turn the other cheek.”
“And I’ve had pastors tell me,” Moore continued, “that they have just parenthetically mentioned the Sermon on the Mount and have had church members say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’”
Another current example is Pope Francis’ complaint in August 2023 about a minority of American Catholics who replace faith with ideologies.
To be clear, even the most sincere Christians are vulnerable to letting their own perspective and desires obscure their understanding of God. As Saint Anselm wrote in his best-known book, “The Proslogion” (Discourse), “I strove toward God, and I stumbled upon myself.” Clearly, we moderns can stumble upon ourselves as easily as a medieval philosopher who is a doctor of the Church.
Saint Anselm’s thinking is also worth considering in contrast to Mildred Bevel and her seemingly superficial conception and blithe dismissal of God.
The way she uses the word “answer” implies knowledge, complete comprehension, a fully formed explanation – as if denying the concept of God is the same as recognizing the wrong solution to a math problem or an outdated scientific theory. Conceived in that way, faith is simply a position to be adopted or rejected: a light switch to be turned on or off, with no need for introspection or humility, and no place for tradition or spiritual guidance.
Yet Saint Anselm, who originally planned on using “Faith Seeking Understanding” as the title for his major work, held that God is not a “thing” that, like worldly things – from a pebble to the American financial system that Mildred and her husband exploited – can be objectively studied, taken apart and analyzed, with the goal of being fully known and comprehensively explained. Assent to faith, Anselm held, is insufficient. “It strikes me as negligence if, once we are secure in faith,” the saint wrote, “we do not try to understand what we believe.”
Nine centuries later, facts and data and studies and knowledge are more universally accessible than at any time in human history. But in this era of Google searches, 24/7 news coverage, social media condemnations and extreme tribal alliances, people can have an abundance of certainty about anything but a shortage of understanding, including a shortage of understanding about religion.
A thoughtful and humble consideration of God – as opposed to a quick denial or a simplistic formulation, a ready-made “answer” – is never an uninteresting response to any question. That’s especially true for those “most interesting questions” that are likely to occupy the mind of a dying woman.
Carl Peters is former managing editor of the Catholic Star Herald.
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