Gilead: Pages 185-191 Summary & Analysis

Today is John’s birthday. There’s a stack of pancakes waiting for him at breakfast, and his son recites the Beatitudes perfectly, beaming at the accomplishment. His son wears his red shirt, and his wife wears her blue dress. John would give a great deal for a thousand mornings just like it. His wife also found the sermon he gave the first time he saw her, the Pentecost sermon. She kisses him and tells him not to go revising it. He is now 77.

John is discouraged to think that he might end up being “bothered to death” because of Jack Boughton. He feels it’s “disgraceful” that he’s unable to speak to Jack as a pastor should. The best people, he feels, love the people they pity. In general, women are better at this than men, but it also means that they get drawn into harmful situations. John always struggles to counsel people away from such situations—since that loving attitude is basically Christlike.

Jack hasn’t replied to John’s note. So, he writes another. When he’s dropping it off in Boughton’s mailbox, Jack is outside. He reads the note and thanks John for it, and they agree to talk again soon. John feels relieved. Admittedly, part of the relief is the hope that his wife will no longer have reason to pity Jack so much.

John doesn’t sleep this night; he’s thinking about baptizing Jack. The plan had been to name Jack Theodore Dwight Weld. John liked that name, especially since his grandfather had loved Weld’s preaching. But during the baptism, when John asked Boughton what the child’s name was to be, Boughton wept and instead said, “John Ames.” Jack felt the situation was unlike Boughton, and “un-Presbyterian,” at that. People wept in the pews.

To be honest, John says, it took him a long time to forgive Boughton for this. If he’d had any time to reflect, he probably would have felt differently. But in the moment, his heart froze, and he thought, “This is not my child.” It’s foolish, but John admits that he has occasionally thought that the infant Jack felt how coldly John baptized him. He’s always felt guilty about it, and he’s never warmed up to Jack.

After writing this, John realizes it isn’t actually true, and he’s relieved. But he does wish he could baptize Jack again, to really feel the sacredness of it. And John Ames Boughton really is his son in a sense. He recalls the passage in Calvin’s Institutes that says that God’s image in another person is reason enough to love them, even if they’re an enemy. He’s not saying that Jack is his enemy, but even if he isn’t, shouldn’t he be all the more ready to forgive whatever petty offenses Jack has committed against him?

While John was praying about all this, he reflected that existence is the most essential and holiest thing. So, if God chooses to make nothing of human sin, then our transgressions truly are nothing—or at least, they are trivial compared to “the exquisite primary fact of existence.” At the same time, human beings can do great harm. John has always struggled to reconcile the gravity of sin with the grace of forgiveness. If Jack is truly his son, then that little girl who died was John’s child, too.

After reviewing these thoughts the next morning, John has realized that he’s avoiding the key question—how should he deal with his fear that Jack will somehow hurt his wife and son out of sheer meanness? Perhaps a big part of his fear is that if Jack did hurt them, his theology would fail him. Then John hears them all laughing on the porch below. It’s a relief. He thinks that he is an old and limited man, and even once he’s dead, Jack will remain “his inexplicable mortal self.”