Over the weekend, a friend of mine reminded me of a passage in The Divine Comedy. Early in Purgatorio, Dante meets Bonconte I da Montefeltro, a warrior and false councilor who followed his own father into a life of sin. Dante had met the father in Inferno. Bonconte died on the battlefield after his throat was slit, but he uttered one word before death, “Mary,” and shed a repentant tear. A demon and an angel show up at his death, and the former rages that God would spare the soul of a life-long sinner because of “one little tear”—“una lagrimetta” (Purg. 5.107). But such is God’s mercy.
Dante was really communicating the depth and breadth of God’s mercy. He is willing to build the salvation of a soul out of the tiniest gesture of sorrow for sin.
It’s interesting that our culture still believes that there are moments where our soul’s true identity and destiny is revealed, but today this revelation only works for our damnation.
My old friend David Weigel (we once were roommates) has been suspended from the Washington Post for retweeting and unretweeting a joke by Cam Harless that stated, “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”
One of his colleagues took a screenshot of the tweet and publicly complained in a way that invoked the threat of a civil-rights lawsuit. The Post then rushed to clarify that, “Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.”
Kat Rosenfield notices that some of the commentary just assumes that finding the joke at all funny reveals the total inner character of a person:
do we really want to open the door to this notion that being amused by a joke = "publicly telegraphing" the secret unemployable woman-disrespecting darkness inside your heart, let alone make this workplace policy? because god that seems like a bad idea pic.twitter.com/jG4AMbYJAw
— Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield) June 7, 2022
In this case, Weigel probably made life more difficult for himself by unretweeting the joke and apologizing. Human-resource bureaucracies are equipped with no philosophy or theology for judging actions and intentions, they just exist to minimize liability for the company. Confessing your sins to God excites divine mercy. Confessing the same to HR facilitates the swift legal apportionment of blame and punishment. “Oh, so you agree it was wrong! Perfect, now we can punish you to cover ourselves.”
It’s probably unhealthy that our culture assumes that the worst thing you’ve done — or the worst thing you can be plausibly misrepresented to have done — is the definitive portrait of one’s character. The old Christian ethic enjoined us to build upon the good moments we find in each other, rather than the worst. But suggesting that we should be merciful because God is merciful is probably also a fireable offense in the American workplace.