The Grapes of Wrath

I recently found a small paperback edition of The Grapes of Wrath on our bookshelves. Inside the front cover is my wife’s name and some notes she took while reading it in college. In the past few weeks I have been captivated by the Joad family, who were forced out of their home in the Oklahoma dust bowl during the great depression. They packed their family and their last possessions onto a beat up truck and fled to California, following the stories they’d heard about fruit trees, vineyards, and plenty of work for hard-working people. John Steinbeck based his novel on his own first hand reporting of the great migration of people to California. They were called Okies, which was originally a derisive and ugly name. But the promise of California was false. There were too many hungry people and not enough work.

There is a scene that takes place in a sort of refugee camp, where many of the displaced families are living while looking for work. A young woman, pregnant with her first child, meets a woman who calls herself a “lamb’s blood Christian” and preaches fire and brimstone at her. She says the camp is crawling with sinners, which it clearly is not - most people are honest and kind to one another. But all this woman can see is the sinful dances on Saturday nights. They aren’t just square dancing, she says, they’re grab and hug dancing. As a warning, she tells the young woman about two other pregnant women in the camp who lost their babies because of this sin of dancing.

A few moments later, the camp manager walks over to comfort the scared young mother. He tells her that it is true about the two women, but it wasn’t any sin of theirs that caused it. They suffered malnutrition. They couldn’t get rest with the demands of travel and finding work. It’s the sin of the situation, he tells her. It’s the sin of poverty and a wider system that puts people at risk.

Centuries ago, the prophet Isaiah made much the same point. He said that God is not so much interested in our religious ceremonies but our attention to the well-being of the poor and marginalized. Let’s be clear: suffering is not God’s punishment on us; it is often the result of the sin in a situation, and we can do something about that.