Adam S. Miller - Religion and the Two Faces of Grace

Religion corrects for our farsightedness.  It addresses the invisibility of objects that are commonly too familiar, too available, too immanent to be seen.  To this end, it intentionally cultivates nearsightedness.  Religion practices myopia in order to bring both work and suffering into focus as grace.  Redemption turns on this revelation. 
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Double-bound, grace has two faces.  On the one hand, grace presents as the ceaseless work required by the multitude's resistance.  On the other hand, grace presents as the unavoidable suffering imposed by our passibility.  Work is grace seen from the perspective of resistance.  Suffering is grace seen from the perspective of availability. Hell is when the grace of either slips from view. Work and suffering are the two faces of Grace.
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The business of religion is "to disappoint, first, to disappoint" (TF 32).  Religion aims to intentionally, relentlessly, and systematically disappoint this desire to go away by bringing our attention back to the most obvious features of the most ordinary objects.  Its work is to bring us up short by revealing our desire to be done with the double-bind of grace.  To disappoint this drive, "to divert it, break it, subvert it, to render it impossible, is just what religious talk is after (TF 32).  Habitually, we smooth over the rough edges, downplay the invompatible lines, and fantasize that the relative availability of a black box depends on something other than the unruly mobs packed-away inside.  Sin is the dream of an empty black box, of a black box that is absolute rather than relative, permanent rather than provisional.  Sin repurposes the obscurity imposed by ta black box for the sake of obscuring grace.  In this way, sin is as natural as the habits upon which substances rely.  But in religious practices, "incredible pain has been taken to break the habitual gaze of the viewer" (TF 39).  Great effor is expended to show work and suffering as something other than regrettable.  "Religion, in this tradition, does everything to constantly redirect attention by systematically breaking the will to go away, to ignore, to be indifferent, blasé, bored" (TF 36).

Mark this definition: religion is what breaks our will to go away.
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...This revelation of the ordinary as a grace already given, as a life already being lived, is nothing exceptional, but it is something that must be enacted. It is a revelationt aht must be practiced.  Attention is difficult to exercise, it resists focus and is available for distraction.  It is a little bit subtle and requires great care.  Religion, rather than fleeing, practices attending.  It bends the flight of our attention back toward the ground that's already bracing us.

Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 143-145