Religion aims at illuminating objects that are too near rather than too far. Religion is the work of making-present what is already available. Religious narratives, rather than conveying us to some distant place, are meant to enact the nearness of what is already given. Enacting this nearness is the key to redeeming the present and unveiling grace. "The truth-value of those stories depends on us tonight, exactly as the whole history of two lovers depends on their ability to re-enact the injunction to love again in the minute the are reaching for one another in the darker moment of their estrangement" (TF 33).
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Religion should not and never was defined by belief in things absent and distant, invisible and beyond. God is not the object of a belief-action" (TS 231). Rather, religion requires something of an entirely different order. It requires that I be faithful to the grace of what has already been made available. Only this fidelity can redeem the present of presence. Religious work depends, of course, on faith, but "faith and belief have nothing so say to one another." (TS 231).
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 126-127
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