A question for every father

From The Road, page 196: “Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what?”

Cormac McCarthy’s answer in the midst of postapocalyptic despair: “There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.”

He’s right; it’s a question I keep asking myself. But I’m wrong to strive to measure up to my fathers, since I, rather, am called to imitate Christ. I must fail in their ledgerbook’s accounting, but Christ’s Spirit enables me, by grace, to haltingly imitate his self-sacrifice in the offering up of myself in the service of my fathers’ descendents.

And of course, McCarthy’s answer is wrong (although I suspect he knows that). Romans 8:33-34: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. ”