A Christian Reflection on The Diviners

 

Part 1: When Our Story Feels Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners opens with Morag Gunn from a small town in Canada takes readers into her complex life. Through a non-linear narrative threaded with memory, nostalgia, and cultural inheritance, Laurence offers us a story not of becoming but of unearthing. As Jesus followers, our job is to process each other’s stories with compassion, grace and truth, constantly asking, "Where does God’s word intersect the human experience?" When we do, we find that, even in literature that does not expressly derive from Scripture, echoes of eternal truths and gospel longings abound. More generally, The Diviners is an exploration of “who am I?” Morag’s trajectory, from orphaned child in rural Manitoba to novelist and new mother struggling toward self-understanding, is a well-trodden one. She is not in search of mere success but of profound meaning. In that quest we face a fundamental reality, and that is this: that identity separated from the Creator is in many respects a fragmented identity.

The identity blame game without God

Morag seeks to create a self, which becomes a major theme of the novel, through her memories, her writing, her romantic encounters, and searching for independence. These projects reflect what has been called the 21st century cultural value of "authenticity," of crafting identity through personal story and emotional sincerity. But the Bible tells us that identity is not self-imposed, but God-given.

Colossians 3:3 reads, "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." Morag’s is a touching story, raw and real, even if tragic in its course. She doesn’t know who she is in Christ, so her identity is left tied to her pain, memories, sin, and thoughts. As disciples of Christ, we know that only disillusion and failure will result from seeking identity outside of God, from building our lives on shifting sand instead of the solid rock that is Christ (cf. Matthew 7:24-27).

Memory is both a mirror and a burden in Laurence’s novel. Morag 's past is dredged out of letters and snapshots, flashbacks and kept regrets that inform her art even as they hold her captive. She finds it hard to let it go. Memory is powerful and the Bible knows it. After all, the Bible itself commands us to remember: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 5:15), “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead” (2 Timothy 2:8). But a biblical response is not sentimental but directs us with purpose to God who is faithful, whose redemptive deeds and promises never fail. By contrast, Morag’s recollection turns into a closed loop of self-focus in the bad sense and unredeemable. As Christians, we are instructed not to endlessly obsess over the painful past, but to see even our jagged memories through the prism of Christ’s redemptive activity. Isaiah 43:18–19 says it like this: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" For those in Christ, memory becomes testimony, not torture.

Morag’s relationships, with Jules or with her daughter Pique, or even her faraway foster parents, are frightening in their mess, and all too real in the pain of love devoid of covenant, family lacking the gospel, intimacy void of any spiritual underpinning.

It’s easy to interpret these scenes with either nostalgia or cynicism. But Scripture presents a better way: relationships that are no less difficult, yet that mirror a higher reality. It’s because marriage is supposed to reflect the love of Christ for the church (Ephesians 5:25–27). Parenting mirrors God’s nurture and correction of his kids (Hebrews 12:6–7). Friendship gives us glimpses of sacrificial love (John 15:13). When human beings’ love is cut off from its divine wellspring, it tends to be selfish, demanding, disappointed, or debased. Morag’s story is full of this ache. But for the Christian, love is rooted not in what others provide but in what God has already provided. We'll have the power to live a life of love for others, because we have first been loved (1 John 4:19).

 

Closing Reflection for Part 1

The Diviners doesn’t end with a neat theological solution. But it does what great literature does, it makes you want to ask big questions. Who are we? What defines us? How do we process our pain? How do we love those with whom we often have a hard time relating? These questions are not without answers for the followers of Jesus. God’s word illuminates every aspect of identity as rooted in Christ, memory as healed and relationships as mirrors of eternal love. Morag Gunn is a reminder of what life looks like without these, why clinging to Jesus is far more important.