Though life APPEARS to be absurd in that it seems to be nonsensical most times it is not the ultimate reality. And...the paradoxial conundrum that confronts us daily which is that we must search for that which we cannot fully find...needs to be fully accepted and embraced by us.
I have operated under the premise that life had certain parameters or protocols that governed everything.
In other words you reap what you sow. What goes around comes around. You put out bad in the world you invariably get bad back etc. Theologians call it retributive justice. Or you may call it karma.
You work hard...you prosper and good things come to you. You speak your world into existence. Positive thinking yields positive results. Likewise, negative thinking results in negative things happening to you.
Well...that has not been what I have experienced 100% of the time. Sometimes it is true. But, other times...not so much. Those may be general rules that apply to the mass of humanity but not necessarily to each individual.
On my walk across the Great Plains in 2014 I wrestled with the apparent meaninglessness of life.
I have witnessed people some of whom were co-workers who conducted their business in so many shady ways stealing from their clients and customers and yet prospered greatly.
On the other hand, others treated their customers with honesty, professionalism, kindness bending over backwards for them. Sometimes they prospered but many times they came up a day late and a dollar short.
This is the reality we all live in. I searched for wisdom beyond my experience by going to Proverbs in the Bible where it puts forth the idea that the wicked prosper not...but rather end up on the ash heap. The innocent reap rewards etc, etc.
Retributive justice. A great term you will find in the nomenclature of the theologian.
God is just. If I am just then a just God would reward me accordingly.
Right?
Maybe and maybe not. That's the conclusion I came up with.
I can do a couple of things in response to all of this. I can commit philosophical suicide by ignoring the issue altogether and suffer the tragedies of life quietly...or, I can commit physical suicide and resign myself to a dark oblivion in the fuzzy hazy realm of the hereafter where all my troubles supposedly would vanish. No more life...no more problems.
Right?
I don't like ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room...so pretending life is non complex and everything in the Universe is ordered with discernable patterns that we can follow is not a viable option.
And, physical suicide is such an egregious alternative that it is no option at all.
No. Neither of those options work for me.
There is I think...a third option. Embrace the apparent absurdity and meaninglessness of life and agree that while the absurdity feels and looks really real it is not ultimate reality but only an illusion.
My ultimate reality and your ultimate reality is God. My ultimate reality, my ultimate purpose in life is my contact with God, my relationship with this Being, my search for the Unsearchable, who doesn't merely have life but IS Life, who doesn't just love but rather IS Love.
So, therefore, I do not ignore the paradox that we must search for the Unsearchable and come to know the Unknowable. And, I do not resign myself to physical suicide to escape the seeming reality of absurdity. Instead, I simply recognize that this day to day reality I find myself in finally ends in the tragedy of my death, but; beyond that is Ultimate Reality waiting for my arrival.
I don't have a clue about life after death or life after life after death as N.T Wright characterizes it. Heck, I don't even have a clue about the life I'm actually living right now. But, that's ok for now.
So...what to do?
Embrace life with all it's absurdity and lack of sense, don't ask "why" when something bad happens or suffering comes. Put your head down and walk resolutely right into the wind and simply push on.
Seek God knowing that you cannot possibly find Him completely in all that He is. Just make contact. Love the paradox of getting to know the Unknowable. Everything else is mere detail.
Don't let the absurdity of life alienate you from God. Embrace the absurdity and God simultaneously and know that it's your relationship with the All Knowing that eventually overpowers the absurd.
BR Schoenbein
Amy Schoenbein
Edgar Schoenbein
August 24, 2017- Thursday
