Absurd Absurdity

To those who claim

They’ve found the truth

I sincerely wish them well

The best they’ve found

In my view

Is incomplete yet still.

~Michael Kroth, Absurd Absurdity

There is hardly anything more absurd to me than people who claim to follow the first and second great commandments which, according to my Bible, go like this (from Matthew 22: 36-40)...

36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

37 He [Jesus] said to him, " You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

38 This is the greatest and first commandment.

39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

~The New Oxford Annotated Bible, with the Apocrypha , p. 34NT

...and then don't even give them- in particular here, the second commandment - a good try. A good-faith effort, as it were. I'm speaking here specifically about all the controversy around gay-ness. In our church, the United Methodist Church, divergent positions could very well lead to a split, or schism. Isn't that just nuts? With real issues of poverty and homelessness and hunger and so much more to be dealt with?

I'm not a biblical scholar, and there are many, many out there who can out-quote-the-Bible-to-me, but I just wonder, why not try to treat these nice people with love and respect and, importantly, why not share with them the full rights and opportunities and care as you would hope for yourself?

( See recent statement here by UMC Bishop Elaine Stanovsky )

Now, I know this is a complex topic, and that all of us have grown up in very different environments, cultures, ideologies, experiences, and lots more. We wear many hats, and have worn even more over a lifetime. We are who we are now because of who we have been, and we - I include myself, of course - lots of time just assume we know what is right and true, without questioning it or testing whether it holds up now, as we move toward increasing maturity and, hopefully, wisdom from experience tempered by time. But it's when we think we know the whole truth - well, that's when we stop trying to learn more, stop being as curious. Stop trying to explore and go deeper. And does anyone of us know the whole truth? Really?

So, while the topic is complex, the response is simple - love your neighbor as yourself. Follow that sage and holy guidance.

We are what we are...and people of good hearts have differing views. But I always go back to that "love your neighbor as yourself" part. When people use disparaging, labeling, terms for others - like calling people "illegals" or "climate deniers" or much worse - it's pretty likely that they have stopped thinking of these folks as humans and "neighbors", and more as stereotypical objects. Not neighbors next door or from the next country over.

I was lucky. I grew up in Kansas. Spent time with farmers on our family farm, where folks helped each other out a lot. It's a neighborly state to start with. Then I went to college at Washburn University in Topeka. I became a theater major. That whole experience was mind-opening, was deeply life-changing and profound. And I became, I hope anyway, more neighborly than I was before.

This is what happened when I played "Bill" in my first and only one-act play written in the genre of absurdity. This essay, called Absurd Absurdity , was first posted on The Profound Bartender blog. It was fun to go back and to think about this time in my life.

Click here to read Absurd Absurdity: https://theprofoundbartender.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/absurd-absurdity/