In the 19th century, a somewhat obscure Danish philosopher named Søren Kierkegaard wrote on the concept of the Absurd. Later, in the 20th century, Albert Camus took the idea and gave it his own spin. For Kierkegaard, the Absurd is taking the Truth as it is even when reason, logic, rationality, and all such human things resist Truth. For Kierkegaard, faith is an absurdity that makes a human being capable of being authentically him or herself before God. For Camus, the Absurd is a human being’s desire to have meaning and purpose, to define the universe and bring it under human dominion, when all that the universe offers is meaninglessness and lifelessness. Camus thought the human condition was absurd; that is, our desire for meaning in this world is a very strange thing indeed when all the world defies meaning.In both cases, the Absurd can be understood as a determined desire to move forward in the face of futility. This, I think, is the core notion of the Absurd. It is the defiance of futility and defiance of despair (even while despairing).
Now in both the case of Kierkegaard and Camus, it may well be said that neither these concepts really describe the human being’s place in relation to Truth. That is, our world is not absurd when you take what God has said as the world itself. God has created a rational, meaningful, purposed world – to call it “absurd” is to deny God’s design and insult God’s wisdom. But the wisdom of God is foolishness to us. What human being of his or her own accord can stomach Truth without repulsion? Who has kept the commandments handed down to us without failing? Who has managed God’s design? Who has not contradicted the will of God in his or her intentions and actions?
The Truth is ridiculous in the world of human beings and it is impossible to draw life from Truth. Truth is absurd.But, for the philosopher or the thinker who lives in the meaningless world and recognizes the absurdity of Truth, and who despairs because of it, God has made preparations. We have a God who makes the absurd into reality, a God who dies though immortal, who is three and one, who is truly man. And, above all, this God has put us right. Now these things, in themselves, are not the Absurd, though they are absurd to us. The real absurdity in it all, is to pick up and carry on with Truth even when all the world should accuse you of ignorance.
It is to seek to realize the Truth, to live as God lives, to believe what God says when he calls us a new creation, New Adams, little Christs in this world. It is hungering for righteousness with the full knowledge of sin; the recognition of life as its own purpose and glory when everywhere the grave beckons us. In short, it is delighting in life in spite of the world.
In so many things, those human beings whose condition has been tempered with whatever their parents and authorities have called reason and rational, the Absurd is but around the corner for them. If the Truth can take shape as reasonable to all men, by the grace of God, it may also take shape as absurd to all men who are, in themselves, absurd.
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