Waiting for Godot

We imagine ourselves as Vladimir or Estragon, wandering aimlessly through our modern-postmodern wasteland wondering why Godot has not yet come.

It is a damnable lie.

Godot—God—has no reason to hide from us. Remember the story of the Garden of Eden. It was Adam and Eve who hid from him.

We are only conning ourselves that we are looking for him. If he were to appear, we would crucify Him.

The wasteland is our protective shell of lies, that keeps us from having to think. Then we can go about our daily lives untroubled, worrying only about in which ditch to sleep. It is the matrix; it is the idolatry we have inherited from our parents.

We find any sincere quest for truth profoundly threatening. Leave aside Jesus; Socrates was executed for asking too many questions.

We would rather believe the obvious nonsense of Marxism, long ago disproven; or of Freudianism, long ago disproven; of postmodernism, or existentialism, or for that matter of “Hallelujah Chorus” Christianity, which obviously contradicts the gospel, but looks easier. There are many such idols of the tribe. The one thing they have in common is a denial of moral concerns.

Here’s the plain truth. God is both omnipotent and benevolent. He will hide nothing. All it takes is a sincere quest for the truth, and truth begins to be apparent. “Seek and ye shall find.”

This is why Descartes was able to conclude that anything we perceive with clarity and distinctness must be true.

Of course God would not have abandoned us in some wasteland without direction.

Here’s how simple it is: the point of life is to seek truth, and the good, and beauty. As soon as you seek truth, you have found it, because the sincere effort to find truth is the essential truth of life. As soon as you seek good, you have found it, for the sincere effort to be good is the essential good. As soon as you seek beauty, you have found it, for the quest for beauty is the most beautiful of stories.

As Vladimir might well have mumbled to Estragon, “Now where did I put my nose? I’m sure I left it around here someplace…”