We humans prefer a manageable complexity to an unmanageable simplicity, so observed Fr. Bruno Barnhart. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around that since reading it. We prefer a manageable complexity to an unmanageable simplicity. As my granddaughter would say, that’s deep.
Having just gotten back from my walk with my friend, I’ve had a bit of time to let that rumble around in the back of my mind. I’m not at all sure what Fr. Barnhart meant, but what I’ve come up with is that we much prefer a religion and social structures that have lots of rules and regulations and tell us what to do to one that focuses on a single concept like love, which is nebulous and hard to grab hold of. In an unmanageable simplicity, love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self are so open-ended that they become frustrating. No rules about which church is better, which liturgy is more divine, which approach to understanding the Bible is correct, so forth and so on. Just love with all that brings into being.
When we love, we experience gratitude. We experience joy. We approach our problems as gifts that will open us to new understandings and insights. When we focus on loving the other, we won’t have room for hate or resentment. Yes, we will inevitably be hurt and disappointed because that is a part of life and one of the ways we grow in love. At the very least, the loving response is to simply accept that person for who they are, not who we want them to be. We can love someone even when we don’t like them, as we can love what is best for them and still walk away from the relationship because this person is toxic for us. Establishing our boundaries is an important way of loving ourselves. As our pastor likes to say, “God, bless them, change me.”
I think that in my experience, we humans prefer a manageable complexity to unmanageable simplicity. Take our legal system, for instance. People make a living trying to interpret all of the twists and turns of “the law.” In spite of what we are told, our justice system is not based on what is fair and good, but on an adversarial system in which the one who can best interpret or twist the law wins. The individuals involved rarely count. It’s so much easier to deal with differences and conflict, even dishonesty, theft, abuse, and murder with specific laws and penalties than it is to examine what is fair and just in any given situation because that is never a constant. Les Misérables is a good example where Jean Valjean is severely punished for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry family. Then, later, when he steals from the priest, the priest gives him the golden candlesticks, and his kindness transforms Jean Valjean’s life. When I was volunteering at our local jail, we had an inmate who kept coming back on shoplifting charges for stealing less than $20.00 worth of food. It soon became clear that he was trying to get arrested because he was homeless. In jail, he had a bed, a shower, and food. No one made an effort to help him get on his feet. They just kept arresting and rearresting him, costing the country far more than it would have paid to get him an apartment and a job.
Now that I am older, I don’t need all of the rules I had pounded into me as a child. I have internalized many of them, but others I have thrown out, recognizing that going the second mile (giving the other person a break) is a lot easier than enforcing an eye for an eye. Having said that, I recognize that there is nothing easy about shaping our lives around an unmanageable simplicity such as the Great Commandment …loving God, loving neighbor, and loving self. Yet when we can steep ourselves in the Great I Am, that is love, the emotional and spiritual rewards are many.