Between a Rock and a Hard Place

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare--From Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Is this not the description of life apart from God? Life under these circumstances would be unbearable and unsustainable. The despair and futility would be too much. This leaves us in a dilemma. We could return to the truth or we can manufacture our own gods. Either way, there are insurmountable problems.

First, how can we possibly return to God? We have defiantly rejected God and there is no way for us to make amends. Even if we could find a way into God’s presence, we may find ourselves before a being so powerful that merely looking at his face destroys us.

Second, any god we chose to create is a fiction. It is an illusion. To the degree we wholeheartedly buy into the illusion we are deluded. To the degree we disengage from illusion we come to Shakespeare’s realization that life “…is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Humanity is truly between Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place. Woody Allen once said, "More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." So what shall we do?

We will build Babel. We will delude ourselves by building a powerful illusion that will divert our attention from the rock and the hard place.