Plastic, Paper or Truth?

The homeowners’ association meeting turns to recycling. As soon as the subject is raised a religious atmosphere pervades the room.

“Our neighborhood doesn’t have recycling,” one man solemnly says. He is a priest indicting a parish. His neighbors, the parishioners, nod and murmur their acknowledgment of the sin.  

“What must we do to be saved?” a lady asks.

“Let us petition the county,” the priest continues. “Amens” permeate the room.

This is the second time in two weeks that I have witnessed this liturgy in a homeowners’ association meeting. My sense both times was that if a heretic were discovered in the room that he or she would be burned at the stake of ostracism.

It isn’t that recycling is wrong. It isn’t that recycling isn’t worthy. But could we have had a conversation about transcendent truth? If there is no transcendent truth then recycling really doesn’t matter because whether we last another one or two generations doesn’t really matter – if the end is the end then it doesn’t matter when the end comes for it is simply the end.

Excuse me, I have to go, I see another piece of cheese.