Absurdity

This strikes with me, from The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. (An excerpt from my Philosophy textbook.)

“What I said was absurd, but–”
“That’s just the point that ‘but’!” cried Ivan. “Let me tell you, novice,
that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities,
and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without them. We know what we know!”
“What do you know?”
“I understand nothing,” Ivan went on, as though in delirium. “I don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact and I have determined to stick to the fact.”

I do not yield to nihilistic absurdity, but there is something mysteriously true about this idea. God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and makes the last first, the meek the inheritors of the earth.