Lucky-Dipping Barth's <i>Church Dogmatics</i>

It is on this basis that it becomes so serious, so simple and at the same times so complicated as in the last resort it always actually is.

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1 §8.3.

Barth is speaking of the decision to put the doctrine of the Trinity at the front of our thinking about theology. He's making an important point in the section these words appear, but when I read this particular sentence, my response was something like, "whu?"

As I dealt with my semantic confusion, I noticed that, stripped of its context, the quoted statement can also apply to a few other things. For example,

1. Playing 20 questions with a pregnant wife.
2. Flossing during a unicycle race
   
3. Understanding the metanarrative of LOST
4. Building a sand castle in an Ant Farm
5. Juggling Tuna Fish

These are all things that seem to become "so serious, so simple and at the same times so complicated as in the last resort they always actually are."

Thank you, Barth, for this category of thought.