Life's Choice: Existentialism & Christianity

Most of us college kids think that adults are old, smelly, un-beautiful, incredibly realist and have nothing important to say to us that we do not already know. But I think as we mature ourselves, we see more of their wisdom. My mom, aside from her devotional musings, do not always say things in the most elegant philosophical way. But these things she says intrigue me beyond mere black humor:

"You know your age by the news that you hear. When you are about to get married, you hear that your friends are getting married. When you are about to have kids, you hear that your friends are having kids. When you get to my age... well, you hear that your friends are sick and/or dying."

I know that we all know this, but life is really not that complex when you think about it. You are born, then you go to school maybe, work certainly, get married maybe, have a family maybe, and you die certainly. From an existentialist point of view, that's it. You are born and you die. Your life passes away in some decades or so; then there remains no trace of your insignificant existence in this silent universe. You are just a composition of atoms, which happened to contribute briefly to the story of the ever-changing universe (that is, if there is a story to be written in an atheistic existentialist universe). As you find yourself utterly alone in this vast infinitude, you might as well resort to anguish, despair, and abandonment because there is absolutely no essential meaning to your existence.

"Why do the heathen rage, and people imagine vain things?" King David once wrote about Gentile nations. This is true. If you are an existentialist, it seems to me that there is no reason for further strife because there's no point! Yet in the university community, the most hyper, most self-absorbed, most opinionated, most stressed out people seem to be professing atheists, and the meek, the humble, the peaceful people seem to be professing Christians. Furthermore, morality is an unnecessary luxury in an existentialist universe. I have found many existentialist arguments for morality inherently contradictory and ambiguous. They themselves say that they know they are just perspiring away into darkness... so why should they care? Although the meanest, Nietzsche was the most honest in this matter.

In the end, why don't we all just commit mass suicide and die? After all, death might be the only way to find (quite ironically, I might add) the meaning of life. (Please don't take this advice seriously here. I'd feel really bad if you killed yourself at this point.)

So is there an essential meaning to life? Of course, existentialists disagree. This next segment is a list of purely subjective reasons as to why I think there is. But truly, given the beauty of art and music, given the frivolity of laughter and the power of will, given the joys of love and the sorrows of loss, given the diversity and uniqueness of each and every being, given such a dynamic experience of human life in spite of its brevity -- I can't help but think that there is indeed something more. You can accuse me of not providing you with empirical reasoning, but I think that it is reasonable to conclude so without sacrificing my intellectual and moral integrity. As Pascal once said, "We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart."

At this point, let us switch perspectives and look at verses that we already know, living in America and all:

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(1) "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." - Genesis 1:27
(2) "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." - Romans 3:23
(3) "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." - John 3:16
(4) "For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." - 1 Cor 1:8
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So at this point you come to realize three things:
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(1) God created humans in His image, both male and female. This fact testifies to our internal Morality and our ability to Reason, which could not have evolved, in my humble opinion.
(2) All humans sinned. This explains our current miseries, tragedies, and imperfections.
(3) God provided salvation from our sin through His Son Jesus Christ. This explains the life-giving power of the Gospel which still produces today human beings who show in their lives being freed from self and sin for God and neighbor.
(4) The Gospel is meant to be preposterous. Moderns are not the first to think so. (People don't come back to life, you know, even back then. I know; surprising.)
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If you do not trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, I hope you will not dismiss what I say as theological musings of an immature college student. Rather, I challenge you to ask: "What frames what?" By that I mean this: When you consider the mysterious beauty of the universe, the vanity of fleeting life (and all its wealth, labor, fame), the dynamics of human experience and love, the heartbreaks and evils and tragedies -- all things considered, what gives a better account of these? Existentialism; or Christianity?

In my personal studies, I have found the Christian account of Creation, Fall, and Redemption the most convincing framework of our human experience. God wrought us with reason so that "the meaningless" would not be meaningless. The Ecclesiastes already spoke of the anguish, despair and abandonment that Sartre wrestled with. Paul unraveled the horrid consequences of ragingly promiscuous sex that we face today. Paul even spoke of Sartre's very unbelief, the foolishness of the cross that is the saving power to us! God in flesh revealed to us our helpless state and provided a means of help by offering up Himself. The Scriptures -- from Creation, to Fall, and ultimately to Redemption -- give us beautiful yet truly real accounts of our human experience. Although they were all recorded, as they like to say, "thousands of years ago."

In my mind, as all things are revealed in the Scriptures, "There is nothing new under the sun."

So let us stop raging and imagining vanities today, and let us serve God and His Son Jesus Christ in the short time that we have on this earth.

[After reading over: I meant to write a post on love and such, but this turned out to be a clumsy, pseudo-philosophical summary of what I learned in Dr. Horner's class this past semester. How lol.]