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EXISTENTIAL EXAMINATION
Rev. John T. Crestwell, Jr.
March 19, 2006

I dedicate this sermon to my friend, Existentialist, and Elder of Davies Church, Richard Hess.

In the book of Genesis, chapter 3, we hear these words…

4 “‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. 5 ‘For God knows that when you eat of the fruit, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil…’”

Later, God announces:

21… ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ 23 So the Lord banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.’”

The 20th Century Jewish Existentialist Martin Buber who wrote many works on the Hebrew Bible and what its myths mean to us today. Wrote in 1952 that this ancient story is a mythical narrative, not so much about the fall of human beings, as much as it is about the birth of consciousness—the birth of awareness. Buber wrote in his book GOOD and EVIL (1952) that this is an attempt by the many writers of Genesis to explain the meaning of good and evil. Adam and Eve shared a oneness with God and with all creation. They were living in a world that did not contain opposites and Buber says the story explains simply the birth of the opposites– the good/evil — right/wrong — love/hate — and with this came our ability to contemplate the vastness of the cosmos. We can compare this story to the anthropological story where scientists say over 2.5- million years ago, the Homo Sapiens Sapiens’ brain sized doubled abruptly changing the human evolutionary process... Our forebears after creating tools, then fire, would also, because of this expanded brain capacity, contemplate their existence and begin creating myths to explain their fears in a world with many strange sounds & objects—and they would, as they developed language, begin asking questions to each other and too themselves-- “Who am I? What is my purpose? What is that strange looking blue ceiling above me? Is there something up there? These questions came as they experienced life, struggle, pain and death—the bad things, along side many good and wholesome pleasures life brings... But they wrestled with attempting to make sense of the opposites...

My topic this morning is Existential Examination, and by this, I mean that we look at matters of existence—the meaning of life. I want to do this by looking at a few historical Existentialists and see what they have to say to us today on this issue to see if there is a meaning in life and a purpose for each of us…

I’d like to start the journey with a French speaking gentleman named Albert Camus —1913 to 1960 and in his book THE STRANGER, Camus reveals his existential philosophy. For Camus, like Immanuel Kant, the Universe is benign, indifferent—meaningless and it is up to us to create our own meaning out of this ambiguity. He said the world and cosmos do not care about good and evil and that humans project this onto the universe. He called this level of reasoning absurd saying, “We have a demand on the world and the world does not care!”

For Camus, we find our meaning in life by first accepting (get this) the purposelessness of it all. Camus would say, “Life is the meaning of life.” Or as I’ve heard others say, “Life is what it is.” We find in Camus’s theory that once you let go of holding on to the purpose of life, then you can constructively find your own purpose—and not through contemplation about the gods or God—not by looking at the stars, but through LIVED EXPERIENCE. Camus felt lived experience is where you find your purpose. You’ve heard Descartes say “I think therefore I am”—well Camus would dismiss this notion as irrational and not fully developed. It’s too “heady”. He felt there must be a level of participation in life for us to find meaning. For Camus a rational philosophy for life requires reflection and lived experience. This follows very closely to the ancient Greek idea that we are not fully-alive—fully human without our reason and passion—our thinking along with our lived experience working together in the world.

And you can imagine then that Camus also felt we must be fully responsible for our actions. That when you participate in life, when you create YOUR meaning, you also learn to following or adhere to a social standard, and more importantly you learn to anticipate consequences; you learn that your actions have consequences—and you think your way through life as you actively participate, attempting to make wise choices that add depth and breath to your existence. I know this is a bit abstract because Camus did not really define what “participation” in life really meant… Nonetheless he gives us valuable information about taking personal responsibility for our lives.

Enter into our discourse, Danish Christian Existentialist Soren Kierkegaard--1813-1855, who called his era “The age of reflection and lack of passion.” This was around the mid 40s in Copenhagen, Denmark where Kierkegaard felt the folk in his town were alive– yes—but not really LIVING, particularly when it came to religion. Kierkegaard would redefine what it meant to be a religious person in this era. He said that most of Christianity was a mass of “herd” phenomenon —they didn’t think or feel they just did what they were told to do; felt that most showed no passion for their faith—he said what was needed was a fervent belief; he said most religious leaders were hypocrites content with having members only; and he felt they understood their religion only in terms of doctrines and rituals which he felt lacked vitality. He saw most of the members as asleep at the wheel, so to speak—that they didn’t take risks. And risk for Kierkegaard was the ability to dare; to think and then act. The solution was simple: the “ethically existing individual” he claimed, needed passion—inwardly and outwardly. But he too like Camus is unclear about how we are to express this passion. On one hand he says the passionate person may never be known to be passionate by others but is deeply driven, while on the other hand he called for a sort of radical outward participation in life… But even still, like Camus, he is clear that a person needs a certain fervor and passion in life.

But more than that, there was also the problem with good and evil for Kierkegaard. How could a good God allow evil? This was his existential question… For him, the answer comes, not by trying to answer the question when we attempt to rationalize what he felt were irrational religious truths. He saw Christianity’s tenets as unexplainable. Why God allows evil cannot be explained, because the existence of God cannot be explained… For Kierkegaard, 2+2=4, that can be explained—it is a truth, but religion was more like trying to say that 2+2=5 and then passionately trying to prove to someone you’re right and they’re wrong. So in some ways, Kierkegaard is agnostic here. But he comes back to his Christian roots when he says that a person that is religious must take a leap of faith and believe (PERIOD); as in my example, that 2+2=5 (believe it), which for him was the same as saying God exists–a statement of faith… This led him to his epiphany—that we must find a truth that we can live and die by. Or as Dr. King would say, “If a person has not found something they are not willing to die for they aren’t fit to live.” And the individual truth is found in the religious leap of faith; when we actively participate in religion. Like Camus, Kierkegaard felt you create your meaning and purpose and then you go head first into it—which essentially means you build your own theology for life and then live by that belief, as opposed to taking what others impart on you and accepting it just because that’s what your parents and grandparents did… There is a difference…

On other point on Kierkegaard… You can see, like Camus, his philosophy is very individualistic… In fact, Kierkegaard asked for the words “the Individual” to be inscribed on his tombstone. He believed that beyond the collective consciousness or world spirit, a term made popular by philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, there was more importantly the individual life—the individual spirit that really mattered. Hegel argued that individual purpose was not paramount in the world because history was a collective story about human beings working itself out toward a perfect society. But Kierkegaard rejected this as a dangerous notion because it could cause the human to be looked at as an object instead of subject, which history has proven him to be correct….

And we cannot forget the German Existentialist, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who helps me wrap up this message… He lived in a land which many say is the home of Theology (Germany)… He is known for his ideas on nihilism and his most famous phrase, “The Death of God”…

Now, Nietzsche, who many would say was a pessimist, would tell us that “nihilism” indicates a need to do away with the morals of the culture, the things valued, the truths cherished because in reality (pause) no one lives up to them. He felt justice, which could be had for all, was not really wanted in society by the powers that be. In fact he felt minsters and political leaders preferred the lower road of inequality and injustice to maintain their subjective truths as opposed to seeking a higher truth and morality. For Nietzsche in the late 1800’s, the world was morally corrupt and meaningless and until the existing social, political and economic institutions were disempowered, nothing really mattered... Nietzsche said, “We have the highest values devaluing themselves.”

Religiously, he felt the church promoted an “otherworldly” theology exclusively—which he felt could not help anything; and he called for the edification of life which he considered the ultimate value in existence! He felt that the love of life and truth were gone and like Martin Luther and Hegel, before him, he too would exclaim, “GOD IS DEAD!” He would later add a twist to these cutting words by saying, “God is dead and we have killed him!” What he meant here is that his modern world had eliminated virtue and thus eliminated God by placing God outside of morality and in a metaphysical realm “up there”. And then he said the church creatively posited reasoned truths out of subjective theological ideas and made them dogma—in other words theologians had taken biblical stories and used reason to prove them true when they are subjective truths or truths based on the way the individual saw them—He felt they could not be collective or universal truths. Nietzsche did not believe in a universal truth… He felt what was really needed was a more down to earth personal theology and philosophy that was morally conscious. If there were a God for Nietzsche, that God would be alive in the world working actively through people, but God was dead because humans, who have the power of choice, had chosen to place God in the heavens theologically, instead of on earth socially.

Like Kierkegaard he felt there was an over abundance of “herd behavior” in religion where people inadvertently let God die. Nietzsche felt that if you are religious, as most of the society claimed to be back then, you must have a physical, present Creator. This meant his overarching focus was that religion must be centered on THE SELF--THE INDIVIDUAL. The greatest creation on earth for Nietzsche was the human being, and thus, as I said before HUMAN LIFE and the preservation of a moral society, was his fundamental philosophy. As we heard from his words this morning: “At bottom every person knows well enough that they are a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity ever be put together a second time.” For him religion should not ask “What is to happen to me when I die?”, rather it should ask, “What kind of person am I because of my faith?” “What can I do with my life right now?” Nietzsche’s philosophy was a philosophy of virtue or character; it was not defined by rules or principles or even good behavior, rather it was guided by the belief that we must understand what we understand, from our perspective, and then act consciously according to that belief. Although all beliefs are subjective, he believed that people, at their core, had similar levels of virtue which, if each individual focused on themselves fully, we could move the society forward to righteous standards. He would say, “Virtue has its own reward.” For Nietzsche, you don’t do things for a heavenly reward but you do them for virtue’s sake. You do good—for goodness sake. He felt we spent too much time judging others while we need to be judged ourselves–that folk tried to take the splinter out of another’s eye when they had a log in their own eye.
And so, like Camus and Kierkegaard, Nietzsche felt the individual should not worry about heaven or others’ morality, rather on themselves. For these Existentialists, introspection was the best thing for society in the long run. Nietzsche’s existentialism might ask: “Have you lived up to the character you want to be?” “Are you the master of your morality or slave of your morality?” “Do you accept yourself?” “Have you made something out of your life?” “Are you letting society determine who you are?”

One other point, Nietzsche like the others, also felt the Universe was indifferent, but his idea says that it’s not the deck you are dealt, but how you play your cards! And he would say as the Greeks said well: “Become who you are!”

And so, with all that said, these very fine gentlemen teach us this morning that existentialism is essentially a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual and the individual experience in an indifferent, random universe; it regards human existence as unexplainable, but stresses that freedom of choice and taking responsibility for the consequences of our action is what is important. (www.answers.com ).

And that speaks to us this morning as Unitarian Universalists… Our second principle is closely related Existentialism. We do believe that all deserve A free and responsible search for truth and meaning, which means I hope that you will take this freedom to find your truth seriously as these Existentialist’s did.

I know this philosophy may appear, to some of you to be morbid, atheistic, mundane and down right negative. But if you are listening, what I’ve discussed this morning is what it means to be active in the world. It’s not a negative message it is a positive and invigorating message that asks that we “step up” in life. Existentialism asks that we think more and do more. It asks that we look at what we’ve done with our lives; it asks how do others think of you—more than that--how do you think of yourself? It gives us no concrete advice on what “participation” in life really means, but it asks us to take responsibility for our actions—that we find our path or as Nietzsche would say, “Discover in yourself who you are” and for me, in that-- is the secret to finding your purpose in life and living a bold and fearless life at that!

Existentialism tells us we have choices—It asks that we accept the world of opposites, the finitude of it all; that we accept IT or—the “Tao”—the Way—the Creative Sustaining Force for its unexplainable self. But existentialism also shows us that IT can be alive when it is alive in every one of us who follow our passions. And maybe we don’t know what ITS WILL is but clearly if we are it and it is apart of us then our WILL is ITS will, our hopes—ITS hopes, our choices—ITS choices, because we are it and it is us!

So remember, each day when you struggle to make sense of it all. Everyday when the burdens of life weigh you down and you would like to hold on to something more tangible than an indifferent Universe... Take a leap of faith with me and say that you will not give up on really trying to LIVE, instead of just existing; take a leap of faith with me and really participate passionately in life--responsibly. Take a leap of faith with me and hold on to your passion. And when you hold on to your passion, when you think and do, you are making the best out of your situation and you are holding on to THE ESSENCE OF LIFE—THE MEANING OF LIFE… You are living amidst the ambiguity. And so Hold on the “GEIST” within you... Hold on to that existential power inside of you. It may be that this ability to think and do—this ability to act; this ability to contemplate our existence is the greatest gift the Universe could give. And so, in the midst of the opposites, particularly in the midst of the pain and despair—look onward and upward and find your meaning in life and manifest your greatness. As Nietzsche said: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Yes--“The days can be dark with storms and burdens weigh on the heart. But even though troubles wait at every turn I know you can go on. And though the journey is long, the destination is unclear; and troubles wait at every turn, I know you can go on. And so brother take my hand, sister hold on to what is good and true for you—and know without a doubt that when troubles wait at every turn, you can go on…”

Amen.

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