Existentialism Versus Christianity

To be completely honest, when I was first reading Kierkegaard I had absolutely no idea what his purpose was. It wasn’t until class that I realized he is merely focused deeply on the individual.

So I have learned this about myself: although I try to be open-minded (I really, really do try very hard to be, honest) it’s not something I have been able to completely overcome. It’s just been impossible for me to open up to Christianity.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is background to this intense distrust over the religion. For example, growing up I was “raised” Roman Catholic. I never agreed with what I was learning and I always knew deep down I was not Catholic, not in the slightest. However, being a young one, I couldn’t ever tell my mother my dissatisfaction with the church and its ideology. So, I continued to attend for her sake.

The longer I was involved the more contradictions and more logical fallacies were brought to my attention. Therefore, I am now at the point of complete distrust in any religion.

Which goes into my question: can one be an existentialist and religious at the same time?

My answer: Absolutely not.

And now let me elaborate.

Modern day Christianity, the common notion of Christianity, has a single purpose. That purpose is to serve God, to serve Jesus Christ, and to abandon your self in order to follow them.  It’s already decided for you what your purpose is by God. Going based solely off of this, I do not see how Existentialism can be put into this mess.

For me to really describe my thoughts well, we can also analyze Kierkegaard’s Christianity. Kierkegaard’s philosophy is quite fascinating up until I realized how he was somehow Christian. I don’t understand how one can place so much emphasis upon the self when Christianity seeks so hard to destroy that. Anyways, even if we pretend that Christianity wasn’t a so-called “religion” and that there was no established church, no established doctrine of ideas. If Christianity was completely reliant on the individual’s self then there can be a slight acceptance of existentialism (which could happen at the part just shy of admitting to believing in God and Jesus). All the way until the person admits that they have a “God” that they are worshiping.

The point of religions is to do what someone else deemed acceptable. Therefore, if one considers themselves religious, they really just can’t be an existentialist. There is no room for religion for the emphasis placed upon the self. So a person who is religious can never truly be living for themselves because they are constantly thinking about the otherworldly figure they are attempting to please.

The other thing I wanted to quickly touch base on is the idea of subjectivity and objectivity.

For some reason, these concepts seemed very clear to me when I began the readings, I thought I had gotten this down! Oh Kierkegaard I deciphered you! Oh, little did I know, it is so much more complicated than the black and white thinking I was inferring it to be. Now, I continue to be at a loss of understanding. This is because I cannot determine if I believe there is anything objective ever on this planet. Thinking about it, isn’t everything subjective? Even when we collectively analyze something with the scientific method, with multiple people, and come to a repeatable, understandable conclusion, is that still objective or is it subjective to those scientists. I don’t think there is ever a point to where something is a definite objective truth aside from natural events on this Earth that could happen regardless of human existence.