ex·is·ten·tial adj.
Of, relating to, or dealing with existence.
You cannot help but begin to think about your existence as you drive 8 hours across Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
Not only am I prone to think existentially but I also have the most existential music collection ever. I have the perfect soundtrack to question your life to.
Of course, U2‘s songs always pose existential conundrums. Songs like Message in a Bottle by The Police, In My Life by The Beatles, Dancing Nancies by Dave Matthews Band, and Be Yourself by Audioslave just beg you to ask yourself about yourself.
All this introspection can get annoying. That is why I love the fact that existential thinking inevitably asks you to look outside of yourself. Existential thinking isn’t about you. It is thinking about the world you inhabit. I try to live by the old Boy Scout rule of leaving my area better than I found it.
A quick side note:
The very first class I attended at a youth ministry conference was entitled “Why Youth Ministers Should Read the Writings of the Existentialists.” Tony Camoplo presented the lecture and I took an obscene amount of notes. I am weird!
True true, but this brings me back to Ecclesiastes 3:9-12. God has laid in the hearts of men, eternity, yet not let them understand it. What a conondrum, if he wants us to know and understand him. As Jesus asks us to seek him and he will reveal himself to us, why leave out eternity?
Ecclesiates- Existentialism is meaningless, so is wisdom. A chasing after the wind. Guess I should stop reading Ecclesiastes… hahaha… like your notes Micheal.
Maybe the point about knowing and following Christ has little to do with the sweet by and by and more about the here and now.
Keep reading Ecclesiases! To everything turn, turn, turn.
Thanks for stopping by Brandon!