Sunday, November 12, 2006

Existential Christianity: Is It For All?

I was reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment when I suddenly recalled something a friend of mine told me after I've explained my existentialist view of Christianity: that though it may be applicable to certain individuals, not everyone can embrace it. Well I've been wondering about this for some time now, on and off, just how true this statement is. Are each of us personally responsible for our relationship with God, or is it God's will to have churches serving the mass of (to use Crime and Punishment's protagonist Raskolnikoff's terminology) 'ordinary' people?

I know that there is no more turning back for me now that I have become aware of the superficiality of church life (at least it is to me), but I can't help but wonder: Can it be the some people, nay, most people, are 'destined' to obey an institution that insist themselves to be shepherds to the followers of God? That individual like myself is more an exception rather than the rule?

Whatever the answer is, I'm in no way troubled by it, since I firmly believe that each person's faith is personal, and there's no right or wrong that we fellow humans could judge it, as God is the only one all of us are accountable to in the end. I am just curious about other people's... how shall I call it? 'Internal wiring'? Lol. To each his own, I guess.