Existentialism and Existential Crisis
- Apr 27
- 5 min read
“I have no desire to wake up every day and look at the world and see only hopelessness. God did not create us to be hopeless. He created us, knowing us even before we were born, because of His infinite love and mercy. We too, are called to have love and mercy for each other.” (Jackie Morfesis)
“Christ’s resurrection forced His disciples into a true paradigm shift: the finality of death was gone forever. Yet, life with all its trials and problems was still ongoing and the disciples themselves still feared death. The disciples had to think through what the implications of the resurrection were for all aspects of life and some of the implications caused deep cognitive dissonance for them. They were hopeful that the resurrection was good news for Jews and was indeed the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel as well as the chosen people’s mission in the world. But then, non-Jews began to embrace the faith and the Jew-Gentile divide so deeply engrained in the Jewish mind was being challenged. They were overwhelmed by the idea that God was overcoming His separation from the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. Then Peter has this vision of a sheet filled with animals, clean and unclean, and God telling Peter to eat all of them. Was God abandoning His law on Kosher eating? No, that wasn’t the point of the vision; it had far bigger and more important implications – the Gospel was for all the people in God’s creation…” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“The resurrection is not simply an afterthought in our lives. It is not simply something that happened 2000 years ago to Jesus in a faraway land. The resurrection is our…it is our hope and reason for a life of joy. It is a reminder that even when things in our life are looking bad, maybe terrible, nothing really scares us because Our Lord is greater than these things. If anything does scare us it should be that we don’t have enough faith and that we don’t take enough care for our souls to protect ourselves from falling into sin, for this we should each be terrified. But we shouldn’t worry about the things of this world and the threats of this life because Our Lord Jesus Christ has conquered the worst that the world could throw at Him while saying “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (Fr. James Guirguis)
“Another manifestation of lack of faith is the loss of the meaning of life, and this is precisely what underlies depression. A Christian always has a reason to live—to love God and others. A believer knows that God will never abandon him, that with God he’s not one-on-one with trouble….But for a modern man of little faith, life is fearful and death is just the end! Thus, sorrow and depression can only be dealt with by placing our hope in the Lord, by entrusting our sorrows and problems to him, entreating His help and support. Our anxiety for the future, the present, and for our children (we also worry about them a lot) must be placed on God: Cast thy care upon the Lord, and He will nourish thee (Ps. 54:25). Then it will become much easier to cope with anxiety and sorrow.” (Archpriest Pavel Gumerov)
“[Jacob’s story] I gave next to no thought to God—that is until I had what could be called a mental break at 24.I spent my free time playing in a band and living a lifestyle reflective of that choice. I set myself up to have an early existential crisis, wondering what the point in anything was, behaving in a highly anxious, paranoid manner. In my desperation, I asked God, whom I never spoke to before, to help me. I lifted up my hands, as if to place all my cares into them and gave them to Him. I can only describe the next moment as lightness and peace. Finally. That moment changed my life.” (Fr. Matthew Swehla)
"Fear is a life-giving, God-given gift, essential for survival. It is an evolved capacity in the human being, so science tells us. But like other God-given gifts and drives, which I inherently have as a human being, fear becomes harmful to me when it is divorced from God; when it is not “of God” and takes on a life of its own. Inherent, human fear in a life not God-focused is crippling, existential anxiety in the face of the many uncertainties and ambivalences that are part-and-parcel of any human life." (Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin)
“Death and loss is an existential confrontation with who we are and our meaning in life…For the committed…Christian…Christ is the meaning of life: God's Love, Mercy and Will, and the grace we receive to respond with hope and trust, is the foundation life's meaning.” (Fr. George Morelli)
“On a very basic, human level, we all wrestle with pain. It’s the great existential problem with which mankind struggles: we’re trapped between God’s comforting assurance, as He created the world, that “it is good,” and the awful reality that the good gifts of creation are all doomed to death and decay. We fully experience the brutal, numbing terror of the grave because we intuitively feel the unbridled joy of birth and creation. On a visceral level, we know the world was made for something better than the tomb. The world is a good thing; its big problem is that it doesn’t last. Yet we see the world as it was meant to be in the light of Christ’s victory over death.” (Steven Christoforou)
“When we enter into the realm of Christ’s truth we enter into the realm of freedom - freedom from ignorance and fear, from existential vacuum and metaphysical chaos, from guilt, sin, and evil which ruthlessly plague humankind…It is unfortunate, or rather tragic, that many people, especially the young, ignore this integration of truth and fife, truth and freedom that knowledge of Christ produces. Despite their advanced knowledge and how astonishingly informed they are in every conceivable field, they are extremely poor in knowing the wholeness of truth revealed by Jesus. As a result they turn to other sources, even to therapy, in order to obtain answers to crucial existential questions. Saint Paul knew this need as well as the immense, incomparable value of sharing in the wholeness of truth revealed by Christ. He therefore uses extremely intense language to underline this point when he writes to the Philippians: “I count everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of the knowledge of Christ.” (His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios Trakatellis)
“…our understanding of “dying with Christ” has been grievously complicated in the modern world. We no longer understand death as a spiritual reality, “of which one can partake while being alive, from which one can be free while lying in the grave…” Death is reduced to a mere biological event. We have lost sight of the reality that death means separation from God, with attendant physical, psychological, and spiritual corruption…Christ Jesus longs to free us from spiritual death. The Lord Jesus embraced death and overcame it so that He might end that creeping death in our hearts. (Dynamis 1/31/2015)
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