Two Frames for Surviving Modernity: Humanism and Existentialism

How a Christian humanist existentialism is needed at this moment.

Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash

In my last post I used T.S. Eliot to explore some of the core challenges of modernity, endless cycles of “progress” without a teleology. Alienation. Anxiety. Loss of wisdom. Etc. I plan to continue writing about Eliot’s poem, “Choruses from The Rock.” And of course in You Are Not Your Own, my main goal was diagnosing and offering a response to modernity. In some ways this is my main project across all my works. What is our modern condition and how can we respond as Christians?

In YANYO my framework was the concept of belonging to God. Modernity calls us to belong to ourselves, but we fundamentally belong to God. This creates friction and anxiety that marks much of modern life. My next book, tentatively titled Re-Collecting Your Life is a guide to living in the modern world using the four cardinal and three theological virtues (Any prayers for help writing and finishing that book would be appreciated). In this book I’ll be talking about how the virtues can be a framework for navigating what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity”: a society where all social norms and values are in continual flux and it feels impossible to have any grounding.

So here are two frameworks for responding to modernity: You are not your own, and the virtues. Today I want to talk about a third framework, or rather two related frames for surviving modernity: Christian humanism and Christian existentialism. The modern world is such a complex place I don’t think there is one single way we can respond to it. We need to think of it as the complex phenomenon that it is, and it requires an equally complex response. And these two framings, I believe, are essential for surviving a modern world that denatures us and distracts us.