The Stranger

The other day, before heading up to Chicago to visit my dad and mom, I picked up the audio version of Albert Camus, "The Stranger." I didn't know anything about it except that it was supposed to be a fairly influential book by an author who I had heard of. According to the introduction, it was (and is) the literary work that captured perfectly the existentialism and nihilism of it's day and was proclaimed by Jean-Paul Sartre to be the book of that philosophical idealogy. "The Stranger" follows an overly simple man through some fairly exraordinary events; the death of his mother, romance, manipulative relationships, violent fights, murder and a trial to follow. All along the way his emotional responses and decisions fail to even scratch the surface of what any normal human being would experience. He makes decisions based on expedience, instant comfort and cold logic - often times to his own long-term detriment. Ironically, it is his simplicity that makes him so complex and profound. Toward the end of the book he encounters a priest who is concerned and bothered by his predicament and disbelief in God. The character is so at peace with his rotten life (reasoning that it is his and can't be avoided or altered) that he is confused to the point of anger with a priest who could not come to some resolution with his own God concerning the fate of some stranger. It seemed the one with peace was upset and the one whose life was being upset had peace. As I thought about the character, his lifeview began to really bother me. What bothered me most was not that his philosophy of life was foreign or bizzarre, but that it was a lot like mine. Throughout the multiple struggles I have faced over the past year alone I have felt little emotion - a tinge of sadness, but nothing meaningful. In the face of trials I echo, not pain or fear or sadness, but some version of what is now disonant theology; "God is in control so there is nothintg I can do," "why worry, it's in God's hands," "why fight God's will?" It's crazy how similar existentialism or nihilism and Christianity can sound. If God does have a will and plan that has been written before the foundation of the world - practically speaking - there is little difference. I must accept what is laid before me and concede to what I cannot control. To die today is as good as any other day (as the stranger acknowledges) if what lies ahead is either nothing or everything. In a thousand years the moments I hold onto will not matter - but be swallowed up by... eternity or nothingness. When I pressed some friends about what makes Christianity and Existentialism/nihilism different, the common response was hope. I thought about it. What is hope other than a life oriented around the not yet. It's a future fantasy that one hopes is strong and real enough to erase the present regrets. I hope to go to heaven because my life on earth was filled with ungodly acts, pain and guilt - which will be wiped away in eternity. I hope God brings me peace or stabilty or blessing because I'm not willing to do the work or pay the price to bring it about myself (ie... healing a relationship, sacrificing or changing my thought process.) Then I thought about that. Maybe the difference is regret. I can't regret what is or was because both are equally as meaningful/less as what is to be. If there is no significant difference between yesterday and tomorrow, right and left, up and down - all things being equal, I can't regret anything. If life is truly meaningless - I can't hope for what is better or regret what is not - it's all equal. Solomon figured that out a long time ago... sort of. After a while of dwelling on this idea I shook myself back into reality and said, "boy am I overanalizing this... what does it matter anyhow?!" And I kept on driving.