Existentialism?

Christians and existentialism always seem to be in opposition.  For me, however, existentialism and its perspective has deepened and strengthened my own Christian perspective.

Let's say existentialism is the idea that nothing has an intrinsic meaning and that meaning is created by human beings.

At first blush, this seems to contradict Christianity.  Everything has an intrinsic meaning: it was created by God and it is good.  The world contains the notions of good and evil and God enforces them.  Striving to understand the world is a search for the mysterious meaning God placed in the world.

Let's go back to existentialism.  A table is just a collection of molecules and calling it a 'shape' or 'good' are human perspectives originating in human beings.   

Is God really committed to the idea that a table must be a table adn could not be anything else?  God gives us the freedom to assign meaning to the table with which we are confronted.  We can call it good, we could even call it sacred. 

When we make a table and put it in a church and say Mass around it, does the table become sacred?  Was it sacred all along or did God make it sacred once we put it in the church?

A more sensible approach for a Christian might be to say that everything in nature is sacred and that God gave us the freedom to acknowledge this aspect of His reality or not in our own way. 

If you look at the life of Christ, He's often assigning new meaning to things, or playing on old meaning, or asking others what a thing might mean.  Would it be accurate to say that a cross has always, objectively in its nature, been a symbol of redemption?  Or would it be better to say that as both Human and Divine, Christ imbued the cross with this meaning through his actions.

And this view ends up looking oddly similar to many forms of existentialism.  The world is a sort of blank slate which we imbue with meaning through our choices, actions, and perspective.  Rather than decry this as a human limitation, Christ elevates this capacity to one of the highest human goods.

We are still left with the idea that Christ came on earth to explain what was good and what was bad; and that the idea of good and bad is not arbitrary.  However, the primal goods God displays are intersting

Creation, making something is good if the thing made is good
Love, a total and trusting giving of self to the other without thought of return is a good


These things which are goods look like they heavily involve the human capacity to create meaning in order to interact with things. 

At the end of the day, we know humans encounter the world and incorporate those experiences into a story which for them has some meaning.  This is not a bad thing for Christians, who can argue that this way of relating was given to us by God for the purpose of freely relating to God and His creation. 

The existentialist humanist might argue that this is an act of faith, unsupported by evidence, and that we are only certain that it is our human experience.  We cannot say from whence it comes.

But this doesn't stop most existentialist humanists from making a leap of faith: they assert without proof that the capacity to create meaning emerges from our natural biological properties, likely as the result of evolution.

I have no problem with this explanation.  But it is an act of faith nonetheless to support it.  We know with philosophical certainly only that we make meaning, not from whence the capacity to do so comes.

I would humbly submit that if there is a God then natural processes have given rise to human beings with the capacity to make meaning in order that we might know, interact with, and love God and one another.  They have an intended function.  There is scope and depth and awesomeness of reality and in the human potential to constantly explore and divine new and surprising meanings from a seemingly limitless cosmos