Encounters, Choices, and the Return of Existence

Soyo's Existence Ethics (Existence itself is ethics)

Divine Providence

Who should humans meet? And who must they meet in order to fully realize their existence?

This question is not simply about the importance of relationships, but stems from a deep reflection on how human existence itself is completed through others. However, Soyo's Existence Ethics goes one step further. Human existence is not simply completed through encounters, but through “chosen encounters” that allow us to return to the “truth of existence.” This is the essential meaning of the countless encounters and partings, loves and wounds, and sometimes rejections that we experience as we live on this earth.

Human beings were created from the moment of creation as beings with free will. This is not a mere ability, but the most sublime expression of God's love and trust. God did not treat humans like machines. Instead, God gave humans the “freedom of choice.” The encounters in life are the most existential result of that freedom. Who to love, who to leave, and who to live with are entirely up to human free will.

However, this is where the problem begins. From the moment humans take responsibility for the consequences of their choices, that responsibility envelops them in pain and questions. Why did I meet this person? Why did that love have to end? Why did that friendship end in betrayal? And why am I standing here alone now?

These questions are not merely emotional lamentations. They are signs of a loss of direction that appears when humans lose their “purpose of existence.” Soyo calls this point “the threshold of chaos.” At this threshold, humans ask God, “Why?” But God does not answer. Instead, God waits for humans to go beyond their questions and return to the essence of existence.

The essence of human existence is not a static state. It is a flow of endless dynamism, and the journey of existence is not always in tranquility, but a journey of longing to connect with God in the wilderness of life. We are in a process of pilgrimage, seeking God, waiting for God, sometimes denying God, and then kneeling before God again. All of this points to one thing. “We are beings who cannot exist without God.”

Soyo believes that all classical philosophical inquiries were ultimately attempts to avoid this truth. Ancient philosophers who sought to interpret human existence on their own, academic disciplines that sought to understand the world through human reason alone, and all attempts to explain humanity through humanity itself ultimately reduced humanity to an orphan of the universe. Humans who sought to prove their own existence through their own language ultimately became beings without God, and the result was always loneliness and emptiness.

“Truth is in God, and humans can only be interpreted in God.” This is the core declaration of existential ethics. Philosophy that excludes God imprisons human existence in countless questions, and those questions are divided into other disciplines, which in turn lead to other ideologies, ultimately leaving only echoes that stray from the truth.

However, if we ask God again, we will realize that the countless encounters in life are not “coincidences” but “providence.” Even the encounters we believed we had chosen were, in fact, the encounters God had been waiting for. The moments when we felt lost were, in fact, the path back to God, and the places where we felt broken were the places where God would lift us again.

Thus, Soyo's Ethics of Existence declares:

“It is more important when one awakens than who one meets.” And that awakening must begin with “kneeling before God.”

The freedom of existence is only true in God, and the meaning of encounter is only interpreted when viewed through God's eyes. Humans do not exist alone. And the truth of existence is only completed on the path back to God's embrace.

CCJ 05929026-12

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo's Existence Ethics, Author of 'The Silence of Existence' and 'The Flame of Truth'

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