I mentioned the great existentialist, Albert Camus, as someone who had impacted my own religious thinking. A reader notes that in William Faulkner's obit for the great writer, something of the same came across:

Camus said that the only true function of man, born into an absurd world, is to live, be aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom. He said that if the only solution to the human dilemma is death, then we are on the wrong road. The right track is the one that leads to life, to the sunlight.