Although I disagree with many of Nikolai Berdyaev’s ideas, I believe his assumptions concerning what constitutes the core of the Christian faith—the very essence of what Christianity is or should be about—hit the mark in most respects. 

Chief among these is Berdyaev’s insistence that inner spiritual experience and creativity are more substantial and consequential than supposed external realities. 

Berdyaev’s emphasis on the internal over the external stems primarily from his overarching belief in personality as a cardinal value and ultimate reality. 

For Berdyaev, personality embodies the unique, unrepeatable, free, spiritual, and divine aspects of a being -- not to be confused with the individual, which Berdyaev regarded as a predominantly natural, material, and social construct. 

Berdyaev regards the “external” beyond the realm of personality as secondary to the interior life and the spiritual, subjective world, and often contrasts the external world with the inner freedom and creativity of the spirit. 

He believes that the external, in the form of society, culture, ritual, and norms, congeal into what he termed “objectivization,” a deadening, burdensome force that is often at odds with and, ultimately, stifles freedom and creativity. Taken to the extreme, objectivization can potentially lead to dehumanization and despiritualization. 

Thus, authentic personality and spirituality are grounded in and stem from the internal, which Berdyaev views as the source of vitality, freedom, meaning, and, ultimately, truth. 
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Any drastic shifts away from such an internal focus toward a mainly or, in some cases, purely externalized existence lead to an “impersonal” existence that invites spiritual decomposition and decay, which eventually renders human beings spiritually powerless against all external forces, particularly those associated with "objective reality" or societal concepts like “the common good.”