I find it better to pass over the quotes that seem too pious, formulaic or which remain opaque to me. But that it speaks to you and I consider you an honest broker makes it worth it to look in when I can and comment when something speaks to me.
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Aaach, Merv. I wanted to say something profound and pull in a sermon of Kierkegaard’s from Either/Or, but I’m too tired, and the brain won’t budge that far.
In spite of that, thanks for this.
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This one follows almost directly on the heals of post #64 above - continuing that thought.
(65) The Same
'Does this comfort you? Then alas for you! A thousand times alas! Your relief is to know that the Lord has no need of you–does not require you to part with your money, does not offer you himself instead! You do not indeed sell him for thirty pieces of silver, but you are glad not to buy him with all that you have!
As found in the unspoken sermon: “Hardness of the Many”
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(66) How Hard?
It is life they must have; there is no enduring of existence without life . They think they can do without eternal life, if only they may live for ever! Those who know what eternal life means count it the one terror to have to live on without it.
Take then the Lord’s words thus: ‘Children, how hard is it to enter into the kingdom of God!’ It is quite like his way of putting things. Calling them first to reflect on the original difficulty for every man of entering into the kingdom of God, he reasserts in yet stronger phrase the difficulty of the rich man: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ It always was, always will be, hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is hard even to believe that one must be born from above–must pass into a new and unknown consciousness. The law-faithful Jew, the ceremonial Christian, shrinks from the self-annihilation, the Life of grace and truth, the upper air of heavenly delight, the all-embracing love that fills the law full and sets it aside. They cannot accept a condition of being as in itself eternal life. And hard to believe in, this life, this kingdom of God, this simplicity of absolute existence, is hard to enter. How hard? As hard as the Master of salvation could find words to express the hardness: …
As found in the unspoken sermon: “Hardness of the Many”
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(67) Things
The man who for consciousness of well-being depends upon anything but life, the life essential, is a slave; he hangs on what is less than himself. He is not perfect who, deprived of every thing , would not sit down calmly content, aware of a well-being untouched; for none the less would he be possessor of all things, the child of the Eternal. Things are given us, this body first of things, that through them we may be trained both to independence and true possession of them. We must possess them; they must not possess us. Their use is to mediate–as shapes and manifestations in lower kind of the things that are unseen, that is, in themselves unseeable, the things that belong, not to the world of speech, but the world of silence, not to the world of showing, but the world of being, the world that cannot be shaken, and must remain. These things unseen take form in the things of time and space–not that they may exist, for they exist in and from eternal Godhead, but that their being may be known to those in training for the eternal; these things unseen the sons and daughters of God must possess. But instead of reaching out after them, they grasp at their forms, reward the things seen as the things to be possessed, fall in love with the bodies instead of the souls of them.
The above already begins before what Lewis included, but ends where Lewis ends it. I also include more below here where MacDonald continues his thoughts about the rich young ruler, which finishes out the above paragraph with a hard observation.
There are good people who can hardly believe that, if the young man had consented to give up his wealth, the Lord would not then have told him to keep it; they too seem to think the treasure in heaven insufficient as a substitute. They cannot believe he would have been better off without his wealth. ‘Is not wealth power?’ they ask. It is indeed power, and so is a wolf hid in the robe; it is power, but as of a brute machine, of which the owner ill knows the handles and cranks, valves and governor. The multitude of those who read the tale are of the same mind as the youth himself–in his worst moment, as he turned and went–with one vast difference, that they are not sorrowful.
As found in the unspoken sermon: “Hardness of the Many”
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”With all the energy we can put forth, we are but unprofitable servants.”
In Ultimatum from Either/Or Kierkegaard examines the common phrase “One does what one can” in relation to our service to God.
He concludes (in this section) that, while we wish to console ourselves (as we recognize ourselves to be unprofitable servants, perhaps) with the thought that we have done all we could, if we think about what we are saying or if we have ever striven to determine the bounds of what we can do to serve God, we remain in uncertainty, in anxiety. We are unprofitable servants.
And to the second half of this quote from MacDonald:
The way MacDonald expresses this passage sheds new-to-me light on it. In directing the young man to sell everything, give to the poor and “follow me” Jesus seems to be suggesting that the selling and giving were not the focus, neither was some eventual eternal reality, but that He himself was the fulfillment of the young man’s desire for eternal life. Sell everything, give the money to the poor (those who really need it and won’t be hindered by having some of it) was the way to move the man’s attention and pride from his stuff, so that he could redirect it toward the one he would follow and in whom he would find fulfillment.
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I remember Lewis driving home the point somewhere to the effect that it is rather a matter of embarrassment for us, how much more resource we can suddenly find of ourselves underneath the crack of a driving whip than we manage to find in our motivations of what we think we should love. Not that I think this is at all any model for service to God and I wince at the comparison. But his point wasn’t about the necessity of whips at all - it was about our human nature when it comes to self-appraisal of what we can do.
A more positive comparison might be what we already have at hand to ourselves if we’ve had experience in the world of romance. Percy Sledge in his song “when a man loves a woman” showcases it well … “will spend his very last dime” … “will sleep out in the cold and rain if she thinks that’s the way it oughta be…” In short - it’s amazing how much we decide we can do once real love takes hold. We’ll move mountains or die trying.
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And that is where the rest of the sermon goes – in a way.
Got to say from the sidelines I will never understand the urgency. It is important but why the angst? Some important things require one to approach a goal less forcefully. I understand that novelists need to let their characters find their voice and similarly with other creative endeavors receptivity counts more than sweat and toil. The idea of giving away every means of being responsible for one’s own well being as a performative enactment of a calcified ought seems counterproductive to me. Symbolically it goes toward making the point that pursuits that don’t serve one’s vision of what a life is for can drain away one’s energy on what is relatively trivial. But there is something about it that it that seems too extreme.
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Indeed! And I think MacDonald would note that where “angst” is involved, we aren’t yet speaking of fully realized love. No lover (unless there’s something really unhealthy going on) spends any time worrying over whether or not he is spending too much of himself lavishing love on his beloved in the heights of their courtship. It isn’t a question (in his mind) of checking boxes and embarking on the drudgery of trying to satisfy her just enough, and wondering whether he can afford it. (Not to say these are never real life concerns in any given relationship). But if we stick to the idealized romance for the sake of the comparison, the lover isn’t interested in or fretting over “what’s the minimum my beloved demands - and will it be more than I want to spend…” - no no. He’s joyfully doing everything he can for the joy of claiming and keeping her favor. His heart is captured. Does that mean he’ll kill himself or spend himself such that he’s now destitute - and therefore not likely to be in a place to keep her happy long? Far from it. He’ll probably take care of himself too - but only because he wants more life with her. It’s all about her in his mind - and he likes it that way.
And all of that is a beautiful thing. It seems to be the way we’re made. It’s also a shadow of the love we’re capable of once our hearts are sold out.
[For being a single man, Paul sure knew what he was talking about when he warned about courtship and marriage - once the brain goes down that road, well … everybody else can pretty much just forget about getting anything out of the now pre-occupied pair. They have eyes only for each other, and everything else including religion will just have to find its place within that context.]
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We’re on the same page. And it isn’t even a matter of keeping her near his hearth so much as it is because pleasing her simply is more pleasing to him than his own. Of course wives need no pedestal because they are full partners as well. But what I see as what is greater within is also a partner though much less equal; this one never competes because the differential is too great but also because what we bring to the partnership is also simply different in kind. No comparison. One last parallel to a marriage: no relationship is improved through obsessively turning toward the other in every instant. A good relationship should include room to breath and center so that each can realize their best.
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(68) Possession
He who has God, has all things, after the fashion in which he who made them has them.
As found in the unspoken sermon: “Hardness of the Many”
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There are other dissimilarities (or perhaps similarities!) to explore as well. I’m pretty sure most men (or maybe I should carefully just speak only for myself here) …don’t have such perpetual strength of life that they could long run on this “high-octane” romance level of moving every mountain they can at her wish. Eventually the day-to-day realities and living with each other for the long haul must settle in, and while one hopes that romance doesn’t disappear from the scene, it nonetheless does now find its more modest pace for the duration of a life together.
So is our analogy elastic enough that this too is an accurate reflection on being “sold out” for Christ? Is there such thing as a bright “flash-in-the-pan” Christian who burns out so quickly (often neglecting his own family too) that perhaps will not go the distance like a “slow-and-steady-wins-the-race” disciple? “Be not too wicked nor too righteous” comes to mind from Ecclesiastes. And I think Paul may have had some longer endurance perspectives he put out there too as it became apparent that the fledgling communities were going to need to learn to take care of each other and perservere.
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Mark, these are good questions. Clearly a fairly standard Christian concept of God will make a difference in how one will answer them. You and Merv have covered a lot of it. But haven’t gotten back to the urgency and angst. And I don’t think the discussion has gotten back to this point of yours, either:
The quotes Merv shared from MacDonald regarding the rich young man, and then people’s reactions about wealth and power being good don’t reflect quite the level of anxiety that Kierkegaard exhibits in the quote I brought from Ultimatum. But anxiety was such a prominent feature of SK’s personality and processessing, he seemed not to understand that any serious intellectual or spiritual activity could take place absent a large dose of anxiety.
While you and Merv have discussed the personal motivation (“why”) to serve another, your questions regarding urgency and anxiety relate, I think, more to the “what” Christians are being asked to do and “how” that is of value.
The young man had a wrong concept of God and eternal life; he saw them as transactional, as you have mentioned before: “I do the prescribed stuff for God (follow rules, laws, obey) and I get stuff (more wealth that demonstrates my piety, eternal rewards, etc.).” An economic system.
In this tiny encounter, Jesus demonstrates that it isn’t transactional. While the guy had been (or claims to have been) doing all the stuff he had been told to do to be pious, and thought he had all his wealth as an outward demonstration of his piety (rewards from God for good behavior), Jesus told him to give away all wealth and to follow him.
The wealth was not a demonstration of piety or God’s favor. The young man would have read his entire life that the rain falls on the righteous as well as the unrighteous. The appearance of anything transactional about it was an illusion.
If he gave all that wealth away, however, he would really have been obeying the direct commands of Jesus (as well as OT law) and lavishly.
When Jesus invited the young man to follow him, the young man failed to understand that Jesus was offering him eternal life, life in the kingdom of God, right now. “There’s no need to strive for the ‘sweet by and by;’ I’m here right now; come follow me.”
Kierkegaard approaches the question of how best and how much to serve God pragmatically — particularly since Jesus is currently not on the scene as he was for the rich young man. SK’s naturally intensely anxious personality seems to augment his concerns and turns the consolation “One does what one can,” into a bitter self accusation. Eventually, he explores the idea of a lover, much as Merv suggested, but always with the consideration of being satisfied in always being in the wrong in relationship to the beloved. In such a relationship, SK claims, one would rather let the beloved be in the right, simply out of love for that person, and similarly so in relation to God. SK claims that to recognize in love that one is always in the wrong before God, rather than trying to be in the right (just give that thought up right now), we can console ourselves with “One does what one can” and even be edified by that thought.
As a beginner with SK, I can only talk about what I make of this right now, which is probably at least partly wrong. But here is my application, which I hope addresses your concern about “calcified oughts”:
Christians have very clear commands from Jesus about things we should be doing, and many of them are time-sensitive. We are told, for example, to practice charity, to serve others, to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love peace. Those have real-world, right-now implications, because human lives have expiration dates. If believe we are part of some sort of transactional, reward-driven system of belief that promises a better deal in the “sweet by and by” because we checked more boxes, then we have the wrong idea, and we can never have any consolation that we have done enough to earn our reward. If, however, out of love for God who has shown us great kindness, we humbly (because we are always in the wrong before God; and cannot seek rewards for being in the right) and lovingly demonstrate such love for others, then we can find consolation in “One does what one can.”
Christians should be idealists who want the world to be a better place, largely, because we claim to believe that it can be. We should be willing to use whatever we have to make it so.
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Whenever we try to say what it is we have no recourse but to call on language, that part of our representational super power which has commandeered so much of our brain’s working space. But we as we represent ourselves to ourselves in reaching to understand can never find the word or any combination of all the words which will pin it down. That which is secondary can never usurp what comes first. That part of consciousness which first receives the world and makes it available to our representational efforts is outside the reach of our efforts to bring everything under the dominion of our understanding. It is we who are conditional and limited in ways we cannot quite grasp. So we depend on what is more to give us the world, each other and ourselves. If nothing else one must have faith in that as there will be no rational, scientific cavalry coming to restore us to the power we naively once supposed was our possession.
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(69) The Torment of Death
It is imperative on us to get rid of the tyranny of things. See how imperative: let the young man cling with every fibre to his wealth, what God can do he will do; his child shall not be left in the hell of possession! Comes the angel of death!–and where are the things that haunted the poor soul with such manifold hindrance and obstruction! The world, and all that is in the world, drops and slips, from his feet, from his hands, carrying with it his body, his eyes, his ears, every pouch, every coffer, that could delude him with the fancy of possession.
‘Is the man so freed from the dominion of things? does Death so serve him–so ransom him? Why then hasten the hour? Shall not the youth abide the stroke of Time’s clock–await the Inevitable on its path to free him?’
Not so!–for then first, I presume, does the man of things become aware of their tyranny. When a man begins to abstain, then first he recognizes the strength of his passion; it may be, when a man has not a thing left, he will begin to know what a necessity he had made of things; and if then he begin to contend with them, to cast out of his soul what Death has torn from his hands, then first will he know the full passion of possession, the slavery of prizing the worthless part of the precious.
As found in the unspoken sermon: “Hardness of the Many”
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(70) The Utility of Death
‘Wherein then lies the service of Death? He takes the sting, but leaves the poison!’
In this: it is not the fetters that gall, but the fetters that soothe, which eat into the soul. When the fetters of gold are gone, on which the man delighted to gaze, though they held him fast to his dungeon- wall, buried from air and sunshine, then first will he feel them in the soreness of their lack, in the weary indifference with which he looks on earth and sea, on space and stars. When the truth begins to dawn upon him that those fetters were a horror and a disgrace, then will the good of saving death appear, and the man begin to understand that having never was, never could be well-being; that it is not by possessing we live, but by life we possess. In this way is the loss of the things he thought he had, a motioning, hardly towards, yet in favour of deliverance. It may seem to the man the first of his slavery when it is in truth the beginning of his freedom. Never soul was set free without being made to feel its slavery; nothing but itself can enslave a soul, nothing without itself free it.
As found in the unspoken sermon: “Hardness of the Many”
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(71) Not the Rich Only
But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. The man who is ever digging his grave is little better than he who already lies mouldering in it. The money the one has, the money the other would have, is in each the cause of an eternal stupidity. To the one as to the other comes the word, 'How is it that ye do not understand? ’
This is the last of the quotes taken from the sermon: “Hardness of the Many” and is indeed the conclusion (final lines) of that sermon.
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Speaking of stupidities (though of the less ‘eternal’ sort, one hopes), here is a ‘cheery’ thought I put up for reflectin at school:
“Nothing is ever, ever, so bad that it can’t be made a whole lot worse.”
Which was my attempt at a more polite way of saying: Whenever anybody thinks a world situation or political situation is so bad that we have nothing to lose any more … Human stupidity will invariably reply: “Challenge accepted.”
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Human stupidity know no bounds. Yes, we can take any terrible situation and augment it.
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