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.
1 Like
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.]
2 Likes
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.
2 Likes
(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”
2 Likes
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.
2 Likes
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.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
(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”
2 Likes
(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”
1 Like
(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.
2 Likes
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.”
2 Likes
Human stupidity know no bounds. Yes, we can take any terrible situation and augment it.
1 Like
well written; what is the cure for the love of perfection, or of happiness in this world? I look forward to what Macdonald writes.
Does this even have repercussions for those of us looking for social justice for others? Can we make the process worse, if we presume that a given target is the ultimate justice cause, instead of looking at the whole person? We can, perhaps, orient to only a cause, and not realize that there is much more out there.
3 Likes
That makes me think of Thomas Jefferson’s quotation, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” But once acted upon, the would-be patriots who choose lawlessness and bloodshed become the real tyrants making things much worse for everyone in the process.
2 Likes
True, anything that can be made an idol can be put into the same catagory. Health is one we often see in our daily lives, where its pursuit to the neglect of others can lead to sad consequences.
2 Likes
I guess those may be yet higher challenges, even once one is freed from the tyranny of wealth, Randy.
Maybe we’ve become accustomed to thinking of the rich man’s challenge (that needle eye) as being “the final” obstacle - the one that finally defeated the young man who had apparently succeeded impressively on lawful requirements up to that point. But as Macdonald put it, Jesus’ response to him was essentially … “So you’ve gotten this far! … Great. Your next step is a doozie - see if you can get this one!” And we imagine that the young man was at heaven’s door with that last challenge, and could have walked through Scott-free had he “passed the final test”. But after reading a lot of MacDonald, I no longer think that’s the case. Had the young man done as Jesus asked, he would have found yet more necessities of riddance yet to be dealt with, some of which I think you name, Randy: happiness, perfection, pride … (or health, as Phil mentioned - another ‘ouch’ for me.)
Eventually we realize that it’s an infinite stair, and nobody will be climbing this all the way to the top on the steam-power provided by law. Our more human response to that is … okay, forget the stupid stair then! That’s an impossible game. Please Jesus just get me on your elevator and deliver me to the promise land as only you can! And in wanting that, we are effectively wanting to bypassing the very salvation we are so in hope of getting. We find it hard to realize that the salvation Jesus offers is the salvation of being freed from the tyranny of our sin, not some “salvation” that yet keeps our sinful desires still lingering around. It is through and for Christ that we finally find the power to face and climb that next impossible stair.
1 Like
It seems to me there’s a danger here too, though. We might neglect simpler needs as a pretext for thinking we mean to attend to ‘deeper’ needs. And it is a noble and good thing to want to address all of those. But it seems to me that the physical always comes first - and perhaps by design. I.e. if I have the means to alleviate a starving man’s hunger, it is not a loving thing to preach at him first while withholding the aid so needed. Indeed the very act of withholding will be the only real ‘preaching’ he will experience as that action will tell him all he needs to know of my alleged ‘love’ (or its lack, rather). Of course it’s yet quite another matter if the actual physical need might be in the witholding - i.e. not giving money to a desperate alcoholic to secure his next drink. But again - that’s all about physical need.
1 Like
Absolutely, and well put–both Macdonald and St John note that it’s our spiritual act of worship to serve the worldly needs of our fellow men.
I am sorry-- I was on a different tangent entirely–I think I was musing how I can even do what Lewis talked about in the Great Divorce–that I can become so focused on a task–of me as the crusader, for example–that I forget that it’s about more than just me. If I focus on world hunger, I should not alienate those who work with me, who get in the way of my target, if they are trying to also work with peace. I’m thinking of those who are task and object and glory oriented, rather than person oriented. It’s sort of the difference between the man Lewis wrote about, who told everyone they should stop all other work in the UK to focus on making people live longer–in opposition to Sarah Smith of Golders Green in Great Divorce, who became the caring servant of all who knew her. Or, how Macdonald in GD reminded Lewis of how some gave their lives to the poor, but lost all love for them.
Or, as in a church or NGO, where someone’s ego (I’m as susceptible as the next person) gets wrapped up in a project, and upset if some other project gets the time, money, and recognition.
I think it’s a great thing to practice generosity like that–and my grandpa, who worked in World Vision, recounted to me several times how he admired people he met who even lived iwth just one or two clothing sets, so they could give more. We need to learn more how to give till it hurts.
Just as in James–how can we wish people well, without feeding them?
And I’d rather have someone who gave, and had an ego wrapped up in it, than someone who didn’t give and spiritualized that!
George Macdonald wrote htat he had no time for those who disputed the will of God when they ignored the needs of their fellow men. The will of God is right there–in serving.
Thanks. I am sorry I was so confusing.
3 Likes
(72) Fearful thinking
Because we easily imagine ourselves in want, we imagine God ready to forsake us.
From the sermon: “The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity” (from which #72 - 84 are drawn)
2 Likes
YES! Thank you for that observation.
2 Likes