Great, thank you! I agree that there is much that needs discussion. You’ve put your finger on many spots I’ve been wanting to review. I’ll share this with my boys, if that’s ok.
From my recollection, he had a very dismal experience with Christianity, staying with an abusive couple, that turned him away from it–for 6 years in England, while his parents and aunt had no idea of the trauma.
Kipling referred to the place as “the House of Desolation”.[25]
In his autobiography published 65 years later, Kipling recalled the stay with horror, and wondered if the combination of cruelty and neglect that he experienced there at the hands of Mrs Holloway might not have hastened the onset of his literary life: “If you cross-examine a child of seven or eight on his day’s doings (specially when he wants to go to sleep) he will contradict himself very satisfactorily. If each contradiction be set down as a lie and retailed at breakfast, life is not easy. I have known a certain amount of bullying, but this was calculated torture – religious as well as scientific. Yet it made me give attention to the lies I soon found it necessary to tell: and this, I presume, is the foundation of literary effort.”[25]…
In the spring of 1877, Alice [his mother] returned from India and removed the children from Lorne Lodge. Kipling remembers “Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told any one how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established. Also, badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it.”[25]
There’s much more to his history, but I sometimes wonder if that trauma contributed to his darker side, too. I still like the positive portions of the poem.
Thanks.
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Thanks for all this background, Randy. I didn’t know anything about his childhood. It’s incredible what people survive!
I think his poem, “If,” reflects the common values of his time, class and culture. Most of it is praiseworthy. Even the response to losses, although gambling for sport is never a good idea. He reflect the idea of the Ethical person, and even the Knight of Infinite Resignation in Kierkegaard’s book Fear and Trembling. These are (culturally situated) good things, but incomplete.
It’s wonderful that you are so deliberate in your conversations with your kids and sensitive to their understanding and needs.
As far as talking about what I wrote, Randy, if you find something of value, it’s all yours. This is all public.
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In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard hammers incessantly at the anxiety Abraham endured when God required him to sacrifice Isaac. The most significant aspects of the anxiety have to do with Abraham’s love for Isaac, and Abraham’s inability to make himself understood by anyone besides God. These two paragraphs, shortened for clarity and focus, demonstrate the fear-inducing paradox fairly well:
Let us, then, consider a bit more closely the distress and the anxiety in the paradox of faith. The tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith renounces the universal in order to become the single individual. … By contrast, the knight of faith knows that it is glorious to belong to the universal. He knows that it is beautiful and pleasant to be the single individual who translates himself into the universal, who, so to speak, himself edits a clean and elegant and—so far as possible—error-free edition of himself that can be read by everyone. He knows that it is refreshing for a person to be understandable to himself in the universal in such a way that he understands it and, in turn, every individual who understands him understands the universal in him, and both find joy in the security of the universal. He knows that it is beautiful to be born as the single individual who has his home, his welcoming place of rest, in the universal, which if he wishes to remain there, immediately receives him with open arms. But he also knows that, higher than this, a narrow, steep path wends its lonely way; he knows that it is frightful to be born alone, outside the universal, to wander without encountering one single wanderer. He knows very well where he is and how he is situated in relation to people. Humanly speaking, he is mad and cannot make himself understood by anyone. And yet, madness is the mildest expression for it. If he is not viewed in this way, he is a hypocrite, and the further up the path he ascends, the more abominable a hypocrite he becomes.
"… And if only he could explain why he wants to do it—but it’s always a trial.” Nor could Abraham have provided any further explanation, for his life is like a book that has been impounded by the divine and does not become publici juris [a public matter].
From Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard (Problema II, ¶16 & ¶17)
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Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John 14:27
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In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard confronts the easy way we approach Abraham’s trial, that is God’s requirement that Abraham sacrifice his beloved son; the way we belittled what was demanded of Abraham by abstracting the story, by leaving out Abraham’s distress at having to do what everyone else would call murder.
With faith, it is another matter. But what no one is permitted to do is to lead others to believe that faith is something inferior or that it is something easy, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of things.
People understand the story of Abraham in another way. They laud God’s grace for having restored Isaac to him—the whole affair was only a trial. A trial: this word can say a lot and a little, and yet the whole affair is over as soon as it is said. We mount a winged horse and at that very instant we are atop Mount Moriah. At that very instant we see the ram. We forget that Abraham only rode upon a donkey, that it went on its way slowly, that he had a three-day journey, that he needed time to split the firewood, to bind Isaac, and to sharpen the knife.
…
So, either let us write off Abraham or let us learn to be appalled at this enormous paradox that is his life’s significance, so that we might understand that our age, like every age, can rejoice if it has faith. If Abraham is not a nullity, a phantom, some bit of frippery we use to pass the time, then the error can never be that the sinner wanted to do likewise; rather, what is important is to see the greatness of Abraham’s deed, so that the man can judge for himself whether he has the vocation and the courage to be tried by something of this sort. The comical contradiction in the orator’s conduct was that he made Abraham into someone insignificant and yet wanted to prevent the other person from behaving in like manner.
Fear and Trembling, “Getting Something off my Chest,” ¶30,¶32.
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Brilliant song, brilliant with fire, the fire of a heart burning from innumerable suns.
I finished the book on Azusa Street last night, what a flash of heavenly light that was in 1906. And yet the flame flickered, and yet… and yet, he promises not not to extinguish the smoldering wick… Amen!!!
What a stark historical contrast it was to take a break from Azusa Street and to dip back into Heidegger. Truly these were parallel phenomena, and the revival never took root in Germany for some reason I cannot recall.
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The original was a bit earlier and longer (and harder to read in a few places)…
from The Temple (1633), by George Herbert: The Thanksgiving.
Lovely, I misread it as a hymn of Wesley, but it goes back a little further. It is a wonder how God moves at various times, and his kingdom advances a little more, imperfectly each time.
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That I found the first verse unattributed in Spurgeon this morning is how I came across it.
Maybe a comma?
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That’s still fair though, adapted and condensed from Herbert.
“I did, and I did, and I did–and what does it matter what I did?”
—Orual, Queen of Glome, “Till We Have Faces,” on reflecting on her works. Somehow, this comes back to me at times of fatigue. 
(author: CS Lewis).
Temperament and culture in large part. The German Christians I have known are intensely distrustful of what Americans call revivals. For them it would indicate a giving over of self-control and personal orderliness, something that for them would feel sinful or even seem akin to demon possession. They can be intensely passionate for and devoted to Christ, but you would not see it demonstrated in “revival” as is recognized here.
I started listening to Merold Westphal’s book Kierkegaard’s Concept of Faith. He actually mentioned Heidegger briefly. If you are interested in reading Fear and Trembling or have read it already Westphal’s book is a good companion to it so far, largely focuses on F&T, the focus of which is faith.
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I’d like to highlight this again, because Kierkegaard’s point is important. In the church, even 170 years later, Abraham is taken too lightly. I think I’ve see the term “easy believeism” used lately around here. Abraham may be the father of faith, but the challenge faith is hardly ever discussed. That’s the point of this quote below. If we’re going to talk about Abraham as an example, we have to tell the whole story and tell it accurately.
It’s very easy to leap over the details of his anxiety; he has been commanded to kill his son, which under other circumstances would be viewed as murder! He has plenty of time to think it over as he prepares for the trip, etc.
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Along those lines, a friend recommended this movie put out by Angel Studios. I was a bit hesitant to watch, knowing my friend’s taste, but the trailer looks good. Anyone seen it?
His Only Son
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I thought I’d heard that Abraham had more than one son. Is that right? Not a huge issue I don’t suppose. The horror and repulsion is huge in either case.
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Well … the Bible tells of Ishmael of course, but in the Hebrew scriptures, it was Isaac that was the covenantal son of promise.
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I’ve been wanting to watch that too. Somebody I really respect watched it, and was intrigued and wanted to know what I thought. He stopped short of giving it any rave reviews like he gave to Chosen. But he didn’t disparage it either. Which might be praise from him.
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