Terry, this really hits home. Not that I can claim structure and discipline, but certainly the feel for the need for control.
A one-inch punch.
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Not unrelated to the Joy & Strength just above:
C.H. Spurgeon (for higher resolution click on the image or the link)
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I would love to get an Orthodox theologian’s take on Kierkegaard! The problem of “always feeling like one is not doing enough to please God” is totally different for the East because they never invested in the “wrathful God” meme that drives the West; to the Orthodox God knows we’re going to stumble and it’s no big deal because He isn’t a Judge that will pound His divine gavel on the judgment bench and scowl at us in the first place – which goes back to the view of Eden and the serpent and all where Adam and Eve didn’t suddenly become “sinners in the hands of an angry God”, they just got derailed (which changed a bunch of things admittedly) and needed to be put back on track.
Dunno. Jesus isn’t ‘nice’ with his severe warnings about sheep and goats, wheat and tares. Paul isn’t gentle either in several places, nor Jesus again in Revelation. Then there are the several parables, e.g. Lazarus and Dives.
- Personally, I was moved to wonder: what if evolving hominim, in various times and places, seeking comfort in, solace during, or protection from tempests, the elements, and tragedies and some foundation in a chaotic world, found in religion and discipline what they sought? A sketchy idea better stated by others no doubt, but I’ll work on it.
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Terry, I think your questions get to the point of the quote you posted, that is, not having read the rest of the book myself, thus reading the quote out of context, etc, etc and so forth.
Structure and discipline feel like control and comfort, the way religion and a crucifix can. It’s something to do. Something you can manage and measure.
None of those things is like the love of God, which doesn’t give us control over things but, as you said, comfort, solace and protection.
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I’m a rank beginner with Kierkegaard. But there are a number of themes that seem foundational to his work already. One is anxiety. If he had been alive today, he probably would be medicated to bliss. Or strongly encouraged to be so. Instead, it seems in what little I’ve read so far, that he assumes anxiety to be a normal feature of all human existance, and if it isn’t, it should be.
For example, in Fear and Trembling he stresses the need to interpret the story of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice Isaac through the lens of anxiety, in order to rightly understand the problem Abraham found himself in. In order to please God with a sacrifice, Abraham MUST love Isaac, maybe even increase his love for Isaac. Otherwise it would be no sacrifice to kill Isaac. But to kill a person is murder. To kill a person, whom one loves is even worse than murder. And murder is a sin.
And on it goes.
However, to remove the anxiety from the scene, or ignore it, means that there is no faith involved, no love for God or Isaac. It’s just a deed to get over with.
And that’s just one tiny part of one book that forms a tiny part of the corpus of his writing.
Kierkegaard was also raised in a severely pietistic household by a father who was obsessed with death and verbally abusive. Kierkegaard’s scars show in his work.
At the same time, some of his pieces like The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Christian Discourses reflect a warm-hearted love for and perception of love from God. I need to find time to knuckle down with that book, my current read, and pull out some quotes. It’s really beautiful.
I don’t really know anything about Orthodox Christianity, and I’m just starting out with SK. So, I can’t address your specific questions. It would be interesting to hear your take. If you want to try some of his work, I think Lily and Bird is very approachable, but (at least by half way through) doesn’t deal much with anxiety. However, in SK’s work, it is always there with him, the author.
Oh, another piece to look at is the sermon I linked above, “Ultimatum” from Either/Or Part 2. It’s fairly straight forward and will give you a good taste of what SK’s concerns are with pleasing God and the anxiety that goes with it. “Ultimatum” is part of a pseudonymous work, in which it is quoted by one fictitious narrator as having been written by another fictitious author, but I think the sermon really reflects SK’s voice.
If you dig in to either, I’d be interested in your take on his work.
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In just the little I have read of Kierkegaard so far, I find him to be a unique and interesting person. These related segments of the second discourse of “The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air” is at least worth chewing on. I trimmed it down a good deal for brevity.
Pay attention, then, to nature, which surrounds you. In nature everything is obedience, unconditional obedience. Here “God’s will is done, as in heaven, so also on earth.” Or if one were to cite the holy words in another way, they would still be fitting: here in nature “God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.” In nature everything is unconditional obedience; here it is not merely the case that (as is also true in the world of human beings) inasmuch as God is the Almighty, nothing, not the least thing, happens without it being his will—no, here it is also because everything is unconditional obedience. But this, after all, is certainly an infinite difference: for it is one thing that the most cowardly and most defiant human disobedience cannot—that the disobedience of an individual human being or of the entire human race cannot—do the least thing against his will, he the Almighty; it is something else that his will is done because everything obeys him unconditionally, because there is no other will than his in heaven and on earth; and this is the case in nature.
…
For there is one thing that the lily and bird unconditionally do not understand, that, alas, most people understand best: half-measures. That a minor bit of disobedience would not be unconditional disobedience is something the lily and the bird cannot and do not want to understand. That the least little bit of disobedience would truly have any name other than contempt for God is something the lily and the bird cannot and do not want to understand. That there should be anything else or anyone else that a person, being divided, could also serve in addition to serving God, and that this would not also be despising God: this is something that the bird and the lily cannot and do not want to understand. Marvelous security in encountering the unconditioned and having one’s life in it! And yet, o you profound teachers, could it really be possible to find security anywhere else than in the unconditioned, since in itself the conditioned is of course insecurity! Then I would certainly rather speak differently; I would not admire the security with which they encounter the unconditioned, but would rather say that it is precisely the unconditioned that gives them the admirable security that makes them teachers of obedience.
Søren Kierkegaard. “No One Can Serve Two Masters…” from “The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air,” (Trans. Bruce Kirmmse), Bookshare edition, 62%.
@NickolaosPappas I thought of you, when I read this, and your questions/thoughts about predestination and free will.
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Sadly God missed the chance to make us like the angels. With no free will and good stewards of creation in his image. That is if we have free will indeed
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It’s an interesting “problem” to me, one that I really wasn’t aware of as a “problem” until I came here. Maybe it’s a “men thing.” Or a “philosopher thing.” I’m neither. As someone who leans calvinist in the first place, free will isn’t exactly at the top of my list of concerns. And as I think you are indicating, there is the question of how free that will could possibly be.
Certainly not lol. It’s everyone’s thing I like to imagine .
This does raise a problem on behalf of God’s character . Someone could easily argue for a not so moral God if free will does not exist. I could challenge you on that but it’s beyond my point😀
Certainly I believe these questions won’t get any answers sooner or later. The debates have been going on for centuries.
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My standard reply:
“We have to believe in free will, we have no choice.” I.B. Singer 
Is God absolutely sovereign? Yes. Do we have free will? Yes. Is there an apparent paradox? Yes. Will we be able to get our heads around it? No. Can we live with it and still trust God? Yes, if we can trust his providence, and it is trustworthy, regardless.
…providence is nothing more than [God’s] goodness in action.
We can talk about his omnitemporality and his omnipresence in ‘spacetime slices’ compared to our timeboundedness, and we have in several places – the last of the three to start with, but those respective attributes don’t change the basics above.
Unless maybe you’re a mathematician who skipped out of the advanced mathematics doctoral program at Berkeley because you found it boring!
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I’ve heard that resembles someone’s brother. 
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More from TL&tB. The bird’s focused attention to the work it has been given is something Kierkegaard argues we humans should emulate.
When the bird comes into contact with the harshness of this life, when it is tried with difficulties and opposition, when, every morning, day after day, it finds that its nest has been disturbed: every day, the obedient bird begins its work all over again with the same joy and meticulousness it displayed the first time. In simple fashion and with the help of unconditional obedience, it understands one thing, but understands it unconditionally: that this is its work and that it is solely concerned with doing it.—When the bird must experience the world’s evil, when the little songbird that sings to the glory of God must put up with a naughty child’s finding amusement in jeering at it in order, if possible, to disturb the solemnity; or when the solitary bird has found surroundings it loves, a beloved branch on which it especially loves to sit, perhaps also dear to it for the most cherished memories—and then there is a human being who takes delight in chasing it away by throwing stones or in some other way—alas, a human being who is just as untiring in evil as the bird, despite having been driven off and scared away, is untiring in returning to its love and its old place: the obedient bird submits unconditionally to everything. In simple fashion and with the help of unconditional obedience, it understands only one thing, but understands it unconditionally, that everything of this sort that happens to it does not really concern it; that is, these things only concern it in an unreal fashion, or more correctly, that what actually concerns it—but also unconditionally—is to submit to it in unconditional obedience to God.
“You cannot….” from SK, TL&tB, Bookshare edition 71%
As with the previous quote, SK sees that the bird and the lily have no option but to obey unconditionally, but elsewhere he indicates that although humans do have the option of acting by “half measures” we should emulate the bird and lily as if we don’t.
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Joy & Strength
I love that,
Events, [timing & placing]
His duteous ministers and wise,
With frowning brows, perhaps, for their disguise,
But with such wells of love in their deep eyes,
And such strong rescue hidden in their hands!
Has anyone mentioned storms recently? And let me talk to you about being rescued (have I ever been, and not just once)!
Dale,
I understand you have things you want to share here, too. I’m trying to wait at least a day, after someone posts a quote, to post a new one. That way people have a chance to read it and respond to it. Could you follow the same courtesy, please? I think I’ve asked this before.
My previous one was four days ago? And not that heavy to absorb. Feel free to disregard anything I post and not respond to it. (Is that the real problem?)
Ah, I misread. You want a day between any post. Sorry. Some of what I post is dated, and there is also the reality of senior memory. And it’s not like people are clamoring to post here, or that there is a waiting line. (So is that the real problem?)
Thanks for your thoughts. I’ve been listening to Russell Moore’s “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.”
“When the claims of an individual or a group cannot be questioned without the possibility of exile, and when exile becomes the worst fate imaginable, we are in a place of confusion.”
Hm, tough one. I can see myself as an enforcer, sometimes–I need to open my mind and validate others.
He likes Wendell Berry, too!
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