8. What the Thought of Following Christ Means and What Joy Lies Therein
Chapter Eight
Prayer
You who once wandered the earth yourself, leaving behind footprints that we are to follow; you who still look down from your heaven on each person who wanders, strengthen the weary, encourage the fainthearted, restore the erring, comfort the struggling; you who shall come again at the end of time in order to judge each person individually, whether he followed you: our God and our savior, let your archetype stand very clearly before the eyes of the soul in order to dissipate the fog, strengthen in order to have this alone unchanged before our eyes, so that, by resembling you and by following you, we may find the right way to the judgment. For, after all, every human being ought to be brought before the judgment—oh, but may we also be brought by you to blessedness with you in the next life. Amen.
Luke 14:27: Whoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Guidance is offered surely enough on life’s way, and, no wonder, since every error passes itself off as guidance. Yet, even if errors are many, the truth is still only one, and there is only one who is “the way and the life,” only one guidance that truly leads a person through life to life. Thousands upon thousands bear a name by which it is indicated that they have chosen this guidance—that they belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, after whom they call themselves Christians; that they are his subjects, whether they are masters or servants in other respects, slaves or freepersons, men or women.
They call themselves Christians, and they also call themselves by other names, which all designate a relation to this single guidance. They call themselves believers and by this signify that they are wanderers, strangers, and aliens in the world. Yes, a wanderer is not known as certainly by the staff in his hand (after all, many could also bear a staff, without being a traveler) as calling oneself a believer obviously testifies that one is on a journey. For faith just means this: what I am seeking is not here; that is precisely why I believe it. Faith just means the deep, strong, blessed unrest [Uro] that drives the believer, so that he cannot settle down [ikke kan slaae sig til Ro] in this world. Thus the one who did settle down also ceased being a believer. For a believer cannot sit still like one sits with a walking stick in one’s hand; a believer wanders ahead.
They call themselves “the communion of saints” and by this signify what they should be and ought to be, what they hope to become at some point, when faith is given up and the walking stick laid down. They call themselves cross-bearers and signify by this that their way through the world is not as light as a dance but is heavy and laborious, though, to them, faith is still also the joy that overcomes the world. For just as the sailboat, which easily proceeds before the wind, deeply cuts its heavy path through the sea at the same time: so also the way of the Christian is easy when one looks at the faith that overcomes the world, yet hard when one looks at the laborious work at bottom. They call themselves “followers of Christ,” and it is now on this name that we want to dwell, as we bear in mind:
What the Thought of Following Christ Means and What Joy Lies Therein
When the bold warrior presses forward courageously and receives all the enemy’s arrows with his breast, yet also defends his squire who is following behind: can one then say that this assistant follows him? When the loving wife thinks that—in what she holds dearest in the world, in her husband—she has the beautiful example that she wished to attain in life, and she then femininely (for, after all, the woman was taken from the side of the man) wanders with him side by side, leaning on him: can one then say that this wife follows her husband? When the undaunted teacher stands calmly in his place, surrounded by ridicule, plotted against by envy; when every attack is directed only at him but never takes aim at the follower who becomes attached to him: can one then say that this follower follows him? When the hen sees that the enemy is coming and therefore spreads out her wings to cover up the chicks that are walking behind her: can one then say that these chicks follow the hen?
No, one cannot talk in this way; the relation must be changed. The bold warrior must fall out, so that it now can become manifest whether his squire will also follow him, follow him in the actuality of danger, when all the arrows are aimed at his breast, or whether he will cowardly turn back from the danger, lose courage, because he lost the courageous one. The noble husband—alas, he must step aside, go away from her, so that it now can become manifest whether the grieving widow, without his support, will follow him or whether she, deprived of his support, will let his example go. The undaunted teacher must hide himself or must be hidden in a grave so that it now can be revealed whether the follower will follow him, will hold out in that place surrounded by ridicule, plotted against by envy, or whether he, while alive, will relinquish the place in shame because the teacher honorably abandoned it in death.
To follow, then, means to go on the same path that was taken by the one whom one is following. Therefore it means that he no longer goes visibly in front. And thus it was necessary, after all, that Christ had to go away, had to die, before it could become manifest whether the disciple would follow him. It is many, many centuries since this happened, and yet, even now, it always happens in this way. For there is a time when Christ almost visibly walks by the child’s side, goes in front of the child, but then a time also comes when he is taken away from the eyes of the sensory imagination, so that now, in the earnestness of decision, it can become manifest whether the adult will follow him.
When the child gets permission to hold onto its mother’s dress: can one then say that the child goes the same way just as the mother does? No, one cannot say that. The child must first learn to go individually, to go alone, before it can go the same way as the mother and go just as she does it. And when the child learns to go individually, what, then, is the mother to do? She must make herself invisible. That her tenderness remains the same anyway, remains unchanged—yes, that it almost certainly increases in the time since the child has learned to go individually: of course, we know that well, whereas the child perhaps cannot always understand it.
But what it means for the child to have to learn to go individually and to go alone—in spiritual terms, that is the task assigned to the one who is to be one’s follower. He must learn to go individually and to go alone. Ah, how strange! Almost jokingly and always with a smile we talk about the child’s worry when it must learn to walk by itself. And yet, perhaps language has no stronger or more gripping or truer expression for the deepest grief and suffering than this: to go individually and to go alone. That, in heaven, solicitude is unchanged—indeed, if it were possible, heaven is even more concerned in this dangerous time—we know that well, of course. But perhaps it cannot always be understood while one is learning.
To follow, then, means to go individually and to go alone on the way that the teacher went. It means to have no visible person with whom one can consult, to have to choose oneself, to scream in vain as the child screams in vain (for the mother dares not help in overt fashion), to despair in vain (for no one can help, and heaven dares not help in overt fashion). But to be helped invisibly is precisely to learn to go individually, because it is to learn to transform one’s mind into the likeness of the teacher’s mind, who, however, is not visibly seen. To go alone! Yes, there is no one, no human being, who can choose for you or, in a final and decisive sense, give you counsel about the only important thing, decisively give you counsel about the matter of your salvation. And, even if ever so many were willing to do so, it would, after all, only be to your harm.
Alone! For when you have chosen, you will surely find fellow wanderers. But in the decisive moment, and every time there is mortal danger, then you are alone. No one, no one, hears your ingratiating prayer or heeds your fierce complaint—and yet there is help and willingness enough in heaven. But it is invisible. To be helped by it is precisely to learn to go alone. This help does not come from the outside and grip your hand; it does not support you like a loving person supports a sick person. It does not lead you back by force when you have gone astray. No, only when you completely give in, give up your will altogether, and give yourself away with your whole heart and mind: then the help comes invisibly. But then you have indeed gone alone.
One does not see the powerful instinct that leads the bird on its long course. The instinct does not fly in front and the bird behind it; it looks as if it were the bird who found the way. Likewise, one does not see the teacher but only the follower who resembles him, and it looks as if the follower himself were the way, precisely because he is the true follower, who goes alone by the same way.
This is what is implied in the thought of following someone. But to follow Christ, to take up his cross, or as it is put in the text in question: “to bear his cross.” To bear his cross means to deny oneself, as Christ explains when he says: “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt 16:24). Or it was: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in human likeness: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:5ff.). The archetype was like this; the imitation must also be like this, even if it is a slow and difficult task to deny oneself, a heavy cross to take up, a heavy cross to drag, and one that, according to the archetype’s direction, is to be borne in obedience unto death, so that the follower resembles the archetype in dying “with the cross on,” even if he does not die on the cross.
One good deed, one noble resolution, is not to deny oneself. Alas, perhaps one does learn this in the world, because even this is seen so rarely that, on the rare occasion, it is then seen with astonishment. But Christianity teaches otherwise. Christ did not say to the rich young man: “If you would be perfect, then sell all your goods and give it to the poor.” Even this demand alone would seem exaggerated and eccentric to many persons, wouldn’t it? Perhaps one would not even admire the young man if he did such a thing, but smile at him as if he were an oddball or pity him as a fool. However, Christ is saying something else. He says: “Go your way, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and come, take up the cross, and follow me” (Mark 10:21). Therefore, to sell one’s goods and to give to the poor is not to take up the cross. Or, at most, it is the beginning, the good beginning, in order to take up the cross and to follow Christ.
To give everything to the poor is the first step; it is (since, after all, the language allows an innocent cleverness) to take up the cross. The next step is the protracted continuation: to bear one’s cross. It must take place everyday, not once and for all, and there must indeed be nothing, nothing, that the follower would be unwilling to give up in self-denial. It makes no essential difference at all whether it is a trifle (as one says) that he would not deny himself or whether it is something big. For even the trifle becomes infinitely significant as a guilt in relation to the required self-denial. Perhaps there was one who was willing to do what the rich young man failed to do, hoping thereby to attain the height of perfection, and who nevertheless did not become a follower, because he remained standing, “turned around and looked back”—at his great achievement. Or, if he went ahead, he still did not become a follower, because he thought he had done something so great that trifles did not matter.
Alas, why is it that to deny oneself in trifles is the most difficult thing of all? I wonder if it is not because a certain enhanced self-love is apparently capable of denying itself in great things. But the lesser, the more insignificant, the more petty the requirement is, the more offensive it is to self-love, because it is completely abandoned by its own and by the pompous notions of others in relation to such a task. However, that is just why self-denial is the more humble.
Why is it that denying oneself when one lives alone and as if in a backwater is the most difficult thing of all? I wonder if it is not because a certain enhanced self-love is also capable of apparently denying itself—when many are looking on admiringly. But just as little as it makes any difference (whatever the difference is) in what the individual person denies himself in relation to his circumstances—unconditionally, then, a beggar can deny himself as well as a king—so it makes no essential difference either (whatever the difference is) in what a person cannot deny oneself. For, in the end, self-denial is precisely the inwardness to deny oneself. And this is a hard and difficult task. For it is true that self-denial entails casting off burdens and could seem easy enough as far as it goes. But, of course, it is still hard to cast off the very burdens that self-love would carry so gladly, yes, so gladly that even now it is very difficult for self-love to understand that they are burdens.
To follow Christ, then, means to deny oneself and therefore means to go the same way as Christ went in the lowly form of a servant—poor, abandoned, mocked, not loving the world and not loved by it. And that means, consequently, to go alone. For the one who, in self-denial, gives up the world and all that belongs to the world forsakes every relation that otherwise tempts and imprisons. “So he does not go to his field, nor does he bargain or take a wife either.” The one who, if necessary, surely does not love father and mother, sister and brother less than before but loves Christ so much more that he can be said to hate these others: certainly he goes alone, goes alone into the entire world. Yes, in the crisscrossing busyness of life, it seems like a difficult, an impossible task to live in this way; already it seems impossible to judge whether anyone is actually living in this way. But let us not forget that eternity is to judge how the task was carried out, and that eternity’s earnestness will command that embarrassment be silent in relation to everything worldly, about which there is perpetual talk in the world.
For in eternity you will not be asked about how great a fortune you are leaving; the survivors ask about that. Nor will you be asked about how many battles you won, how clever you were, how powerful your influence; that, of course, becomes your reputation in the future. No, eternity will not ask about what worldly things remain behind you in the world. But it will ask about what riches you have gathered in heaven; about how often you have conquered your mind; about what control you have exercised over yourself, or whether you have been a slave; about how many times you have mastered yourself in self-denial, or whether you have never done it; about how often you, in self-denial, have been willing to offer a sacrifice for a good cause, or whether you have never been willing; about how often you, in self-denial, have forgiven your enemy, whether probably seven times or seventy times seven times; about how often you, in self-denial, bear insults patiently; about what you have suffered, not for your own sake or for the sake of your self-interested purposes, but what you, in self-denial, have suffered for God’s sake.
And the one who is to ask you, the judge from whose verdict you cannot go to anyone higher: he was not an army commander who conquered kingdoms and lands, with whom you could talk about your earthly achievements; on the contrary, his kingdom was not of this world. He was not a person clothed in purple, with whom you could seek dignified company; for he only wore purple in indignity. He was not powerful through his influence, so that he could wish to be initiated into your worldly secrets; for he was so despised that the distinguished person dared visit him only under the cover of darkness.
Oh, it really is always a comfort to meet with like-minded people—when one is cowardly, then not to have to be brought before a court of warriors; when one is selfish and worldly-minded, then not to have to be judged by self-denial. And this judge not only knows what self-denial is; he knows not only to judge in such a way that no fraud can hide itself. No, his presence is the judging that lets everything die down and fade that, to the worldly, looked so good out in the world, that was heard and seen with admiration. His presence is the judging, for he was self-denial. He who was equal to God took on the form of a lowly servant. He who could rule over legions of angels—yes, over the origin and the end of the world—went around defenseless. He who had everything in his power gave up all power and could not even do anything for his beloved disciples but simply demand the same lowly and despicable conditions of them. He who was the Lord of creation constrained nature itself to keep quiet, for it was not until he had given up his spirit that the curtain split and the graves opened and the forces of nature betrayed who he was. If this is not self-denial, what, then, is self-denial!
This is what is implied in the thought of following Christ. But let us now bear in mind the joy in this thought.
My listener! If you imagine a young man who stands on the threshold of his life, where many paths open up before him, asking himself which track he would like to set foot on: is it not true, then, that he would closely inquire into where each particular path leads? Or, in what amounts to the same thing, would he not seek to get to know who had gone by that path previously? Then we mention to him the famous, the prized, the glorious names of the ones whose remembrance is preserved among persons. Perhaps at first we name many persons, so that the choice can stand in relation to the young man’s possibility; thus the wealth of instruction offered can be abundant. But then he himself, driven by a desire in his gut, narrows the choice, and, at last, there remains for him only one, a single one, which in his eyes and from his heart is the most excellent of all. Then the young man’s heart beats violently when he enthusiastically mentions this name—the only name to him—and says: “I want to go this way, because he went this way!”
Now we would not want to divert attention or waste time by naming such names. For, after all, there is still only one name in heaven and on earth, a single name, and therefore only one path to choose—if a person is to choose in earnest and to choose correctly. That is to say, there must be many ways, since a person is to choose; but, additionally, there must be just one to choose, if the earnestness of eternity is to rest upon the choice. A choice about which it is true that one can just as well choose one thing as another does not have the eternal earnestness of the choice. In the choice there must unconditionally be everything to win and everything to lose, if the choice is to have the earnestness of eternity, even though, as said, there must be a possibility of being able to choose something else, so that the choice actually can be a choice.
There is only one name in heaven and on earth, only one way, only one archetype. The one who chooses to follow Christ chooses the name that is higher than all names, the archetype that is highly exalted above all heavens, but still also human in such a way that it can be an archetype for a person, so that it is named and shall be named in heaven and on earth—in both places—as the highest. For there are archetypes whose names are mentioned on earth, but the highest one, the only one, must indeed have just this excluding quality—that it is named both in heaven and on earth—whereupon it is again perceived as the only name.
This name is the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, then, is it not joyous to dare to choose to go the same way that he went! Alas, in the world’s confused and confusing talk, sometimes the simple and the earnest almost sound like a joke. The person who has probably experienced the greatest power that has ever been experienced in the world calls himself proudly the successor [Efterfølger] of Peter. But to be the follower [Efterfølger] of Christ! Yes, that does not tempt the pride of a person. It is permitted equally to the most powerful and to the most lowly, to the wisest as well as the most simple, which, again, is the very blessed thing in the end.
And is it really so glorious to become the excellent person, which no other person can become? Is it not more like hopelessness? Is it so glorious to eat on silver, when others are hungry? To dwell in palaces, when so many do not have shelter? To be the scholar that no ordinary person can become? To have a reputation in the sense that thousands upon thousands are excluded? Is that so glorious? And if this—the envious dissimilarity of earthly life—was the highest, would it then not be inhuman! And would not life be unbearable for the fortunate!
How different, on the other hand, when the only joy is to follow Christ. After all, a higher joy than this cannot be given: to be able to become the highest. And this sublime joy cannot be made more bold, more blessed, more secure than it is by the joyful, by the merciful thought of heaven—that every person can do this.
So, then, the one who chose to follow Christ goes forward on the path. And when he too must get to know the world and what is in it, the world’s strength and his own weakness; when the fight against flesh and blood becomes anxiety-ridden; when the way becomes hard, the enemies many, the friends none: then the pain surely wrings this sigh from him: “I am going alone.” My listener, if a child starting to learn to walk were to come crying to the adult and say: “I am walking by myself”—would not the adult then say: “That is precisely what is glorious, my child!” And following Christ is also like this. On this way it is not only the case, as is usually said, that when the need is greatest, the help is nearest. No, here—on this way—the height of suffering is nearest to perfection. Do you know of any other way on which this is the case? It is the opposite along any other way: if sufferings come there, then the weight is predominant—yes, even predominant in such a way that it can mean that one chose the wrong way.
In contrast, on the way along which a person follows Christ, the height of suffering is the most glorious. As the person wandering sighs, he accurately counts himself blessed. See, when a person sets foot on any other path, then doubtless he must make himself familiar in advance with the risks on the way. Perhaps it can go well and without a difficult accident, but, in like manner, perhaps so many hindrances can pile up that he cannot press his way forward. On the other hand, there is eternal safety on the road that is the way of self-denial, of following Christ. The “signs” of suffering are on this way—the joyous signs that one is going ahead on the right path. But what joy is even greater than daring to choose the best way, the way to the highest. And so, in turn, what joy is as great as this, except the joy that, in all eternity, the way is certain!
Even still, there is a final blessed joy contained in the thought of following Christ. For, as was explained, surely Christ does not go with the follower, nor does he go visibly before him. Rather, he has gone ahead, and this is the follower’s joyful hope: that he is to follow him. After all, it is one thing to follow him on the way of self-denial—and even this would be joyous—but something else to follow him into eternal blessedness. When death has separated two lovers, and then the survivor dies, then we say: “Now she has followed him; he went ahead.” Christ went ahead in this way, and not only in this way, for he went ahead in order to prepare a place for the follower.
When we are talking about a human predecessor, then perhaps it holds true that, by going ahead, he has made the way easier for the one who follows him. And when the way that we are talking about concerns the earthly, the temporal, the imperfect, then it may be the case that the way has even become quite easy for the follower. This is not true in relation to the Christian or about the perfect way of self-denial. In essence, this way is always equally difficult for every follower. But, then, that Christ went ahead is true in an entirely different sense: he did not prepare the way for the follower by going ahead, but he went ahead in order to prepare a place for the follower in heaven. At times, a human predecessor can say with justification: “Now it is easy enough to go behind, since the way has been paved and prepared and the gate wide.” Christ, on the other hand, must say: “Look, everything is prepared in heaven—if you are prepared to go in by the narrow gate of self-denial and along its straitened path.”
Amid the world’s busyness, perhaps this place in the hereafter seems very uncertain. But, after all, the one who renounced the world and himself in self-denial must have convinced himself that such a place exists. Indeed, the one who exists must be somewhere; he must take refuge somewhere. Yet, he cannot have his place in the world that he has given up. That is why there must be another place; yes, there must be, so that he is able to give up the world. Oh, how easy this is to understand for a person, if he actually has denied himself and the world! And it is also easy to test his life in this respect, how far one actually is assured that there is such a place in the next world, whether one actually has his life eternally assured.
The Apostle Paul says (1 Cor 15:19): “If in this life only we have hope, we are the most miserable of all.” This is even certain, because the one who forsakes all the world’s goods and bears all its evils for the sake of Christ—if there were no eternal blessedness in the next world, he is deceived, awfully deceived. If there were no eternal blessedness in the next world, it seems to me that it must come into existence, simply out of compassion for such a person. If, then, a person does not hanker after earthly things and halcyon days, does not strive after earthly advantage, does not even grasp it when it is offered; if he chooses trouble and difficulty and the thankless task, whatever it may be, because he chose the best cause; if he, when he must do without earthly things, does not even have the consolation of knowing that he has done his very best to win them: then he is indeed a fool in the eyes of the world. He is the miserable one in the world. If, then, there were no eternal blessedness in the next world, then surely he would be the most miserable of all persons. His very self-denial would make him miserable—he who had not even tried to acquire earthly things but voluntarily gave them up.
On the other hand, if there is an eternal blessedness in the next world, then he—the miserable one—is really the richest of all. For it is one thing to be the most miserable in the world, if the world is thought to be the highest; it is another thing to be the most miserable in the world, if there is eternal blessedness, or to be that if there were no eternal blessedness. The proof that this eternal blessedness exists is conveyed by Paul most gloriously. For there can be no doubt about the fact that, without it, he would have been the most miserable of all. In contrast, if a person seeks to assure himself in this world, seeks to assure himself of the advantage of this world, then his assurance that there is an eternal blessedness in the next world is just not convincing. It hardly convinces others; it has hardly convinced him himself. However, no one is to judge about this, or each person himself alone. For even to want to judge another person in this respect is an attempt to assure oneself in this world. Otherwise, after all, he would realize that both judgment and eternal blessedness belong to the other world.
Alas, over the course of time, it often has been repeated—and the repetition continues—that someone goes ahead after whom another person longs, whom he wishes to follow. But never has any person, never any loved one, never any teacher, never any friend gone ahead—in order to prepare a place for the follower. Just as Christ’s name is the only one in heaven and on earth, so also is Christ the only forerunner who has gone ahead in this way. Between heaven and earth, there is only one way: to follow Christ. In both time and eternity, there is only one choice, one single choice: to choose this way. On earth, there is but one eternal hope: to follow Christ into heaven. In life, there is one blessed joy: to follow Christ. And, in death, there is one final blessed joy: to follow Christ to life!