1. The Upbuilding That Lies in the Thought That Compared to God We Are Always in the Wrong
Chapter One
Prayer
Father in heaven! Teach us to pray rightly so that our hearts may open themselves to you in prayer and supplication and to keep no secret desire that we know is not pleasing to you, nor any private fear that you will deny us something that is truly for our own good, in order that the toiling thoughts, the restless mind, the apprehensive heart may find rest in and through that alone in which and through which it is to be found—by always gladly thanking you, since we gladly admit that compared to you we are always in the wrong. Amen.
In the nineteenth chapter of The Gospel of St. Luke, from the forty-first verse to the end, the Holy Gospel is written as follows:
And when he had come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If you had known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which belong unto your peace! but now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, that your enemies shall cast a trench about you, and compass you round, and keep you in on every side, and shall lay you even with the ground, and your children within you; and they shall not leave in you one stone upon another; because you knew not the time of your visitation. And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but you have made it a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, and could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.
What the Spirit had revealed to the prophets in visions and dreams, what these had proclaimed in a portentous voice to one generation after another—the chosen people’s repudiation, proud Jerusalem’s terrible destruction—was drawing ever closer. Christ goes up to Jerusalem. He is no prophet who proclaims the future. His speech does not cause anxious unrest, because he sees before his eyes what is still hidden there. He does not prophesy. There is no more time for that—he weeps over Jerusalem. And yet the city still stood in its glory, and the temple still towered as always, higher than any other building in the world, and Christ himself says: “If you knew today what was best for you.” But he also adds: “Yet, it is hidden before your eyes.” In God’s eternal counsel, its downfall is decided, and salvation is hidden before the eyes of its inhabitants.
Was, then, the generation that lived at that time more reprehensible than the one before it, to which it owed its life? Was the entire people vicious? Was there no righteous person in Jerusalem, no one who could stop the deity’s wrath? Was there no devout person among all those before whose eyes salvation was hidden? And if there was such a person, was there no gateway opened for him in the time of fear and distress, when the enemies besieged it all around and applied force on every side? Did no angel come down and save him before all gateways were closed? Was no sign done for his sake?
Still, its downfall was fixed. In its fear, the besieged city vainly searched for a way out. The enemy’s army squeezed it in its mighty embrace, and no one slipped away, and heaven was locked, and no angel was sent out but the angel of death, who swung its sword over the city. What the people had committed this generation had to pay for. What this generation had committed each individual member of generation had to pay for.
Shall, then, the righteous suffer with the unrighteous? Is this God’s zeal—that he inflicts the father’s guilt on the children to the third and fourth generation, that he does not punish the fathers but the children? What should we answer? Should we say that now almost two millennia have passed since those days, a horror such that the world never before and will probably never again have to see? We thank God that we live in peace and safety, that the scream of angst from those days only sounds faint to us. We will hope and believe that our days and our children’s days may go forward calmly, unaffected by the storms of existence! We do not feel capable to think about such things, but we will thank God that we are not tested in them.
Can anything more cowardly and more comfortless be imagined than this sort of talk? Has the unexplainable been explained when one has said: “It has only happened once in the world”? Or is this not the unexplainable—that it has happened? Or does not this—that it has happened—have the power to make everything else unexplainable, even the explainable? If it happened once in the world that the human being’s conditions were essentially different from what they otherwise always are, then what certainty is there that it cannot happen again? What certainty is there that this was not true and that which ordinarily happens false? Or is it a demonstration of the truth when something happens more frequently? And does what those times witnessed not actually recur more often? Is it not what we all in so many ways have experienced, that what happens in great things is experienced in lesser things as well? “Do you suppose,” Christ says, “that those Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed them, do you think that they were sinners above all men that dwelled in Jerusalem?” Accordingly, some of these Galileans were not worse sinners than other people. Those eighteen were not guiltier than other people living in Jerusalem—and yet the innocent shared the fate of the guilty. It was an accident, perhaps you will say, not a punishment. But Jerusalem’s downfall was a punishment, and it hit the guilty and the innocent equally hard. That is why you will not worry yourself with fretting about such things, for you can grasp that someone can have troubles and sufferings, that these fall both on good and evil just like the rain, but that it is supposed to be a punishment.…And yet, Scripture presents it in this way.
Is, then, the fate of the righteous the same as the unrighteous? Does the fear of God have no promise for this life, such as it is? Is, then, every uplifting thought that at one time made you so rich in courage and confidence, is it a fancy, an illusion, which the child believes in, the youth hopes for, but in which someone a bit older finds no blessing, but only mockery and scandal? But this thought outrages you. It cannot and shall not get power to captivate you; it must not be able to make your soul listless. You will love righteousness. You will practice righteousness early and late. Even if it has no reward, you will practice it nonetheless. You feel that a demand lies in it, which still must be fulfilled some day. You will not sink into lethargy, and then at some point realize that righteousness did have promises, but that you had locked yourself away from them by not performing righteousness. You will not struggle with human beings; you will struggle with God and hold fast to him. He won’t be able to break away from you without blessing you!
Yet, Scripture says: “You shall not contend with God.” Are you not doing that? Indeed, is this not hopeless talk once again? Is, then, holy Scripture only given to people in order to humiliate and to devastate them? By no means! When it is said that you shall not contend with God, then it means that you must not want to be in the right against God. You are to contend with him only like this: you learn that you are in the wrong. Yes, that is what you yourself ought to want. When you are forbidden to contend with God, your perfection is thereby signified, and in no way is it said that you are a trifling being who has no significance for him. The sparrow falls to the ground; in a sense it has a right relation to God. The lily fades; it has a right relation to God. Only human beings fall into what is unrighteous; to them alone is reserved what was denied to everything else—to be in the wrong compared to God.
If I were to put it differently, I would remind you about a wisdom that you certainly have heard often—a wisdom that knows easily enough how to explain everything without doing an injustice either to God or to human beings. It says that a human being is a fragile creature; it would be unreasonable of God to ask for the impossible from him. One does what one can, and if at some time one is rather negligent, God will never forget that we are weak and imperfect beings. Shall I mostly admire the exalted conceptions of the deity’s nature that this shrewdness peddles, or that deep insight into the human heart, that searching consciousness which scours one’s heart and then comes to the comfortable and convenient realization: “One does what one can”? Was it such an easy matter for you, my listener, to determine how much it is you can do? Were you never in a dangerous situation, where, almost in despair, you exerted your powers and yet certainly wished to do more, and perhaps another person looked at you with a doubtful and pleading glance, whether or not it was possible that you could do more? Or were you never anxious about yourself, so anxious that, to you, there was no sin so dark, no self-centeredness so hateful, that it could not creep into you and like an alien power gain control over you? Did you not feel this anxiety? If you did not feel it, then do not open your mouth to answer, for you cannot speak to what is being asked. But if you did feel it, my listener, then I ask you: did you find rest in those words: “One does what one can”?
Or were you never anxious about others? Did you not see them faltering in life, those you used to look up to with confidence and trust? And did you not hear a soft voice whispering to you: “When even these people cannot attain great things, what is life but evil pain and what is faith but a trap, which pulls us out into the infinite, where we really cannot live—far better, then, to forget, to give up every demand.” Did you not hear this voice? If you did not hear it, do not open your mouth to answer. You cannot speak to what is being asked about. But if you did hear it, my listener, I ask you: did you find comfort in the saying, “One does what one can”? Was this not precisely the basis of your unrest—that you yourself did not know how much one can do, that at one time it seemed so infinitely great, in the next moment so very little? For that reason, was not your angst so painful, because you could not pierce through your consciousness, because the more sincerely you would, the more deeply you wished to act, the more terrible was the dichotomy you found yourself in: that you might not have done what you could, or that you actually might have done what you could but no one came to help you?
Hence, every more sincere doubt, every deeper worry is not calmed by the maxim “One does what one can.” If a person is in the right at times, in the wrong at times, in the right to a certain degree, in the wrong to a certain degree, who is the one who determines that but the person himself? And yet, can he not once more be in the right to a certain degree and in the wrong to a certain degree in this determination? Or is he another person when he assesses his action rather than when he acts? Shall, then, doubt rule, constantly to discover new difficulties, and shall worry go alongside of and impress past experiences on the troubled soul? Or ought we to prefer constantly to be in the right in the sense that creatures without reason are? Thus we have only the choice between being nothing before God or to begin again each moment in eternal agony, yet without being able to begin. For if we are to be able to determine with certainty whether we are in the right in the present moment, then this question must be determined with certainty about the previous moment, and so on further and further back.
Once more, doubt is set in motion, once more worry is awakened. So let us strive to soothe it by contemplating:
The upbuilding that lies in the thought that compared to God we are always in the wrong.
To be in the wrong—can a feeling more painful than this be conceived? And do we not see that people would rather suffer everything than confess that they are in the wrong? We certainly do not approve of such obstinacy, neither in ourselves nor in others; we think that to confess that we are in the wrong is the wiser and better course of action when we actually are that; we then say that the pain that follows from confession would be like a bitter medicine, which would restore to health. But we do not conceal that it is painful to be in the wrong, painful to confess we are in the wrong. We suffer the pain because we know that it is to our good; we trust that one day we will succeed in making a more powerful resistance, that we perhaps will progress to the point of being in the wrong only very seldom. This reflection is so natural, so obvious to everyone. There lies, then, something upbuilding in being in the wrong, provided that, as we confess being in the wrong, we build ourselves up by the possibility that it will be the case more and more infrequently. And yet, it was not by this consideration that we would calm doubt; it was by contemplating what is upbuilding in the fact that we are always in the wrong. If, then, this first reflection—which gave the hope that, with time, one no longer would be in the wrong—was upbuilding, how can the opposite point of view also be upbuilding, the one that would teach us that we are always in the wrong, including both the past and the future.
Your life brings you into various relations with other people. Some of them love justice and righteousness; others seem not to want to practice them; they do wrong to you. Your soul is not hardened to the suffering they cause you, but you search and examine your heart. You make certain that you are in the right, and you rest quietly and strongly in this conviction. “No matter how much they hurt me,” you say, “they will not be able to take away from me this peace—that I know I’m in the right and that I suffer wrong.” There is a satisfaction, a joy in this thought, which probably everyone of us has tasted. And when you continue to suffer injustice, you are upbuilt by the thought that you are in the right. This way of thinking is so natural, so understandable, so often proven in life. Nevertheless, we do not want to calm doubt and heal worry with it, but by contemplating the upbuilding that lies in the thought that we are always in the wrong. Can, then, the opposite thought have the same effect?
Your life brings you into a variety of relations to other people. To some you are drawn with a deeper love than to others. Now, if such a person who was the object of your love were to do wrong to you, it would pain you. You would carefully examine everything, but then you would say: “I know myself that I am in the right; is this thought supposed to calm me?” Oh, if you loved him, it would not calm you. You would inquire into everything. You would not be able to see anything but that he was in the wrong, and yet this certainty would disturb you. You would wish that you might be in the wrong; you would try to find something that would speak in his defense, and, if you could not find it, you would only find rest in the thought that you were in the wrong. Or if you were directed to bear responsibility for such a person’s welfare, you would do everything in your power, and when the other person nevertheless paid no attention to it and only caused you worry, is it not true that you would try to account for it? Would you say: “I know I am in the right toward him”?—Oh, no! If you loved him, this thought would only make you anxious. You would grab after every probability, and, if you found none, you would tear up the account in order to forget it, and you would strive to build yourself up by the thought that you were in the wrong.
So, then, it is painful to be in the wrong, and even more painful the more often one is in the wrong; it is upbuilding to be in the wrong, and even more upbuilding the more often one is in the wrong! Indeed, it is a contradiction. In what manner can this be explained but this—that you in the one case are obliged to acknowledge what you in the second case wish to acknowledge? Yet, is not the acknowledgment the same? Does the fact that one wishes or does not wish have any influence on it? In what manner can this be explained but this—that you in the one case loved, but not in the second case? In other words, that you in the one case were in an infinite relationship with a person, in the second case in a finite relationship? Thus to wish to be in the wrong is an expression for an infinite relationship, but to want to be in the right or to find it painful to be in the wrong is an expression for a finite relationship! For that reason, it is upbuilding always to be in the wrong, for only the infinite upbuilds. The finite does not!
Now, if it were a person you loved, even if your love piously managed to deceive your thinking and yourself, you were nevertheless in a constant contradiction, because you knew you were in the right but wished and wished to believe you were in the wrong. On the other hand, if it were God you loved, is talk about such a contradiction possible? Could you be aware of anything other than what you wished to believe? Should he, who is in heaven, not be greater than you, who lives on the earth? Should his riches not be more surpassing than your measure, his wisdom not deeper than your ingenuity, his holiness greater than your righteousness? You must acknowledge this as a matter of course, no? But if you must acknowledge it, then there is no contradiction between your knowledge and your wish. And yet, if you must acknowledge it as a matter of course, then there is indeed nothing upbuilding in the thought that you are always in the wrong. After all, it was said that the reason why it is painful to be in the wrong on one occasion and upbuilding to be in the wrong on another was because, in the first case, one is compelled to acknowledge what one wished to acknowledge in the second case. So, then, in your relation to God you were freed from contradiction, but you had lost the upbuilding. Still, that was precisely what we wanted to think over: the upbuilding in the fact that we are always in the wrong in relation to God.
Might it actually be like this? Why did you wish to be in the wrong in relation to a person? Because you loved. Why did you find it upbuilding? Because you loved. The more you loved, the less time you spent thinking about whether or not you were in the right. Your love had only one wish—that you must constantly be in the wrong. Likewise in your relation to God. You loved God, and therefore your soul could only find rest and joy in the fact that you always must be in the wrong. You did not come to this recognition from the difficulty of thought. You were not compelled, for when you are in love you are in freedom. When the thought assured you that this is right, that it could not be otherwise than you always must be in the wrong or God always must be in the right, then this followed behind. And you did not become certain that you are in the wrong from the acknowledgment that God is in the right; rather, you came to the recognition that God is always in the right from love’s only and highest wish—that you always must be in the wrong. But this is love’s wish and therefore freedom’s concern, and by no means are you compelled to acknowledge that you are always in the wrong. You did not become certain that you were always in the wrong by deliberation, but the certainty lay in the fact that you were upbuilt by it.
It is, then, an upbuilding thought that compared to God we are always in the wrong. If that were not the case, if this certainty did not have its source from the whole of your being—that is, from the love within you—then your reflection would have taken a different form. You would have acknowledged that God is always in the right; you would have been compelled to acknowledge this as a consequence of being compelled to acknowledge that you were always in the wrong. The latter was already difficult, because it is true that you can be compelled to acknowledge that God is always in the right. But to make the application to yourself, to take up this acknowledgment in your whole being—you cannot be compelled to do that. You acknowledged, then, that God is always in the right and that you, in turn, are always in the wrong. However, this acknowledgment did not upbuild you. There is nothing upbuilding in acknowledging that God is always in the right, and thus there is nothing upbuilding in any thought that follows from it as a matter of course. When you acknowledge that God is always in the right, you stand aloof from God, and the same holds true when you consequently acknowledge that you are always in the wrong. On the other hand, when you—not by virtue of any prior acknowledgment—demand and are made certain that you are always in the wrong, then you are hidden in God. This is your worship, your devotion, your fear of God.
You loved a person; you wished always to be in the wrong compared to him—ah, but he grew faithless to you, and no matter how reluctant you were, no matter how much it hurt you, you still were in the right toward him and wrong in that you loved him so greatly. And yet your soul demanded to love in that way. Only in that could you find rest and peace and blessing. Then your soul turned away from the finite to the infinite; it found its object, which made your soul happy. “I will love God,” you said, “he gives everything to the person who loves. He fulfills my highest, my sole wish—that I must always be in the wrong compared to him. No worrisome doubt will ever tear me away from him. Never shall the thought terrify me that I could prove right compared to him. For compared to God I am always in the wrong.”
Or is it not so? Was this not your sole wish, your highest, and did not a terrifying anguish grip you when, in an instant, the thought would emerge in your soul—that you could be in the right; that your plans, rather than God’s Providence, were wisdom; that your games, rather than God’s thoughts, were righteousness; that your feelings, rather than God’s heart, were love? And was it not your salvation that you could never love as you were loved? So, then, this—that compared to God you are always in the wrong—is not a truth you must acknowledge, not a comfort that relieves your pain, not a payment for something better, but it is a joy in which you triumph over yourself and the world, your delight, your hymn of thanksgiving, your adoration, a demonstration that your love is happy, as only the love with which one loves God is.
In this way, the thought that compared to God we are always in the wrong is upbuilding. It is upbuilding that we are in the wrong, upbuilding that we are always so. It shows its upbuilding power in dual fashion, in part by stopping doubt and by calming the worries of doubt, in part by encouraging action.
My listener, do you still remember a wisdom that was denoted earlier? It looked so faithful and reliable. It explained everything so easily. It was willing to rescue every person all through life, unaffected by the storms of doubt. “One does what one can,” it shouted to the perplexed. And, to be sure, it is undeniable that, when one does just that, one is helped. It had nothing else to say; it disappeared like a dream, or it became a monotonous repetition in the ear of the person doubting. When, then, he would use it, it turned out that he could not use it; it turned out that it caught him in a snare of difficulties. He could not find the time to think about what he could do, because, at the same time, he had to do what he could do. Or if he got time to think it over, then the examination gave him a more or a less, an approximation, but never something comprehensive. Likewise, how should a person be able to measure his relation to God by a more or a less, or by a determination of an approximation? He learned that this wisdom was a treasonous friend, who, under the appearance of helping him, entangled him in doubt, worried him into a continuous cycle of confusion. What before had been obscure but not worrying to him did not become clearer now, though his mind was anxious with doubt and worried. Only in an infinite relation to God could doubt be calmed; only in an infinitely free relation to God could his worry be turned to joy. He is in an infinite relation to God when he acknowledges that God is always in the right; he is in an infinite relation to God when he acknowledges that he is always in the wrong.
In this way, then, doubt is brought to a standstill. For the movement of doubt lay precisely in this—that in the one moment he was to be in the right, in the next moment in the wrong, to a certain degree to be in the right, to a certain degree in the wrong, and this was to mark his relation to God. But such a relation to God is no relation, and this was the fuel of doubt. In his relation to another person, it was certainly possible that he could be partly in the wrong, partly in the right, to a certain degree in the wrong, to a certain degree in the right. For he himself as well as every human being is a finite entity, and their relation is a finite relation, which consists in a more or a less. So long as doubt, then, would render the finite relation infinite, and so long as wisdom would fill up the infinite relation with finitude, just so long would he remain in doubt. Every time, then, doubt wants to worry him with the particular, wants to teach him that he suffers too much or is tested beyond his powers, he loses the finite in the infinite—that he is always in the wrong. Every time the disquiet of doubt wants to make him sad, he lifts himself up over the finite into the infinite. For this—that he is always in the wrong—is the wing on which he rises over finitude. It is the longing with which he seeks God. It is the love in which he finds God.
Compared to God we are always in the wrong. But is this thought not anesthetizing? However upbuilding it may be, is it not dangerous for a human being? Does it not lull him into a sleep in which he dreams about a relation to God that is no actual relation? Does it not consume the will’s power and resolution’s strength? By no means! Was, then, the person who, in relation to another person, wished always to be in the wrong—was he listless and stagnant? Did he not do everything in his power to be in the right and yet wished only to be in the wrong? And then should not the thought that compared to God we are always in the wrong be inspiring, for what does it express but that God’s love is always greater than our love? Does not this thought make him glad to act, because when he doubts he has no energy to act? Does it not ignite the spirit, for when he calculates in finite terms the spirit’s fire is put out? If, then, your only wish was denied to you, my listener, you are still happy. You do not say: “God is always in the right,” because there is no joy in that. You say: “Compared to God I am always in the wrong.” If you yourself were the one who had to deny yourself your highest wish, you are still happy. You do not say: “God is always in the right,” because there is no cheer in that. You say: “Compared to God I am always in the wrong.” If your wish was what, in a certain sense, other people and yourself must call your duty, if you not only have to deny your wish but betray your duty in some way, if you not only lost your joy but even your honor, you are glad nevertheless. “Compared to God,” you say, “I am always in the wrong.” If you knocked but it was not opened, if you searched but did not find, if you worked but got nothing, if you planted and watered but saw no blessing, if heaven was closed and the witness failed to come, you are still glad in your work. If the punishment that the father’s guilt had called down came over you, you are still glad. For compared to God we are always in the wrong.
Compared to God we are always in the wrong—this thought, then, brings doubt to a standstill and calms its worries. It enlivens and fills one with enthusiasm for action.
Your thought has now followed the course of the exposition, perhaps quickly hurrying ahead when it led you on well-known paths, perhaps slowly, reluctantly when the way was strange to you. Still, though, you must confess that the situation is as it was worked out, and your thinking had nothing to say against it. Before we part, my listener, one more question: would you wish, could you wish, that it might be different? Could you wish that you are supposed to be in the right? Could you wish that this beautiful law, which, for thousands of years, has borne the generation through life and each member of the generation—this beautiful law, more glorious than that which bears the stars on their course over the vault of heaven—could you wish that this law be shattered, something more terrible than if the law of nature lost its power and everything was broken up into frightful chaos? Could you wish that? I have no words of anger to terrify you with. Your wish must not emerge from anxiety over the presumption in the thought of wanting to be in the right compared to God. I ask you only: would you wish that it be otherwise?
Perhaps my tone does not have enough power and fervor; my voice cannot penetrate into your innermost thinking. O, but ask yourself—ask yourself with the solemn uncertainty with which you would turn to a person who you knew was able to determine your life’s happiness with a single word—ask yourself even more earnestly than that. For, in truth, it is a matter of salvation. Do not stop the flight of your soul. Do not distress the best in you. Do not dull your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself, and keep on asking, until you find the answer. For one may have known a thing many times, acknowledged it. One may have willed a thing many times, attempted it. And yet, only the deep inner movement, only the heart’s indescribable emotion—only that convinces you that what you have recognized belongs to you, that no power can take it from you. For only the truth that upbuilds is truth for you.