Part 8
People want to eliminate injunctions and constraints in order to play the game of being independent. In the old days people believed that it was the conscience that gave freedom of con science, that if one had conscience, freedom was sure to come along. But to eliminate every constraint, to loosen every bond,
73 Freedom
meant at best to make it as free and as convenient as possible for everyone to have no conscience while imagining that he had one. All this talk about eliminating constraint comes either from the coddled or from those who perhaps once felt the power to fight but are now exhausted and find it nicer to have all constraints taken away.
Certainly, Mary was the chosen one, and so decidedly so that she was chosen. But there is also another factor, freedom and the moment of choice, where we see that such a one is the right one. Had the angel not found her as he did find her, she would not have been the right one.
God's education consists in leading one to being able to do freely what at first one had to be compelled to do.
The opposite of freedom is not necessity, but guilt.
Who does not want to be free? Wishing to be free is an easy mat ter, but wishing is the most paltry and unfree of all performances.
In all our own "freedom," we actually seek one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.
That which distinguishes the Christian way from the common way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty – no, he chose poverty.
A person is a slave of what he is unfreely dependent upon. But our freedom-loving age thinks otherwise; it thinks that if one is not dependent, then one is not a slave either. If there is no ruler, then there is no slave either. One is scarcely aware that precisely here a bondage is being created. This bondage is not that one person wants to subjugate many, but that individuals, when they forget their relation to God, become mutually afraid of one another.
We read that Christ after his resurrection came through closed doors, where the disciples were assembled. This is sometimes mistakenly used as a picture of how eagerly Christ seeks the soul, how he can even get through the closed doors of hearts that are indifferent or hardened. But this is untrue. Rather, he stands before the door and knocks.
That God could create beings free over against himself is the cross that philosophy could not bear but upon which it has re mained hanging.
The whole question of God's omnipotence and the relation of goodness to evil may perhaps be resolved quite simply in this way. The highest that conceivably can be done for a being is to make it free. But it requires omnipotence for this. It may seem strange, since omnipotence would seem to require dependence. But if one will think carefully about omnipotence, he will per ceive that the distinctive characteristic of omnipotence is the ability to withdraw itself again. It is precisely for this cause that what comes into existence by omnipotence can be independent.
Only omnipotence is able to withdraw (take itself back) in giving out, and it is this relationship precisely which constitutes
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the independence of the recipient. Hence God's omnipotence is his goodness. For goodness means to give out completely, but in such a way that withdrawing it makes the recipient free. Om nipotence is not merely able to produce the most imposing phenomenon, the totality of the visible universe, but also the most fragile thing of all: a being that in the very face of omnipo tence is independent. It is but a worthless and worldly concep tion of the dynamic of power that it is greater and greater in proportion as it can compel and make dependent. No, the art of true power is precisely to make free.
74 God
The law of relationship between us humans and God is as fol lows: Major Premise: There is an infinite, radical, qualitative difference between God and humans. This means that we can achieve absolutely nothing; it is God who gives everything. It is he who brings forth a person's faith, and so forth. This is grace, and this is Christianity's major premise. Minor Premise: Al though we can merit nothing, unconditionally nothing, we can, in faith, dare in all childlikeness to be involved with God.
If the major premise is everything, then God becomes so in finitely great that there can be no relationship between God and the individual human being. The life of the single individual never gets off the ground. It can be fraud to elevate God so high. The difficulty is to have an infinite conception of God's majesty and of Christ's glory and then the childlike openness to become involved with them in your own personal life in a wholly child like way.
Yes, who in all the world can or dares risk involvement with God when you consider that your serial number in the race is, for example, No. 27,000,000,000 and so on? But you ought not think this way. You should simply shut your eyes, think only of God, become a poor single human being to whom God's infi
74 God
nite love gives childlike openness, and above all rejoice in the fact that every human being has permission to do this – yes, he shall do this.
Oh, that you would learn to think humanly of God! I do not mean that you should become buddy-buddy with God. No, first of all, first the infinite conception of God's infinite majesty, and then, then the next, the childlike openness to become involved with him earnestly and in truth. Unfortunately Christianity has made God so sublime that in the long run we really have spir ited him away and smuggled him out of life.
If a desert Arab looking for water suddenly discovered a spring in his tent, so that he would always have spring water in abun dance – how fortunate he would consider himself! It is the same with a person who is always turned outward, thinking that his happiness lies outside himself. If only he would turn inward and discover that the springs lie within, to say nothing of discovering the spring that God offers in a relationship.
"He must increase, but I must decrease" is the law for all draw ing near to God. But then in a way do I lose God? How? For in deed, he increases! No, if I lose anything, I lose only myself.
The longer one lives with God the more infinite God be comes – and the less one becomes. Alas, as a child one thinks that God and man can play happily together. As a youth one dreams that if he really and truly makes an effort, like someone passionately in love, then that relationship to God might still be achieved. Alas, when one matures he discovers how infinite God is, discovers the infinite distance.
God is personal. That matter is certain enough. But unless something else happens, you have not advanced. No, God is in deed personal, but it still does not follow that he is straightway personal for you. Take a human relationship. A superior person is certainly personal, but does he not have it in his power to be personal in relation to the inferior one or to relate himself ob jectively to him?
So it is with God. Yes, he is personal, but whether he will be that toward you depends on whether it so pleases God. It is the grace of God if he will be personal in his relation to you. And if you throw away his grace, he punishes you by relating to you objectively. And in this sense it can be said that the world (de spite all proofs!) does not have a personal God. The truth is that long ago there ceased to be people capable of bearing the pres sure and the weight of having a personal God.
God is the only power who does not hold sales or reduce the prices; his prices remain eternally unchanged.
The goal is not to merge into God through some fading away or in some divine ocean. No, in an intensified consciousness "a person must render account for every careless word he has ut tered." Even though grace blots out sin, the union with God still takes place in the personality clarified and intensified to the ut most.
God is unchanging. But this changelessness is not a chilling indif ference, a devastating loftiness, an ambiguous distance, which the callous understanding lauds. No, on the contrary, this change lessness is intimate and warm and everywhere present. God is un changing love.
74 God
Imagine a solitary traveler, a desert wanderer. Almost burned by the heat of the sun, languishing with thirst, he finds a spring. Oh refreshing coolness! Now God be praised, he says – and yet it was merely a spring he found. What then is he who finds God! He too must say, "God be praised, I have found God – now I am well provided for. Your faithful coolness, oh beloved well spring, is not subject to any change. In the cold of winter, if winter visited this place, you would not become colder, but would preserve the same coolness unchanged, for the waters of the spring do not freeze! In the midday heat of the summer sun you preserve precisely the same coolness, for the waters of the spring do not become lukewarm!" There is nothing untrue in what he says, no false exaggeration in his eulogy.
You, oh God, you who are unchangeable, you are always and invariably to be found, and always to be found unchanged. Whether in life or in death, no one journeys so far afield that you are not to be found by him, that you are not there, you who are everywhere. It is not so with the well-springs of earth, for they are to be found only in special places. And besides – over whelming security! – you don't remain, like the spring, in a single place, but you follow the traveler on his way. How poor and inadequate a description of what you are! You are a spring that itself seeks out the thirsty traveler, the errant wanderer. Who has ever heard the like of any spring! Thus you are unchangeably always and everywhere to be found. And whenever any human being comes to you, of whatever age, at whatever time of the day, in whatever state, if he comes in sincerity he always finds your love equally warm, like the spring's unchanged coolness, oh you who are unchangeable!
With respect to God, the how is the what. He who does not in volve himself with God in the mode of absolute devotion does
not become involved with God. In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the con tradiction to all that is "to a certain degree."
A second-hand relationship to God is just as impossible and just as nonsensical as falling in love at second-hand.
To become involved with God in any other way other than be ing wounded is impossible.
When children are together all day long, they naturally play with each other. But what happens – suddenly there comes a message that little Peter, Christian, Soren, Hans, or whatever the child is called, must go home. It is the same with us adults. We go and talk with the each other about what we want to be in the world, that we want to be this and that, and it seems that we are earnest, almost as earnest as anybody else. But what happens – suddenly there comes a message that we must go home. That is, God calls to us. This, you see, is why the truly religious indi vidual can never engage in the strange sort of earnestness which is so common in the world, the kind that leaves God out. The child cannot be allowed to get stuck in the illusion that his rela tionship with the other children is the whole thing – for then comes the message that he must go home. The same goes for us.
We do not begin to comprehend God until we realize first that we are comprehended by him.
74 God
Whoever does not wish to sink in the wretchedness of the fi nite is constrained in the most profound sense to struggle with the infinite.
God can imprint himself in a person only when he himself has become nothing. When the ocean is exerting all its power, that is precisely the time when it cannot reflect the image of heaven, and even the slightest motion blurs the image. But when it be comes still and deep, then the image of heaven sinks into its nothingness.
The inward person looks not upon the gifts but upon the Giver. He knows that God not only gives gifts, but gives himself with the gifts. And that alone is what is important.
Oh God, let not joys separate us from you in the forgetfulness of pleasure; nor sorrow set a barrier between you and us. Give what you will – but give only the testimony with your gift, and therein yourself.
It is not because you have a father, or because people in general have fathers, that God is called Father in heaven. Rather, it is because he is your father that all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named.
The simple and humble thing is to love God because you need him. It may seem so lofty a thing to love God because he is so perfect, it may seem so selfish to love him because you need him, yet the latter way is the only way in which you can in truth
love God. Woe to him who would make bold to love God with out needing him! The one who most deeply recognizes his need of God loves him most truly. You should not presume to love God only for God's sake. No, you should understand that your life's welfare eternally depends on your need, and for this rea son and this reason alone you should love him.
The difference that we make between sleeping and waking is only a whimsical distinction, as if we needed God to watch over us as we sleep, whereas we can guard and keep ourselves when we are awake.
Instead of all this preaching about lofty virtues, about faith, hope, and love, about loving God, and so forth, someone ought rather to say: Never get involved with God, and above all never in any really intimate way. Get involved with men and imagine that together with them you are involving yourselves with God, because you name the name of God just as meaninglessly as the physicians scribble embellishments on prescriptions. Never let yourself be alone with God lest you venture too far out, but see to it that your relationship with God is like everybody else's so that you can get someone to assist you right away if God should leave you in the lurch. If you were to talk this way you would talk far more accurately than if you used all those high-flying religious phrases, which over the generations we have so nicely perfected.
Many relate to God so that it may go well with them on earth – consequently to profit from God in an earthly sense. Many also relate to God in order to be saved from sin, in order to find a merciful judge. Is there a difference?
75 God's Love
The logic of God's love is this: Love relates itself inversely to the greatness and excellence of the object. If I am a nobody, if in my wretchedness I feel more miserable than the most miserable person of all, then it is eternally, no absolutely, certain that God loves me. Christ says: Not a sparrow falls to the earth without his will. Yes, one could suppose that God has so much to look after. But a sparrow – no, no! God is love, and love relates itself inversely to the worthiness of the object. So I offer a lower bid, for in my sin I am less than a sparrow. Yet God is love and for this reason love's logic is more quickly completed. The harder the fall, the greater the love.
You feel yourself abandoned, that no one understands or cares for you, and so you decide: God does not care for me, ei ther. You fool! Shame on you to think this way about God. No, for even the person of whom it can literally be said that he is of all people most abandoned, he is the very one whom God loves. And all the more certainly!
Think what it means to believe that God came into the world, and for your sake too. It almost sounds as though it were the most blasphemous presumption. If it were not God himself who had said it, yes, of all blasphemies it would be the most ter rible. This is not an invention to show how important we are to
God. It is to show how infinite God's love is. For it is certainly infinite that he should care for a sparrow, but for the sake of a sinner to let himself be born and die, oh, infinite is his love.
This is all I have known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point, God is nevertheless love. If I have made a mistake it will be plain enough; so I re pent – and God is love. He is love, not he was love, nor, he will be love, oh no, even that future was too slow for me, he is love. Oh, how wonderful. Sometimes, perhaps, my repentance does not come at once, and so there is a future. But God keeps no person waiting, he is love. Like spring-water which keeps the same temperature summer and winter – so is God's love. His love is a spring that never runs dry.
That God is love means that he will do everything to help you to love him, that is to change you into his likeness. He knows well how infinitely painful this change is for you, and so is will ing to suffer with you. He suffers more in love than you do, suf fers all the heartache of being misunderstood – but he is not changed.
God has only one passion: to love and to be loved. What com pels God to create is not amusement. No, no, this is just the op posite of what God wills. To love and to be loved is God's only passion. It almost seems – infinite love! – as though he himself were bound by that passion, in the power of that passion, so that he cannot cease loving, almost as though it were a weak ness, whereas it is of course his strength, his omnipotent love, to such a degree is his love above all change.
75 God's Love
Oh, marvelous omnipotence of love! But God who creates out of nothing, who almightily takes from nothing and says, "Be," lovingly adjoins, "Be something even in opposition to me." Mar velous love, even his omnipotence is under the sway of love!
Lord, help us to love you much. Increase our love and inflame it. Oh, this is a prayer you will surely hear, you who indeed are love. Compassionate, loving, in love, you are love of such a sort that you yourself woo forth the love that loves you and fosters it to love you more.
Ah, when Christ wandered in Judea he moved many by his miracles. But nailed to the cross he did a still greater miracle, he did the miracle of love, that without doing anything, except to suffer, he moves every one who has a heart.
The greatest danger for a child, where religion is concerned, is not that his father or teacher should be an unbeliever, not even his being a hypocrite. No, the danger lies in their being pious and God-fearing, and in the child being convinced thereof, but that he should nevertheless notice that deep within there lies hidden a terrible unrest. The danger is that the child is pro voked to draw a conclusion about God, that God is not infinite love.
Heavenly Father, great and boundless is the expanse of your kingdom. You support the constellations and the pillars of a widening universe; you bear up the weight of a weary world; and you direct the tiniest footstep on the pathways of earth. The grains of sand along the ocean's shore do not approach in num
ber the sum of all the responsibilities that are yours. In spite of your boundless power and limitless sovereignty you give heed to us lowly human beings. You bend down to listen to each one so attentively and so caringly that, amidst all the cacophony and confusion of the daily clamor, each person is assured that you are giving all concern to him alone.
Not only do you pay attention to the one who commands and leads; not only do you listen to the voice of him who prays in intercession for loved ones as if he had a special conduit to your favor. No! You pay attention also to the one who is the most miserable, the most abandoned, the most solitary – whether he moves among the multitude or plods along the trackless desert. And if others have forgotten him and cast him out of their car ing, if in the crowd he has lost all identity, if he has ceased, re ally, to be a human being and has become no more than a number on a list, you know him, oh God. You have not forgot ten him. Wherever he is, lost in the desert or just as lost and un noticed in the crowd; whatever state he is in, whether it be in agonizing pain, or in bondage to terrible and terrifying thoughts, abandoned, so cut off from communication that in the pro longed silence he has forgotten his native tongue – nevertheless you, oh God, have not forgotten him and you hear and compre hend his speechless cry! You know at once how to find the road that leads to him, and rapid as sound and prompt as light you speed to his side.
You loved us first, oh God. Alas, we speak of it as if you loved us first one time only, historically speaking, when in very truth, without ceasing, you love us first all the time. When I awaken in the morning and my soul turns at once toward you, you are first. You have already turned toward me. If I rise at dawn and in
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the very first second of my awakening my soul turns to you in prayer, you have beat me to it. You have already turned in love toward me. Thus, we speak ingratitude if, unthankful and un aware, we speak of you as having loved us first only one time.
God be praised that it is not because of my worthiness that God loves me. Otherwise, I might at any moment die of fear lest the next moment I cease to be worthy.
While all the other qualities attributed to God are adjectival, love alone is substantive. How could one ever think of saying, "God is loving?"
He who loves God is loved forth by God.
76 Grace
It was said of Christ that he would reveal the thoughts of many hearts, and this he did. How? Simply by proclaiming grace. He who proclaims the law forces a person into something. People try to hide themselves when faced with the law. But grace, the fact that it is grace, makes them completely unconstrained. Face to face with grace a person really learns to know what lies deep est within. Tell a child to do something – this does not mean the child does it, nor do you really get to know the child's nature. No, but say, "You are free, you may do as you please" – then you find out what lies deepest in the child.
Christianity's intention is that because of grace, now as never before under the law, we shall see what a person can achieve. But instead of this we have used "grace" to prevent acting. In stead of grace being the basis of courage and mobility for action it gets applied in such a way that it even causes an unnatural obstruction. It is applied in such a way that one sinks deeper and deeper so as to require continually more and more grace. We continually run across this kind of thing: Since we are all saved by grace anyway, why should I exert myself. Let's keep clear of any kind of effort because it's all grace anyway. What a mockery! With Christ's grace we can then venture all the more
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intrepidly. We men, however, do it thus: Even the least little ven ture is foolish – since there is grace anyway.
No amount of striving can earn salvation. Therefore there is grace. But here there is a danger, the danger that grace may have a stupefying, paralyzing effect. The mystery of grace consists in the fact that the most strenuous human effort is still fool's play, a wasted inconvenience, a ridiculous gesture, if it should be an attempt to earn salvation – and still to push on just like one who soberly and seriously believed that by his efforts he could earn salvation.
If preaching grace is by someone whose life expresses the op posite, then this is taking grace in vain.
Consider a person who is conscious of his guilt and offense. For a long time he goes about in quiet despair and remorsefully broods over it. Then he learns to flee to grace, and he is forgiven everything; everything is infinitely forgiven. But, the moment he shuts the door of grace, as it were, and goes out full of holy resolve to begin a new life, alas, blissfully stirred by the thought that now all is forgiven and he will never get into that situation again, that very same minute, that very same second, he is on the way to new guilt – in the form of "the best he can do."
In that same moment he must return again and knock on the door of grace. He must say: Oh, infinite grace, have mercy on me for being here again so soon and having to plead for grace. Now I understand that in order to have peace and rest, in order not to perish in hopeless despair, in order to be able to breathe,
and in order to be able to exist at all, I need grace not only for the past but grace for the future.
The difference between an unbeliever and a Christian is not that the latter is without sin. The difference is how he regards his sin and how he is kept in the striving. When an unbeliever sins – and precisely the more profound and noble he is – there is a dreadful halt in striving. He sinks into depression, despairs over his guilt, and the sin then perhaps gets more and more power over him, so that he hopelessly sinks deeper and deeper. The Christian has a Savior. He takes refuge in "grace." As with a child, his sin is trans formed into a fatherly discipline intended to help him go for ward – and he perhaps makes the self-assured step forward right now. Bold confidence is not necessarily irresponsibility, but a trusting in grace.
I remember my youth, when it really bored me to copy father's letters. But he only had to say to me, "All right then, I will do them myself." I was immediately willing. Oh, if only he had scolded, alas, there would simply have been a row; but this re sponse was truly moving. In the same way, self-denial is difficult and can embitter a person, if it is imposed by law. But the Savior's look and his words are something very different. He says, "Everything is given to you, it is nothing but grace, only look upon me and upon my suffering which won this grace for you." Yes, that is moving!
You must give yourself to Christ unconditionally. Now if you surrender, you run the risk that he may make things awkward for you – so awkward that you feel almost ready to despair. This is, and must be, the thing about unconditional surrender that
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makes flesh and blood tremble. But remember that Christ is grace, and it is to grace that you surrender.
As earthly parents, we give to our children, and often, with proud generosity, they will return a portion of that gift to us, really giving back what had belonged to us. We do not, for that reason, reject their gifts or the givers but love them the more. God's gift is like the parent aiding his child in writing a greeting to the parent himself, who receives it as the child's own. The er ror of the pagan is that he knows about his god, and knows that he is not a free giver. The believer, however, knows his God and knows that his blessings are free!
Grace has been pushed into an entirely wrong direction; we use it to slough off the requirement of the law. This is meaningless and unchristian! No, God's requirement is and remains the same, unaltered, perhaps even sharpened under grace. The dif ference is this: under the law my salvation is linked to the condi tion of fulfilling its requirement. Under grace I am freed from this concern – but God's requirement remains.
The law's requirement is a tightening. The tightening of a bowstring creates motion, but one can tighten a bowstring to the breaking point. This is precisely what the law does. Yet it is not the requirement of the law which breaks, but that which is added – the fact that my eternal salvation depends upon my fulfillment of the requirement. No human being can endure this. Indeed, the more serious he is, the more certain is his de spair, and it becomes completely impossible for him to even be gin to fulfill the law.
But then comes grace. Naturally, God's grace knows very well what the trouble is, where the shoe pinches. It takes away this
concern, the appendage of fulfilling the law, which is precisely what makes the fulfilling of the law impossible. Grace takes away this anxiety and asserts: Only believe – then salvation is assured to you. But not more, not the slightest change of the law's demand. Now you are to begin to fulfill it. But there will be rest and peace for your soul, for your salvation is secured to you as long as you believe.
77 The Human Condition
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale.
A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of adver tisement and publicity.
The confusing thing about us is that we are simultaneously the Pharisee and the publican.
To love God is the only happy love, but on the other hand it is also something terrible. Face to face with God we are without standards and without comparisons; we cannot compare our selves with God, for here we become nothing, and directly be fore God, in the presence of God, we dare not compare ourselves with others. Therefore in every person there is a prudent fear of having anything to do with God, because by becoming involved with God he becomes nothing. And so, we desire this relation ship at a distance and spend our lives in temporal distractions. All this busyness in life is but a distraction.
We are a composite of the lower and the higher, and from birth on we are almost completely in the power of the lower. The
pleasant – and the unpleasant – are what determine us, and it remains just about that way throughout life for most of us.
In a certain sense all of us are running. We are running after money, status, pleasure. We run with gossip, rumors, foul talk, with lies, fiction, and trivialities. We run now to the east and now to the west, panting on our activistic errands. But we are not running on the racetrack.
This is how human nature is related to the divine: the disciples sleep – while Christ suffers.
There is a lot of talk about the danger and faithlessness that ex ist in the world. But let us never forget that every person has in himself the most dangerous traitor of all.
There are altogether too many individuals who live in fear of the one restless disturber that is nevertheless the true rest – eternity.
When a person struggles with the future, he learns that how ever strong he is otherwise, there is one enemy that is stronger – himself. There is one enemy he cannot conquer by himself, and that is himself.
When people or when a generation live merely for finite ends, life becomes a whirlpool, meaninglessness, and either a despair ing arrogance or a despairing anguish. There must be weight – just as the clock or the clock's works need a heavy weight in
77 The Human Condition
order to run properly, and the ship needs ballast. Christianity furnishes this weight, this regulating weight, by making it every individual's life-meaning. Christianity puts eternity at stake. Into the middle of all these finite goals Christianity introduces weight, and this weight is intended to regulate temporal life, both its good days and its bad days. And because the weight has vanished – the clock cannot run, the ship steers wildly – hu man life is a whirlpool.
The result of human progress is that everything becomes thinner and thinner. The result of divine providence is to make every thing deeper and more inward.
God created humankind in his own image, and in requital we created God in ours. A person's conception of God is essentially determined by the kind of person he is.
Deep within every human being lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremen dous household of millions upon millions. That fear is kept away by turning to those whom one feels bound to as friends or family; but the dread is nevertheless there and one hardly dares think of what would happen if all the rest were taken away.
Oh God, forgive me for seeking excitement and enjoyment in the allurements of the world which are never truly satisfying. If like the prodigal son, I have gone in search of the wonders of the transient world, forgive me, and receive me back again into your encircling arms of love.
Some birds take off quietly and neatly from the branch on which they are perching and ascend heavenward in their flight, proudly, boldly. Others, like crows, for example, make a big fuss when they are about to fly. They lift one foot and then promptly grab on again, and no flight takes place. In so many ways we are just like this when it comes to achieving movement from un derstanding to action. A few arrive at the proper understanding of what they should do – and then they hold back.
78 The Individual
Every call from God is always addressed to one person, the single individual. Precisely in this lies the difficulty and the ex amination, that the one who is called must stand alone, walk alone, alone with God. Hence, everything that makes its ap pearance statistically is not from above. If anyone construes this as a call, you can be sure it is from below.
"The single individual" – with this category the cause of Christ stands or falls.
When the individual relates himself to God through the race, through an abstraction, through a third party, Christianity is abolished. And when this happens, the God-man becomes a phantom instead of our example.
Christianity does not join people together. No, it separates them – in order to unite every single individual with God. And when a person has become such that he can belong to God and to God alone, he has died away from that which usually joins people together.
It is impossible to be involved with God without enduring the weight of the pressure of being I. Yet thousands live on without having to become I, or they live on as truncated Is, truncated to the third person. They fill their lives with all sorts of things, imagine that they are really involved with God, flatter them selves that they have not ventured farther out because they are so humble. What confusion! The first condition for getting straightened out is to see that this notion about humility is complete rubbish, that one is dragging his feet only because of weakness, thin skin, and cowardice.
The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of "the others," the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the iso lation of the spiritual man.
Every person shrinks from becoming personality, from stand ing face to face with the others as a personality. We shrink from this because we know that others will take aim at us. We shrink from being revealed. Therefore we live, if not in utter darkness then in the twilight, in hoaxes, in the impersonal. But Christian ity, which knows the truth, knows that life means: revelation.
A person's salvation lies precisely in his becoming a person. Why? Because he is so illuminated that he cannot hide from himself – yes, illuminated as if he were transparent. The mu
78 The Individual
nicipality is already of the opinion that gas-illumination at night helps to prevent crime because light frightens crime away. Consider, then, the piercing illumination of being personality – light everywhere!
Nowadays, one does not become an author through his origi nality, but by reading. Similarly, one now becomes a human be ing by aping others. We no longer seem to know, within ourselves, what it means to be human. Rather, through an infer ence we conclude: we are like the others – therefore we are hu man. Only God knows whether any one of us is that!
In the animal world "the individual" is always less important than the race. But precisely because we are each created in the image of God the individual is above the race. Of course, this can be wrongly understood and terribly misused. But that is Christianity. And that is where the battle must be fought.
Christianity wants to grant the single individual eternal happi ness, a good that is not distributed in bulk but only to one, and to one at a time.
In eternity there is no common plight. In eternity, the indi vidual, yes, you, my listener, and I as individuals will each be asked solely about himself.
God desires to have I's, for God desires to be loved.
There are people who handle the ideas they pick up from oth ers so frivolously and disgracefully that they ought to be pros ecuted for illegal exchange in lost and found property.
Who is the authentic individual? One whose life, in the fruit of long silence, gains character and whose actions acquire the power to excite and arouse.
It seems to be forgotten that the distinctions of earthly exist ence are only like an actor's costume or like a travelling cloak. Every individual should therefore watchfully and carefully keep the fastening cords of this outer garment loosely tied, never in tight knots, so that in the moment of transformation the gar ment can easily be cast off. We all have enough knowledge of theater to be offended at an actor who, when he is supposed to cast off his disguise in the moment of transfiguration, runs out on the stage before getting the chords loose. Alas, in actual life one laces the outer garment of distinction so tightly that the in ner glory of equality never, or very rarely, shines through, something it should do and ought to do constantly.
If one would describe the confusion of the modern age, I know of no more descriptive word than: it is dishonest. Young people, even children, are aware of how fraudulent everything is and how everything depends on clinging to their generation, fol lowing the inconstant demands of the age. Thus the life of each generation hisses and fizzes uninterruptedly. Although every thing is a whirlwind, a signal-shot is heard, the ringing of the bells, signifying to the individual that now, this very second, hurry, throw everything away – reflection, quiet meditation, re
78 The Individual
assuring thoughts of the eternal – because if you come too late you will not get to go along on the generation's next whirling expedition, which is just pulling out – and then, then, how ter rible! Ah, yes, how terrible!
Everything, absolutely everything is calculated to nourish this confusion, the unholy taste of this wild hunt. The means of com munication become more and more excellent, but the communi cations become more and more hurried and more and more confusing. And if anyone dares, either in the name of original ity or of God, to resist it – woe unto him! Just as the individual is seized by the whirlwind of impatience to be understood im mediately, so this generation domineeringly craves to under stand the individual at once.
79 Inwardness and Subjectivity
The prophet Nathan told David a story. But as happens when it is only a matter of history or doctrine and so forth, David lis tened quite calmly. But then the prophet gave the story another turn and said: You are the man! This made it personal. Chris tianity is not the objective; it is just the opposite, the subjective.
The movement that leads Christianity back to Christ is a move ment of inwardness. It is as if a lawyer came to an estate and in a certain sense found everything entirely in order – except that the occupants had got the idea that the property belonged to them and not to the benevolent owner.
To believe is not an indifferent relation to something that is true. It is an infinitely decisive relationship. The accent always falls upon the relationship.
All understanding fundamentally depends upon how one is dis posed toward something. If a misfortune happens when you are really trusting and full of faith – well, even if it were utterly di sastrous – if you are trusting and full of faith, you can accept it in the context of joy. God is letting something happen to you sim
79 Inwardness and Subjectivity
ply because now you have the strength to bear it, now you can use the occasion to learn to know yourself in surmounting it. If you are despondent, broken-hearted, melancholy, then the most insignificant matter is enough to make you suspect of bad luck, the law of fatality, in what happens. Therefore, your whole view of life actually is a confession of the state of your inner being.
Like is understood only by like, whatever is known is known in the mode of the knower. If Christianity is essentially something objective, it behooves the observer to be objective. But if Chris tianity is essentially subjectivity, it is a mistake if the observer is objective or speculative. Since Christianity requires an infinite interest in the individual subject, it is easy to see that the specu lative thinker cannot possibly find what he is seeking.
Whereas objective thinking is indifferent to the thinking sub ject and his existence, the subjective thinker is essentially inter ested in his own thinking, is existing in it. Whereas objective thinking invests everything in the result and assists all human kind to cheat by copying and reeling off the results and answers, subjective thinking invests everything in the process of becoming and omits the result. The subjective thinker is continually in the process of becoming. The objective thinker has already arrived.
The subjective thinker is continually striving, is always in the process of becoming. How far the subjective thinker might be along that road, whether a long way or a short, makes no essen tial difference (it is, after all, just a finitely relative comparison); as long as he is existing, he is in the process of becoming.
Imagine a heavenly body, in the process of constituting itself. It would not first of all determine how great its surface was to be and which other body it was to move. It would first allow the centripetal and centrifugal forces to harmonize its existence, and then let the rest take its course. Similarly, it is useless for a person to constitute himself by first determining the outside and afterwards the fundamentals. One must know oneself be fore knowing anything else. It is only after a person has thus understood himself inwardly, and has thus seen his way, that life acquires peace and significance.
The solid, sensible thinker goes about Christianity this way: "Just let there be clarity and certainty about the truth of Chris tianity and I will surely accept it." The trouble, however, is that the truth of Christianity has something in common with the nettle: the solid, sensible thinker only stings himself when he wants to grasp it this way. In fact, he does not grasp it at all; he grasps its objective truth so objectively that he himself remains outside.
Let us take an analogy. Take a married couple. See, their mar riage clearly leaves its mark in the external world; it constitutes a phenomenon in existence (on a smaller scale, just as Chris tianity has left its mark on all of life). But their married love is not a historical phenomenon. The external by itself is insignifi cant. It has significance to the married couple only through their love. The same is true for Christianity. Is that so original?
The various states of a person's soul ought to be like the letters listed in a dictionary – some are very strongly and copiously
79 Inwardness and Subjectivity
developed, others have but a few words listed under them – but the soul itself ought to have a full and complete alphabet.
Philosophy is life's dry nurse who can take care of us – but not suckle us.
Though the system were politely to assign me a guest room in the loft, in order that I might be included, I still prefer to be a thinker who is like a bird on a twig.
80 Love
The more superior one person is to another whom he loves, the more he will feel tempted, humanly speaking, to draw the other up to himself. Divinely speaking, however, the more he will feel moved to come down to him. This is the logic of love. Strange that people have not seen this in Christianity.
By this we can see that love has overcome the world – that it re pays evil with good.
It is still the greatest, the roomiest part of the world, although spatially the smallest, this kingdom of love in which we can all be landholders without the need of one person's property crowding another's. Yes, rather it extends another's holdings. On the other hand, in the kingdom of anger and hate – how small it is in its egotistic isolation and how great the space it de mands – the whole world is not spacious enough; this kingdom has no room for others.
You talk about wanting to find comfort in Christ. All right, then try this: at the very moment you yourself are suffering most of all, simply think about comforting others, for this is what he did. The task is not to seek consolation – but to be consolation.
80 Love
People despair about being lonely and therefore get married. But is this love? I should say it is self-love.
"He who sees his brother in need, yet shuts his heart" – yes, at the same time he shuts God out. Love to God and love to neigh bor are like two doors that open simultaneously. It is impossible to open the one without opening the other, and impossible to shut the one without also shutting the other.
The distinguishing characteristic of Christian love is that it contains this apparent contradiction – that to love is duty. And yet it is only this kind of love that discovers the neighbor.
The love that has undergone the transformation of the eternal by becoming duty has won continuity; it is sterling silver.
To be busy, to be divided and scattered, to occupy yourself is far from love. Christian love is whole and collected in its every ex pression, and yet it is sheer action. Consequently it is just as far from inaction as it is from busyness. It never becomes en grossed in anything beforehand and never gives a promise in place of action. It never draws satisfaction from imagining that it has finished, nor does it ever loiter delighting in itself. It is no secret, private mysterious feeling behind the lattice of the inex plicable, which the poet wants to lure to the window, nor a soul-mood which fondly knows no laws, wants to know none, or wants to have its own law and hearkens only to singing. It is pure action and its every deed is holy, for it is the fulfilling of the law.
Justice avenges itself – love is avenged.
When a fisherman has caught a fish in his net and wishes to keep it alive, what must he do? He must immediately put it in water; otherwise it becomes exhausted and dies after a time. And why must he put it in water? Because water is the fish's ele ment, and everything that is kept alive must be kept in its ele ment. And what about love? Love's element is infinitude, inexhaustibility, immeasurability. If you wish to keep your love, you must take care that it remains in its element. Otherwise, it droops and dies – not after a time, but at once, which itself is a sign of its perfection, that it can live only in its element – the infinite.
When sin in a person is encompassed by love, sin is out of its element. It is like a besieged city with all communications cut off. True, sin may use love as an occasion (for what can't a cor rupt person use for corruption!). The sinner can become em bittered by love, and rage against it. Yet, in the long run sin cannot hold out against love.
What can take love out of its element? As soon as love concen trates upon itself, as soon as it is an object for itself. Imagine an arrow flying. Imagine that for a second it got a notion of want ing to concentrate on itself, perhaps to see how far it had come, or how high over the earth it skimmed, or how its course was related to that of another arrow. In that very moment the arrow would fall to the earth.
80 Love
When an artist devises a plan, a sketch of a work, however ex act the sketch is, there is always something indeterminate. Only when the work is finished is there definition. Similarly, the law is a sketch; love the fulfillment and complete definition. In love the law is completely defined. There is only one power that can complete the work for which the law is a sketch – that is love. Yet the law and love, just like the sketch and the work, are by one and the same artist, are of one and the same origin. They do not quarrel with each other.
Justice separates and divides; it determines what each one has the right to call his own. Justice judges and punishes anyone who refuses to recognize the distinction between mine and yours. But at times, change intrudes, a revolution, a war, an earthquake, or some such terrible misfortune, and all is dis turbed. Justice seeks in vain to protect each one's own; it cannot hold the scales amid confusion. Therefore it throws the scales away – it despairs!
What a terrifying spectacle! And yet, in a certain sense does not love bring about the same confusion, even though in a most life-infusing way? Love is a change, the most remarkable of all. Love is a revolution, the most profound of all but the most blessed! With love, too, there comes confusion. But in this lifegiving confusion there is no distinction between mine and yours. Remarkable! There are a you and an I and yet no mine and yours! For without you and I there is no love, and with mine and yours there is no love.
This is why love is the fundamental revolution. The deeper the revolution, the more the distinction between mine and yours disappears, and the more perfect is the love. Love's per fection consists essentially in the depth of the revolution. The
deeper the revolution is, the more justice shudders; the deeper the revolution is, the more perfect is the love.
Love is perhaps best described as an infinite debt: when a per son is gripped by love, he feels like he is in infinite debt. Usually one says that the person who receives love comes into debt by being loved. Similarly we say that children are in love's debt to their parents, because their parents have loved them first and the children's love is only a part-payment on the debt or a re payment. This is true, to be sure. Nevertheless, such talk is all too reminiscent of a bookkeeping relationship – a bill is sub mitted and it must be paid; love is shown to us, and it must be repaid with love.
We should not, then, speak about one's coming into debt by receiving love. No, it is the one who loves who is in debt. Be cause he is aware of being gripped by love, he perceives this as being in infinite debt. Remarkable! To be sure, by giving money one does not come into debt; it is rather the recipient who be comes indebted. But when love gives, the one who loves comes into infinite debt. What a beautiful, holy modesty love takes along as a companion!
Consider creation for a moment. With what infinite love God surrounds the great variety which has life and being! Remem ber the beauty of the fields! There is no, not any, discrimination in love – yet what a variety among the flowers! Even the slight est, most insignificant, the most plain-looking, the poor little flower overlooked even by its closest neighbors, the one you can hardly find without looking carefully, it is as if this, too, had said to love: let me be something with its own distinctive, indi
80 Love
vidual characteristic, but far more beautiful than what the poor little flower had ever dared hope for. What love! First of all, love makes no distinction. Second, which is like the first, it makes infinite distinctions in loving the differences. Wondrous love!
Perfect love is to love the one who made you unhappy.
Unhappiness is not to love without being loved, but to be loved when one does not love.
Suppose that the victim, whom the merciful Samaritan took care of, died in his hands. Then suppose the Samaritan had to report it to the police, and the police had said: Of course we must keep you under arrest for the time being. What then? His contemporaries would have laughed at him for being so stupid as to let himself get into such a scrape. They would think he was crazy. Behold, these are the wages of mercy.
The true consoler is one who suffers and for whom it becomes a consolation to comfort another who is suffering.
Oh our Loving Father, help us remember that it is not where we breathe, but where we love, that we live.
If we were honest, many of us would want to upbraid Christ for putting a man like Judas in charge of the bag. Was it not "irre sponsible" of him, seeing Judas had a tendency to pilfering? But we should rather say, "What faith and love on Christ's part!" For
the best means of saving such a man as Judas is to show uncon ditional confidence in him. If that does not help him, then what will?
What is it that makes a person unwavering, more unwavering than a rock; what is it that makes him soft, softer than wax? It is love. What is it that cannot be taken but itself takes all? It is love. What is it that cannot be given but itself gives all? It is love. What is it that remains when everything falls away? It is love. What is it that does not cease when the vision ends? It is love. What is it that sheds light when the dark saying ends? It is love. What is it that gives blessing to the abundance of the gift? It is love. What is it that makes the widow's gift an abundance? It is love. What is it that turns the words of the simple person into wisdom? It is love. What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love; and that alone is love, that which never becomes something else.
81 Obedience
When it comes to doing what we know to be God's will, we do not dare to say: I will not! So we say: I cannot. Is this any less rebellious? If it is God's will that you do it, how is it possible that you cannot?
Today's Christianity is a matter of being elevated for an hour once a week just as in the theater. It is now used to hearing every thing without having the remotest notion of doing something.
It is a very simple matter. Pick up the New Testament; read it. Can you deny, do you dare deny, that what you read there about forsaking everything, about giving up the world, being mocked and spit upon as your Lord and master was – can you deny, do you dare deny, that this is very easy to understand, indescrib ably easy, that you do not need a commentary or a single other person in order to understand it? But you say, "Before I do this, however, before I risk such a decisive step, I must first consult with others." Insolent, disobedient one, you are cheeky! You cheat; all you are looking for is a way out, an excuse. For God's sake, spare yourself.
What would a father think if his son, instead of immediately obeying a command that was easy enough to understand, first of all consulted with – another boy – as to whether he should do
his father's will or not. Would the father not say: The very fact that you have the nerve to talk to a single one of your comrades about whether or not you should do what I have commanded, that alone is guilt enough to deserve every punishment. What is the meaning of consulting with the other boys – you certainly can come to me.
To leave out the strenuous passages in the New Testament is now the method. We hush them up and then we arrange things on easier and cheaper terms. I think it is better to take them along, to acknowledge that these demands are found in the New Testament – and then make confession of our own weakness.
Of every word Christ spoke pointing toward the cost and suf fering of being a Christian, we say this: This does not apply to us; this was spoken expressly to the disciples. We make good, how ever, of every word of consolation, of every promise; whether Christ spoke to the apostles or not makes no difference.
The question is never one of understanding, comprehending; it is a matter of doing what one understands, and the thing that a person actually ought to do is always easy to understand.
Do what you can for God, and God will do for you what you cannot do. And remember, the only thing is to give yourself completely, your weakness also, for obedience is dearer to God than the fat of rams.
If I follow my orders and things go wrong as a consequence of that, then it is a part of providence. Perhaps it will come to have
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meaning, although I do not understand it. Suppose Stephen by his death achieved nothing else than to influence Paul – did he achieve nothing? And how often is it not the case that the downfall of the courageous becomes itself an awakening. But the fact is, we want to play providence ourselves.
Oh God, teach me so deeply to understand myself that I may understand how utterly impossible it is to be satisfied with the mere fact that I am master of my own destiny, and that there is no satisfaction and joy and happiness for a person except in obedience.
82 Passion
To be a true Christian is so agonizing that it would not be en durable if one did not continually need Christ's second coming and expect it as imminent. It is wonderful that in the Danish language the word nourishment is related to near. To the degree that the need is greater, the nourishment is nearer; the nourish ment is in the need, and even if it is not the need, it still is the nearest.
Longing is the umbilical cord of the higher life.
How fearfully true are Christianity's metaphors. To cast fire upon the earth. Yes, for what is a Christian? A Christian is a per son who is caught on fire.
Spirit is fire, Christianity is fire-setting. And by nature we shrink more from this fire than from any other. The fire Chris tianity wants to light is not intended to burn up a few houses but to burn up the human zest for life – burn it out into spirit. Spirit is fire. From this comes the frequent expression: As gold is purified in fire, so the Christian is purified. But spirit-fire must not be regarded merely as the fire of "tribulations" – that is, something coming from the outside. No, a fire is kindled within the Christian, in this burning comes the purification.
82 Passion
It is incendiarism, this is how Christ himself describes his com mission, setting fire to individuals by introducing a passion that makes them at odds with what is naturally understood, an in cendiarism that must necessarily cause discord between father and son, daughter and mother, an incendiarism that tears apart "the generations" in order to reach "the individual."
It is not always water that is used to put out a fire. To keep the metaphor, sometimes one uses, for example, featherbeds, blan kets, mattresses, and the like to smother a fire. In this sense, if you want Christianity again, fire again, then do all you can to get rid of the featherbeds, blankets, and mattresses, the grossly bulky stuff – and there will be fire.
It is a great question whether those whom God cannot make mad have ever really existed for God.
Authentic religion has to do with passion, with having passion. Sadly, there are thousands who take a little something out of re ligion, and then dispassionately "have religion."
Herein lies the difficulty with today's religion. It is like trying to push a boat off a shoal where the ground on all sides is a quaking bog, so that when the pole is thrust down it gives way and offers no resistance.
Imagine a jewel that every one desired to possess. It lay far out on a frozen lake where the ice was very thin, watched over by the danger of death, while closer in, the ice was perfectly safe. In a passionate age people would applaud the courage of the one who ventured out, they would tremble for him and with him in
the danger of his decisive action, they would grieve over him if he were drowned, they would make a god of him if he secured the prize. But in an age without passion, in a "reasonable" age, it would be otherwise. People would think it was foolish and not even worthwhile to venture so far out. And in this way they would transform daring and enthusiasm into a feat of skill. How so?
The crowds would go out to watch from a safe place, and with the eyes of connoisseurs judge the skater who could skate almost to the very edge (that is, as far as the ice was still safe and the danger had not yet begun) and then turn back. The most accomplished skater would manage to go out to the further most point and then perform a still more dangerous-looking run, so as to make the spectators hold their breath and say: "Ye gods! How mad; he is risking his life." But look, and you will see that his skill was so astonishing that he managed to turn back just in time, while the ice was perfectly safe and there was still no danger. As at the theater, the crowd would applaud and ac claim him, surge homeward with the heroic artist in their midst, to honor him with a magnificent banquet. For intelli gence has got the upper hand to such an extent that it trans forms the real task into an unreal trick and reality into a play.
During the banquet admiration would reach its height. Now the proper relation between the admirer and the object of ad miration is one in which the admirer is edified by the thought that he is a man like the hero, humbled by the thought that he is incapable of such great actions, yet morally encouraged to emulate him according to his powers; but where intelligence has got the upper hand the character of admiration is com pletely altered. Even at the height of the banquet, when the ap plause was loudest, the admiring guests would all have a shrewd notion that the action of the man who received all the honor
82 Passion
was not really so extraordinary and that only by chance was the gathering for him, since after all, with a little practice, every one could have done as much. Briefly, instead of being strengthened in their discernment and encouraged to do good, the guests would more probably go home with an even stronger predispo sition to the most dangerous, if also the most respectable, of all diseases: to admire in public what is considered unimportant in private – since everything is made into a joke. And so, stimu lated by a gush of admiration, they are all comfortably agreed that they might just as well admire themselves.
Our age is without passion. Everyone knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is really willing to move.
The ludicrous aspect of a zealot is that his infinite passion thrusts itself upon the wrong object. The divine aspect of him, however, is that he dares with passion.
If I could only have the experience of meeting a passionate thinker, that is, someone who honestly and honorably expressed in his life what he has understood!
Existing, if this is not to be understood as just any sort of exist ing, cannot be done without passion. I have often thought about how one might bring a person into passion. So I have considered the possibility of getting him astride a horse and then frightening the horse into the wildest gallop. I think this would be successful. And this is what existing is like if one is to be truly conscious of it and is, if existing is not to be what
people usually call existing. Merely existing is like a drunken peasant who lies in the wagon and sleeps and lets the horses shift for themselves. But true existence has to do with the one who drives.
All existence-issues are passionate. To think about them so as to leave out passion is not to think about them at all. It is to for get the point that one indeed is oneself an existing person. To exist is an art. The subjective thinker is esthetic enough for his life to have esthetic content, ethical enough to regulate it, pas sionate enough in thinking to master it.
Life's earnestness does not consist in the pressure of busyness, but in the will to be, the will to express the eternal in the dailyness of actuality, to will it so that one does not busily aban don it or conceitedly take it in vain as a dream.
However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. The authentically human factor is passion. But no generation can learn from an other how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning.
The highest passion in a human being is faith, and here, again, no generation begins other than where its predecessor did. Every generation begins from the beginning, and the succeed ing generation comes no further than the previous, provided the latter was true to its task and didn't betray it. Therefore, no generation has the right to say that its task is wearisome, for each generation has its own task.
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The first Christians thought that by properly living this life it was possible for one to become an angel and thus step into the place of a fallen angel. Alas, no one knew the number of these fallen angels; admittedly it was not large. But they could not agree on the extent to which God would raise the number in propor tion to the original plan. But that it consequently still was pos sible to become an angel, that this life properly lived was tied to this eternal decision: yes, this was the Christian's deepest con cern, this was his highest passion. Therefore the first Christians were willing to renounce everything, willing to suffer every thing, willing to be sacrificed. Therefore every minute was infi nitely important, and the believer called himself to account for his every deed, for every word he spoke, every thought in his mind, and every look on his countenance. He dared not be come guilty of missing the highest passion.
Now we live in such a way, that no one thinks of doing the least bit, the very least, about relating oneself with passion to the decision to become an angel. Becoming an angel appears ri diculous to us now. If anyone were to declare seriously that he was trying to become an angel, we would all laugh. We would scarcely find it as ridiculous if someone assumed that after death one becomes a camel. How far we have come that the highest passion has become the funniest joke.