Part 9
To be made well with the aid of Christianity is not the diffi culty; the difficulty is in becoming sick to some purpose.
It is spirit, it is of passion to ask: Is what is being said possible? Am I able to do it? But it is lack of spirit to ask: Did it actually happen? Has my neighbor actually done it?"
Our God, we are aware that life upon this planet comes to an end for each of us. No one knows the exact hour or day. Mo ment by moment we come closer to the last breath. May we make each day count as though it were our last. If we have wasted days and weeks, forgive us. Let us have a sense of tre mendous urgency to live today with Christian richness so that we can make up for squandered time. We remember him who in thirty precious years lived as though he was abiding eternally in time. In his name we pray.
The person who is neither cold nor hot is an abomination, to God. God is no more served by dud individualities than a marksman is served by a rifle that, in the moment of decision, clicks instead of firing.
83 Politics and the State
Imagine this. Suppose that a coachman sees an absolutely re markable and utterly faultless five-year-old horse, an ideal horse, snorting and as full of vigor as any he has seen, and he says: "Well, I cannot bid on this horse, nor can I afford it, and even if I could it is quite unsuitable for my use." But after a dozen years, when that remarkable horse is spavined and spoiled etc., the coachman says, "Now I can bid on it, now I can pay for it, and now I can make enough use of it, from what is left in it, so that I can properly see my way to spending a little for its upkeep."
It is the same with the state and Christianity. Of the radical Christianity which entered into the world, every state is obliged to say, "I cannot buy this religion; not only that, but I will say: God and Father, save us from buying this religion. It would surely be to our ruin." But when after a few centuries Christian ity had become spavined and decrepit and on its last legs, spoiled and muddle-headed, then the State said, "See, now I can bid on it; and smart as I am I can see very well that I can use it and profit from it enough so that I can properly see my way to spending a little to polish it up."
That the goal of the state is to improve its citizens – is obvi ously nonsense. The state is of the evil rather than of the good, a necessary evil, in a certain sense a useful, expedient evil, but not
a good. The state is actually human egotism in great dimen sions. Just as we speak of a calculation of infinitesimals, so also the state is a calculation of egotisms, but always in such a way that it egotistically appears to be the most prudent thing to en ter into and to be in this higher egotism. But this, after all, is anything but the moral abandoning of egotism.
To be improved by living in the state is just as doubtful as being improved in a prison. Perhaps one becomes much shrewder about his egotism, his enlightened egotism, that is, his egotism in relation to other egotisms, but less egotistic he does not be come, and what is worse, one is spoiled by regarding this offi cial, civic, authorized egotism as virtue – this, in fact, is how demoralizing civic life is, because it reassures one in being a shrewd egotist.
The state is continually subject to the same sophistry that en grossed the Greek Sophists – namely, that injustice on a vast scale is justice. Yes, politics is nothing but egotism dressed up as justice.
For so many, the state is counted on to develop people morally, to be the proper medium for virtue, the place where one really can become virtuous! But to believe this is like believing that the best place for a watchmaker or an engraver to work is aboard a ship in a heavy sea. Christianity does not believe that the Christian is to remain in the body politic for the purpose of moral improvement – no, in fact it tells him in advance that it will mean suffering.
83 Politics and the State
As soon as the thought of human assistance arises, of not refus ing the help of the world, all is essentially lost. The faith in mar tyrdom as having value in and by itself is thereby abandoned, and Christianity runs downhill until, just as the Rhine ends in mud, it ends in the mud of politics.
On their part the clergy think it very prudent to accept the pro tection of the state. They understand, all right, that it is consid erably more pleasant to be a hired servant of the state than to serve Christianity according to New Testament. But this pru dence is not only short-sighted, it is blasphemy.
What Christianity needs is not the suffocating protection of the state; no, it needs fresh air, it needs persecution, and it needs God's protection. The state only works disaster, it wards off per secution and thus is not the medium through which God's pro tection can be conducted. Above all, save Christianity from the state. By its protection it smothers it to death.
The state thinks it prudent to accommodate Christ's teaching in order to tranquilize people and thus be better able to control them. The state never accommodates Christianity in its truth (as salt in character); it rather has it up to a point, which we "Christians" are also happy to have.
Christianity came into the world through its desire to suffer to the death for the faith; precisely for this reason it was victorious over the world. Its urge to martyrdom was partially marked by its "suffering" intolerance. Now it has lost the desire and the
need to suffer, lost martyrdom's acceptance of intolerance, and is well satisfied with being a religion just like any other religion.
Christianity detests the intolerance that wants to put others to death because of their faith. But to be personally willing to be put to death for one's faith – well, let us not overlook this – it, too, is intolerance, it is suffering's acceptance of intolerance. Modern religion is indifferentism and thus does not so much express that Christianity has abandoned the world as that Christianity has abandoned itself, or, more correctly, that Christendom has abandoned Christianity.
84 Prayer
The earthly minded person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what he is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse: the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God is asking for.
Prayer does not change God, it changes the one who offers it.
Always remember that the task is toward being able to hold fast to the thought of God more and more for a longer time, not the way a dreamer does, idling and flirting, but by clinging to it within your work. God is pure act. A mere dreamy loitering over the thought of him is not true prayer.
If a person does not yield himself completely in prayer, he is not praying, even if he were to stay down on his knees day and night. It is the same here as with a person who is maintaining a connection with a distant friend. If he does not see to it that the letter is addressed properly, it will not be delivered and the con nection will not be made, no matter how many letters he writes.
Similarly, let the one who prays see to it that the prayer is proper, a yielding of himself in the inner being, because other wise he is not praying to God. And let the one who prays be scrupulously attentive to this, since no deception is possible here in relation to the searcher of hearts.
I have often wondered when I thanked God for something whether it was motivated by fear of losing it, or whether my prayer came out of the deep assurance that had conquered the world.
The Apostle Paul says: "Everything created by God is good if it is received with thankfulness." He also says: "Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Fa ther of lights." Are these dark and difficult sayings? If you think that you cannot understand these words, have you truly wanted to understand them?
When you have doubts about what comes from God or about what is a good and a perfect gift, do you risk the venture? And when the light sparkle of joy calls you, do you thank God for it? And when you are so strong that you feel you need no help, do you then thank God? And when your allotted portion is little, do you thank God? And when your allotted portion is suffering, do you thank God? And when people wrong you and mistreat you, do you thank God?
We are not saying that in our thankfulness wrong ceases to be wrong – what would be the use of such destructive and fool ish talk! It is up to you to decide whether it is wrong; but do you take the wrong and abuse to God and by your thanksgiving re ceive it from his hand as a good and a perfect gift? Do you do that? Well, then you have worthily understood the Apostle's
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words. Yes, it is wonderful that a person prays, and many a promise is given to the one who prays without ceasing, but it is more blessed still always to give thanks.
The great actor Seydelmann, on the night he was crowned with a wreath in the opera house "to applause that lasted several minutes," went home and very fervently thanked God for it. Might not the very fervency of his giving thanks show, however, that he did not really thank God? Would not his giving his fer vent thanks when booed instead of praised have shown better the sincerity of his thankfulness to God?
Life very much depends upon being alert to catch one's cue.
The important thing is to be honest towards God, until he himself gives the explanation; which, whether it is the one you want or not, is always the best.
Father in heaven, to whom belong boundless wisdom and deep est compassion, you understand us, our going out and our coming in; you know what is in man. But you desire that we un derstand you. Even as our Master answered not a word to his haughty accusers, thus exposing their fraudulent deceit and re vealing his own innocence, so you speak in love and under standing when you speak not a word! For one is speaking when he remains silent in order to show the listener that he is beloved. One is speaking when, as teacher, he listens to the pupil. One is speaking when he demonstrates that profound understanding comes from listening. We may fear that we are lost in the desert of abandonment when we do not hear your voice. But it is only
the golden moment of stillness in the intimacy of conversation and communion. When we come imploring, pleading, promis ing, even threatening, and you greet us with barely a word, you understand us completely, and you speak by answering our needs. Bless, then, the golden moment of silence, for the same paternal love is ours when you are silent as well as when you speak!
It is unbelievable what a person of prayer can achieve if he would but close the doors behind him.
He who prays knows how to make distinctions. Little by little he gives up what is less important, since he does not really dare to come before God with it, demanding this and that. On the contrary, he wants to give all the more emphasis to the request for his one and only wish. Then before God he concentrates his soul on the one wish, and this already has something ennobling about it, is preparation for giving up everything, because only he can give up everything who has but one single wish.
In proportion as one becomes more and more earnest in prayer, one has less and less to say, and in the end one becomes quite silent. Indeed, one becomes quite a hearer. And so it is; to pray is not to hear oneself speak, but it is to be silent, and to re main silent, to wait, until the one who prays hears God.
To pray is a task for the whole soul.
Even if prayer does not accomplish anything here on earth, it nevertheless works in heaven.
84 Prayer
Father in heaven! You hold all the good gifts in your gentle hand. Give everyone his allotted share as it is well pleasing to you. And give everyone the assurance that everything comes from you, so that joy will not tear us away from you in the for getfulness of pleasure, so that sorrow will not separate you from us, but in joy we may go to you and in sorrow remain with you. And when our days are numbered and our outer being is wasted away, grant that death may not come in its own name, cold and terrible, but gentle and friendly, with greetings and news, with witness from you, our heavenly Father!
God possesses all good gifts, and his bounty is greater than hu man understanding can grasp. This is our comfort, because God answers every prayer; for either he gives what we pray for, or something far better.
85 Preaching and Proclamation
It is absolutely unethical when one is so busy communicating that he forgets to be what he teaches.
All genuine instruction ends in a kind of silence; for when I live it, it is no longer necessary for my speaking to be audible.
On Sunday it is taught that Christ is everyone's example – and if anyone on Monday were to talk about Christ as his example, people would call this presumption, terrible arrogance, and so on. Consequently, most preaching is nothing more than Sunday jargon.
Christianity cannot be proclaimed by talking – but by acting. Nothing is more dangerous than to have a bunch of high-flying feelings and exalted resolutions go off in the direction of merely eloquent speaking. The whole thing then becomes an intoxica tion, and the deception is that it becomes a glowing mood and that they say, "He is so sincere!" – alas, yes, in the sense of the mood of the moment.
Preaching by means of action is more like a fast, and there fore the audience does not flock to it. Such preaching is almost boring, and what is boring is that it promptly makes an issue of doing something about it.
85 Preaching and Proclamation
It is existence which preaches, not the mouth. What my existing says is my sermon.
If it is assumed that speaking is sufficient for the proclamation of Christianity, then we have transformed the church into a the ater. We can then have an actor learn a sermon and splendidly, masterfully deliver it with facial expressions, gesticulations, modulation, tears, and everything a theater-going public might flock to.
The reason why preachers are so eager to preach in a chock-full church is that if they were to say what they have to say in an empty room they would become anxious and afraid, for they would notice that it pertains to themselves.
To preach from the pulpit means to bring charges against one self.
A speech expert is just as suitable for proclaiming Christianity as a deaf-mute for being a musician.
I wish to discuss proclaiming Christianity without tying a knot in the thread. Suppose that a speaker preaches on the Christian theme of self-denial, renunciation of the world. Superbly, in comparably! He charms, enthralls, sweeps his audience off its feet in a matchless way. A rich man is in the audience; deeply, deeply stirred, really profoundly moved, he goes home and says to his wife: It was absolutely amazing, and I want to show my gratitude by giving the preacher a present – a very expensive
fruitbowl. Likewise another deeply moved rich man digs deep, deep into his pocket and gives a gold snuffbox, and the preacher accepts them, gives courteous thanks so as not to offend. This is how one sews without tying a knot in the thread, and this is how the whole mess comes about.
Genuine Christianity holds that "the sermon" comes on Monday, when the preacher sends the gifts back and says: After all, I teach self-denial – ergo, I cannot accept such things; other wise the next time I speak about self-denial I run the risk of be ing inspired by the prospect of an elegant carriage.
The person who is going to preach ought to live his Christian ideas in daily life. Then he, too, will have eloquence enough. He will have what is needed to speak extemporaneously without specific preparation. However, it is a fallacious eloquence if someone, without living his thoughts, once in a while sits down and laboriously collects such thoughts, and then works them into a well-composed sermon, which is then committed to memory and delivered superbly, with respect both to voice and diction and to gestures. No, just as in well-equipped houses one need not go downstairs to fetch water but has it up there on tap, under pressure – one merely turns on the faucet – so also is the authentic Christian speaker who, because the essentially Chris tian is his life, at every moment has eloquence present, immedi ately available, precisely the true eloquence.
You simple one, even though you are of all people most lim ited – if your life expresses the little you have understood, you speak more powerfully than all the eloquence of orators, if your life expresses what you hear, your eloquence is more powerful, more true, more persuasive than all the art of orators.
85 Preaching and Proclamation
There is incessant preaching in Christendom about what hap pened after Christ's death, how he triumphed and how his teachings triumphantly conquered the whole world. In short, we hear nothing but sermons that could more appropriately end with "Hurrah" than with "Amen." No, Christ's life here on the earth is the Pattern; I and every Christian are to strive to model our lives in likeness to it, and this should be the primary subject of preaching.
As soon as I take Christianity as a doctrine and then apply my acumen or my profundity or my eloquence or my imagination to presenting it, people think it is fine and I am regarded as an earnest Christian, I am esteemed. As soon as I live out what I say, make it a reality – then it is exactly as if I had blown up the world. People are immediately scandalized.
Take the rich young man – let me preach about his not being perfect, that he could not bring himself to giving everything to the poor, but that the true Christian is always willing to give everything. Let me preach this way, and people are deeply moved and I am esteemed. But if I were a rich young man and went and gave all my possessions to the poor – then people would be scandalized. They would find it a ridiculous exaggeration. Take Mary Magdalene. Let me preach about her deep consciousness of sin, which goes out to the Savior, opening herself up to all kinds of ridicule. I concentrate on moving people to tears, and I the speaker (note – if preaching happens to be my job, for oth erwise the affair would appear to be exaggerated) will be re garded as a committed Christian. I will be highly esteemed. If, however, I myself, conscious of being a sinner, if suddenly I ac tually step forward with a public confession of sin, offense would immediately arise, people will consider it vanity and
ridiculous exaggeration. People will almost regard it as their duty to ridicule and laugh at me. They would certainly find eve ry way to play it down.
It is a risk to preach, for as I stand up – whether the church is packed or as good as empty, whether I myself am aware of it or not – I have one listener more than can be seen, an invisible lis tener, God, whom I certainly cannot see but who truly can see me. This listener pays close attention to whether what I am say ing is true, whether it is true in me, that is, he looks to see – and he can do that, because he is everywhere present – in a way that makes it impossible to be on one's guard against him. He looks to see whether my life expresses what I am saying. And although I do not have authority to commit anyone else, I commit myself to every word I say from the pulpit – and God hears. Truly it is a risk to preach!
If Christianity is to be preached in truth to those who are happy, to those who enjoy life, then Christianity is a kind of cruelty. This is why it is far easier to proclaim the consolation of Christianity – to cripples.
I have never heard a single preacher speak about prayer nor have I ever read a sermon by him about prayer without promis ing myself to demonstrate, as 2 plus 2 equals 4, that the preacher himself hardly ever makes the practice of praying. The preach ers are like gymnastics coaches who cannot swim themselves and then instruct people in swimming, even standing on the dock and shouting: Just strike out briskly with your arms – as if one could not strike out all too briskly with his arms, something every swimmer knows.
85 Preaching and Proclamation
The punishment I should like the clergy to have is a tenfold in crease in salary. I am afraid that neither the world nor the clergy would understand this punishment.
If someone were to give up his position in order to proclaim Christianity gratis, people would revolt.
Order the preachers to keep quiet on Sunday. What is left? Well, then the essential thing is left: lives, the daily existence with which the pastor preaches. But seeing those, will you get the impression that it is Christianity that is being preached?
It is not so much that doctrine has been falsified, but the proc lamation. It is like water that in the reservoir is pure but is in fected in passing through contaminated pipes – like taking someone to the water reservoir and telling him: "You see, the water is pure," while actually it is contaminated by the medium. Whenever something can be shared only through a medium, the quality of the medium is almost as important as the quality of that which is communicated through the medium. This shows what a dubious thing it is to proclaim Christianity with out ever practicing it.
The greatest possible error arises when we reduce the clergy to teachers. Imagine that the police, instead of acting, began to teach about thievery.
Today, if you would talk about preaching Christianity in pov erty, affirming that this is the genuine Christian preaching and
you literally are a poor devil – my dear fellow, this is no subject for you to talk about, the congregation might in fact believe that it was seriousness, become fearful, feel quite put out and in the highest degree uncomfortable at having poverty come so close to them. No, first procure a fat living, and then when you are about to be promoted to a still fatter one, that is the appropriate time, then you should appear before the congregation to preach and "witness," and you will completely satisfy them. For then your life will furnish guarantees that the whole thing turns out to be a jest, such as serious people might desire once in a while at the theater or in church, in order to gather new strength…to make money.
In the magnificent cathedral the honorable and Right Rever end Geheime-General-Ober-Hof-Pradikant, the elect favorite of the fashionable world, appears before an elect company and preaches with emotion upon the text he himself elected: "God has chosen the base things of this world, and the things that are despised" – and nobody laughs.
Pastor: You must die to the world – that will be ten dollars.
Novice: Well, if I must die to the world, renounce all the things of this world, I certainly understand that I will have to put out more than ten dollars for the sake of the cause, but there is just one question: Who gets the ten dollars?
Pastor: I do, of course; it is my wages. After all, I and my family have to make a living you know. It is a very cheap price, and very soon much more will have to be charged. If you are fair, you yourself will understand that it takes a lot out of a man to proclaim that one must die to the world if the proclamation is
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made with earnestness and zeal. And that is also why it is very necessary for me and my family to spend the summer in the country in order to recuperate.
The most fatal thing of all is to satisfy a want which is not yet felt, so that without waiting till the want is present, one antici pates it, likely also using stimulants to bring about something which is supposed to be a want, and then satisfies it. And this is shocking! And yet this is what so many clergy do, whereby they really are cheating people out of what constitutes the signifi cance of life, and instead helping them to waste it.
Here is proof that the clergy are cannibals. As in the farm houses at the slaughtering season provision for the winter is salted away, so the "minister" keeps in brine tubs the martyrs who suffered for the truth. In vain the deceased witness cries out, "Follow me, follow me!" "That's a good joke," replies the preacher, "No, keep your mouth shut and stay where you are. What nonsense to require that I, or anyone else, should follow you. I keep you alive precisely by eating you, and not I alone, but my wife and my children! To suppose that I should follow you, perhaps myself become a sacrifice – instead of making a living off you, or eating you, is ridiculous."
As a career man and job holder the pastor proclaims Christian ity. He says: My job is to proclaim Christianity – I am hired simply to preach. And so it is with the pastor's proclamation. The congregation on the other hand excuses itself from doing what the sermon says by declaring: We have so many other things to take care of; such a stringent Christianity can be re
quired only of the pastor, the man of God. And thus we arrive at the result: Christianity – but no Christians.
If the Sunday ordinance were to be strictly observed, the churches first and foremost ought to be locked up on Sunday. After all, being a pastor is a means of living and the church is the pastor's shop; why then, should the pastor be the only business man permitted to stay open on Sunday?
86 Purity
Sincerity is not a gift but a duty.
Purity of heart: it is a figure of speech that compares the heart to the sea, and why just to this? Simply for the reason that the depth of the sea determines its purity, and its purity determines its transparency. Since the sea is pure only when it is deep, and is transparent only when it is pure, as soon as it is impure it is no longer deep but only surface water, and as soon as it is only surface water it is not transparent. When, on the contrary, it is deeply and transparently pure, then it is all of one consistency, no matter how long one looks at it. Then its purity is this con stancy in depth and transparency.
On this account we compare the heart with the sea, because the purity of the sea lies in its constancy of depth and transpar ency. No storm may perturb it. No sudden gust of wind may stir its surface, no drowsy fog may sprawl out over it. No doubtful movement may stir within it; no swift-moving cloud may darken it. Rather it must lie calm, transparent to its depths.
If you should see it so, and contemplate the purity of the sea, you would be drawn upwards. As the sea, when it lies calm and deeply transparent, yearns for heaven, so may the pure heart, when it is calm and deeply transparent, yearn for the Good. As the sea is made pure by yearning for heaven alone, so may the heart become pure by yearning only for the Good. As the sea
mirrors the elevation of heaven in its pure depths, so may the heart when it is calm and deeply transparent mirror the divine elevation of the Good in its pure depths.
When the sea rages in the storm and the sky is hidden, when sea and sky blend as one in the turmoil, we do not say that the sea is pure, however terrifying this drama is. Not until they are distinguished in peace, when the sky arches high over the sea, which deeply reflects it, not until then do we say that it is pure. Purity is not in the blending-into-one of the raging storm but in the distinction.
In this way, we compare the soul with the sea. When in unity of confusion it arrogantly breaches the distinction between good and evil, it is riled and impure. But when the good, like the fortress of heaven arches high over the soul, which deeply re produces this oneness, we say it is pure. Distinction between good and evil is purity. Confused unity is duplicity.
When a fog hangs over the sea, of what good is it that the heav ens are high and bright; the sea is still not pure. Similarly there is a fog that hangs over willing the good; this fog is willing the good for the sake of reward. Reward never helps a person to will the good in truth.
He who is not himself a unity is never anything wholly and de cisively; he only exists as a shell.
What means do you use in order to carry out your occupation? Are they as important to you as the end? If not it will be impos
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sible for you to will only one thing. Eternally speaking, there is only one means and only one end: the means and the end are one and the same. There is only one end: the genuine Good; and only one means: to be willing only to use those means which are genuinely good. The good is precisely the end. One may think that the end is the main thing and that one need not be so particular about the means. Yet this is not so. To gain an end in this fashion is an unholy act of impatience.
Reaching the goal is like hitting the mark with one's shot. But using the means is like taking aim. And certainly the aim is a more reliable indication of the marksman's goal than the spot the shot strikes.
Father in heaven. What are we without you! What is all that we know, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if we do not know you! What is all our striving but a half-fin ished work if we do not know you: the One, who are one thing and who are all! Therefore, give to the intellect, wisdom to com prehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this one thing; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may you grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distrac tions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing.
Oh, you who give both the beginning and the completion, may you early, at the dawn of day, give to the young the resolu tion to will one thing. As the day wanes, may you give to the old a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.
Take the story about the widow who placed two pennies in the temple-treasury. She had saved for a long time and then had hidden them wrapped in a little cloth in order to bring them when she herself went up to the temple. But a swindler had de tected that she possessed this money, had tricked her out of it, and had exchanged the cloth for an identical piece which was utterly empty – something which the widow did not know. Thereupon she went up to the temple, placed, as she intended, the two pennies, that is, nothing, in the temple-treasury. I won der, would Christ not still have said that "she gave more than all the rich?"
No matter how much all the earth's gold hidden in covetous ness may amount to, it is infinitely less than the smallest mite hidden in the contentment of the poor!
When a book has become old and shabby, the binding sepa rates and the pages fall out. Similarly in our time people are dis integrated; their understanding, their imaginations do not bind them in character.
We can flee evil either out of fear for punishment – like slaves, or out of hope for reward – like hirelings, or out of love of God – like children.
87 Repentance
The fire of repentance and of the accusing conscience is like that Grecian fire which could not be put out with water – so, too, this one can be extinguished only with tears.
Repentance means to lament the sins one has committed and not to commit any more the sins one has lamented.
There is a Savior, not merely so that we can resort to him when we have sinned, receiving forgiveness, but precisely for the pur pose of saving us from sinning.
That a person wants to sit and brood and stare at his sin and is unwilling to have faith that it is forgiven is itself a further guilt. It simply ignores what Christ has done.
That Christ makes something big out of something small, as at the feeding of the five thousand, is usually referred to as a miracle. But Christ also works a miracle inversely – makes something big (everything that wants to be something) into something little. He makes it infinitely nothing in humility.
God creates everything out of nothing – and all God is to use he first turns to nothing.
God in heaven, let me rightly feel my nothingness, not to de spair over it, but all the more intensely to feel the greatness of your goodness.
God chooses and is closest to the despised, the castoffs of the race, the one single sorry abandoned wretch. He hates this busi ness of the pyramid.
Our hearts often pay far greater toll to sin than do our words or deeds. They invite us to self-excusing. Thoughts invite us, more than words and deeds, to continue in sin; for thought can be concealed, while words and deeds cannot.
It is precisely our consciousness of sin that can lead us nearer to God. For there is hope of conquering the evil, if only, every time sin attacks us, it leads us nearer to God.
How shall God be able in heaven to dry up your tears when you have not yet wept?
To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.
The all-knowing One does not get to know something about the one who needs confession, rather the one who confesses gets to know something about himself.
87 Repentance
Be not afraid of the penitential preacher, who perhaps has ter ror in his appearance and wrath in his voice, who chides and rebukes and thunders. No, in the inmost depths of every man's heart there dwells his own preacher of repentance. When he has a chance to speak, he does not preach to others. He preaches before you alone. He does not preach in any church before an assembled multitude, he preaches in the secret chamber of the heart. He has nothing else whatever to attend to but to attend to you, and he takes good care to be heard when all around you is silence, when the stillness makes you lonely.
The remedy seems infinitely worse than the sickness. "But if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off " (Mt. 18:8–9).
Whoever is intent upon confession is as solitary as one who is dying.
Teach me, oh God, not to torture myself and not to make a martyr of myself in suffocating introspection, but to take deep and wholesome breaths of faith!
Oh infinite love, I do desire to be involved with you! If I make a mistake, oh, you who are love, strike me so that I get on the right path again.
Father in heaven, open the fountains of our eyes, let a torrent of tears like a flood obliterate all that which has not found favor in your eyes. But also give us a sign as of old, when you set the rainbow as a gateway of grace in the heavens, that you will no more wipe us out with a flood.
Father in heaven, let your face shine upon me, that I may walk in your ways and not stray more distantly from you, where your voice can no longer reach me. Oh, let your voice inspire faith and let me hear it, even if it overtakes me with its terrors upon my erring paths, where I live as one sick and tainted in spirit, apart and lonely, far from fellowship with you and with neigh bor! Lord Jesus Christ, you who came into the world to save the lost – you who left the ninety and nine sheep to seek that one which was lost – seek me, lost as I am upon my erring paths. Good Shepherd, let me hear your voice, let me know it, let me follow it! Holy Spirit, come to me with groanings that cannot be uttered. Pray for me as Abraham did for Sodom, that if there be but one pure thought, one better feeling in me, the time of pro bation may be prolonged for the barren fig tree. And Holy Spirit, you who give birth to the dead and youth to the aged, re new me also; create in me a new heart.
I seek you alone, you the Omniscient. If I am guilty, enlighten my understanding that I may see my error and my depravity. I do not wish to escape suffering – that is not my prayer – but let me learn never to argue with you. I must conquer, even though the manner of it is infinitely different from what I can imagine.
88 Sacrifice and Self-Denial
Is a loss a sacrifice? What nonsense! To sacrifice means volun tarily to bring a loss upon oneself. A person is sick, presto! – it is the thorn in the flesh. Life is carried on as in paganism.
The true Christian is one who becomes a sacrifice in order to call attention to the truth that Christ is the only true sacrifice.
Self-denial is a matter of casting off burdens and this might seem to be easy enough. But it is indeed strenuous to have to cast off the very burdens that self-love is eager to carry, yes, so eager that it is even very difficult for self-love to understand that they are burdens.
In eternity you will not be asked how large a fortune you are leaving behind – the survivors ask about that. Nor will you be asked about how many battles you won, about how sagacious you were, how powerful your influence – that, after all, becomes your reputation for posterity. No, eternity will not ask about what worldly goods remain behind you, but about what riches you have gathered in heaven. It will ask you about how often you have conquered your own thought, about what control you have exercised over yourself or whether you have been a slave, about how often you have mastered yourself in self-denial or
whether you have never done so, about how often you in selfdenial have been willing to make a sacrifice for a good cause or whether you were never willing, about how often you in selfdenial have forgiven your enemy, whether seven times or sev enty times seven times. It will ask about how often you in self-denial endured insults patiently, about what you have suf fered, not for your own sake or for your own selfish interests' sake, but what you in self-denial have suffered for God's sake. Yes, in eternity you will indeed be asked what you left behind.
Take a purely human relationship. If the lover is not able to speak the beloved's language, he or she must learn it, however difficult it may seem to them – otherwise, if they cannot talk together, there cannot be a happy relationship. It is the same with dying to the world in order to be able to love God. God is spirit – only one who has died to the world can speak this lan guage at all. If you do not wish to die to the world, then you cannot love God either. You are talking about entirely different matters than he is.
It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.
Just as Christ tells the rich young ruler to sell all his goods and give to the poor, so one could also speak of the requirement to give all his rank and dignity to the poor, something we are even more reluctant to give.
The administration of the world is like running an enormous household, like making an immense painting. Yet it is the same
88 Sacrice and Self-Denial
for him, the Master, God in heaven, as it is for the cook and the artist. He says: "There must be a little dash of cinnamon now; a little bit of red must be introduced." We have no idea why, we can hardly detect it since the little smidge vanishes in the whole, but God knows why. A little dash of cinnamon! This means: here someone must be sacrificed; he must be added to give the rest a specific taste. These are God's correctives.
Abraham is an eternal pattern of faith. To be a stranger and in exile is the peculiar suffering of faith.
Since God himself has created and sustains this world, one ought to guard against the ascetic fanaticism which hates it and annihilates it. This said, God still wants us to make, once and for all, such a clean break with this world that the spirit really comes into existence. He wants us, even now, to wean ourselves away.
To be nothing is precisely the burr under the saddle of zealous ness. To be nothing is precisely what makes delusions impos sible; only when a person is nothing can he in truth serve an idea. The point is this. When a person is something, when he possesses the world's advantages he is no longer a burr under the saddle of worldliness. But is this not what it means to sacri fice oneself for the truth?
It is terrifying when God takes out the instruments for the sur gery for which no human being has the strength: to take away a person's human zest for life, to slay him – in order that he can live as one who has died to the world and to the flesh. It cannot
be otherwise, for in no other way can a human being love God. He must be in such a state of agony that if he were an unbeliever he would at no time hesitate to commit suicide. But in this state he must – live. Only in this state can he love God.
Just as the ship which lightly proceeds at full sail before the wind deeply cuts its heavy path through the ocean, so also the Christ ian's way is hard if one looks at the laborious work in the depths.
89 Silence and Solitude
A person rarely amounts to anything, either good or evil, who has never lived in solitude. In solitude there is the Absolute, but also the absolute danger.
It is true that a mirror has the quality of enabling a person to see his image in it, but for this he must stand still.
It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.
God loves silence. Silence in relation to God is strengthening. Absolute silence is like a lever, or like the point outside the world which Archimedes talks about. To talk lightly about God, therefore, is a depletion that weakens. God hates it when we gossip with others about our relationship with him. To do so is sheer vanity, or else it is cowardice and lack of faith, because one does not really rely upon him. Don't be fooled into thinking that when a person has progressed further than others, it is so kind-hearted of him to let others share in his relation to God. This is not only contrary to God's will, it is conceited. Has not God proclaimed that every person, absolutely every person can turn to him?
In observing the present state of affairs and of life in general, from a Christian point of view one would have to say: It is a dis ease. And if I were a physician and someone asked me "What do you think should be done?" I would answer, "Create silence, bring about silence." God's Word cannot be heard, and if in or der to be heard in the hullabaloo it must be shouted deafeningly with noisy means, then it is not God's Word; create silence!
Ah, everything is noisy. Just as a strong drink is said to stir the blood, so everything in our day, even the most insignificant project, even the most empty communication, is designed merely to jolt the senses or to stir up the masses, the crowd, the public, noise! And we humans, we clever fellows, seem to have become sleepless in order to invent ever new means to increase noise, to spread noise and insignificance with the greatest pos sible ease and on the greatest possible scale. Yes, everything has been turned upside down. The means of communication have been perfected, but what is publicized with such hot haste is rubbish! Oh, create silence!
If you forget to introduce silence into your home, then the most important thing is lacking. Silence – it is not a specific something, nor does it consist simply in the absence of speak ing. No, silence is like the subdued lighting in a pleasant room, like the friendliness in a modest living room. It is not some thing one talks about, but it is there and exercises its beneficent power. Silence is like the tone, the fundamental tone, which is not given prominence and is called the fundamental tone pre cisely because it lies at the base. And silence brought into a house – that is eternity's art of making a house a home.
89 Silence and Solitude
What is talkativeness? It is the result of doing away with the vi tal distinction between talking and keeping silent. Only some one who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk – and truly act. Silence is the essence of inwardness, of the inner life. Mere gossip mocks real talk, and to express what is yet in thought weakens action by forestalling it. Where mere scope is concerned, talkativeness wins the day, it jabbers on in cessantly about everything and nothing. But someone who can really talk, because he knows how to remain silent, will not talk about a variety of things but about one thing only, and he will know when to talk and when to remain silent.
When people's attention is no longer turned inwards, when they are no longer at ease with their own inner lives, but turn to others and think outside themselves, in search of that satisfac tion, when nothing important ever happens to gather the threads of life together with the finality of a catastrophe: that is the time for talkativeness. In a passionate age great events give people something to talk about. Talkativeness, on the contrary, also has plenty to talk about, but in quite another sense. In a passionate age, when the event is over, and silence follows, there is still something to remember and to think about while one re mains silent. But talkativeness is afraid of silence, for silence al ways reveals its emptiness.
Only he who can keep silence can really act, for silence is of the heart.
The beginning is found in the art of becoming silent. Human beings differ from the beasts in that they can speak, but in rela tion to God it is to their ruin that they are so willing to speak.
Talk takes the name of enthusiasm in vain by proclaiming loudly from the housetop what it should work out in silence.
Pausing is not a sluggish repose. Pausing is also movement. It is the inward movement of the heart. To pause is to deepen one self in inwardness. But to go on and on is to go straight into the abyss of superficiality.
Silence is the measure of the power to act; a person never has more power to act than he has silence. Every person under stands very well that to act is something far greater than to talk about it. If, therefore, a person is sure that he can do the thing in question, and if he is resolved that he will do it, he does not talk about it. What a person talks about in connection with a pro posed action is precisely what he is most unsure of and unwill ing to do.
The one who is truly resolved is silent. It is not as if being reso lute were one thing and being silent another. No. To be resolute means to be silent; for silence alone is the measure of power to act.
90 Sin
Man is not conscious of guilt because he sins, but consciously sins because of his guilt.
Rarely do we ever really try to understand why Christ collided with those around him or why he was crucified. Perhaps we fear getting to know anything of the proof of the existence of evil in the world.
It is so heartbreaking that Christ, who is the teacher of love, is betrayed – with a kiss. Such is the nature of sin.
Sin cannot arise out of a person alone any more than one sex alone can have a baby; thus the Christian teaching about the devil's temptation.
Only through the consciousness of sin is one admitted; to want to enter by any other road is high treason against Christianity.
The consciousness of sin is the essential condition for under standing Christianity. This is the very proof of Christianity's
being the highest religion. No other religion has given such a profound and lofty expression of our significance – that we are sinners.
What is sin? It is the pact of an evil conscience with darkness.
What else has a memory like that of a bad conscience?
A person sins out of weakness, then out of despair. In the strict sense the latter alone is the sin. Here, also, is the cross. You doubt that the sin you have committed out of weakness can be forgiven. All is lost, you think, and thus you sin. But the cross can bring you to a halt, if you let it.
What sin cries to heaven? The very one that hides most secretly and most quietly within. What the adulterers, murderers, and thieves do cries out already here on earth.
To be a mere observer is actually sin.
Whenever sin is thought of as a disease, or as an abnormality, it is falsified.
The demonic manifests itself clearly only when it is in contact with the good.
It has been said that it costs a person just as much or even more trouble to go to hell as to enter heaven. Consequently, the way
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of damnation is also a narrow way. It is so easy to trip the light of desire, but when, after a while, it is desire that dances with the person against his will – that is a ponderous dance! It is so easy to give free rein to the passions, until they have taken the reins and tear a person along at daring speeds. One hardly dares to look where they are taking him!
It is so easy to let a sinful thought sneak into the heart. No seducer was ever so adept as is a sinful thought! It is so easy. It is not as it usually is – that it is the first step that costs – oh no, it costs nothing whatever. It costs nothing at all – until at the end, when you must pay dearly for this first step that cost nothing at all. Very often sin enters into a person as a flatterer; but when the person has become the slave of sin, it is the most terrible sla very – a narrow, an extremely narrow way to damnation!
"Do not fear those who can kill the body." Physically it is indeed true that one can fall by the hand of another. Spiritually the truth is that one can fall only by his own hand. No one can cor rupt you except yourself.
Of all the brilliant sins, affected virtues are the worst.
When someone is sick or indisposed, the first thing he does is to see a physician. It is medication he wants. Spiritually it is just the opposite – when a person has sinned, the last thing he wants is the physician and medicine.
The gospel about the Ten Lepers is about how the nine were healed of their leprosy – and then caught, so to speak, an even
worse leprosy: their ingratitude and unthankfulness. Herein lies the difference between sickness of the body and sickness of the spirit.
The danger with sickness of the spirit is just that a certain amount of health is required in order to become aware and ac knowledge that one is sick.
A person can be both good and evil, but one cannot simulta neously choose to become good and evil.
Oh my God, even when I go wrong, your guidance is over me, lovingly overruling innumerable possibilities, so that even this error becomes beneficial to me.
To sin against God is to punish yourself.
It is not dreadful that I have to suffer punishment when I have acted badly. No, it would be dreadful if I could act badly – and there were no punishment.
It is small things that irritate and so embitter one's life. I can gladly fight against a storm so that my blood almost bursts from my veins; but the wind that blows a grain of dust into my eye can irritate me to such an extent that I stamp with rage.
The opposite of sin is faith. And this is one of the most decisive definitions of all Christianity – that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.
91 Spiritual Trial
How horrible it must have been for the apostles when it seemed as if Christ had deceived them – luring them with at tractive prospects – and then reversing the whole thing so dreadfully on the cross.
But it cannot be otherwise in our relationship to God. There has to come a moment (specifically, when all our purely human world of concepts is toppled), when God seems to be a deceiver. Yes, we will have many weak moments when we will long for the good old days, when it will seem to us that we could love God better if our relationship with him were as it once was, when God pulled us along by adapting to our own ideas. But God in his love will not comply.
This is the truth. Really and truly. Anyone who has the faint est idea of what it actually means to die to the world knows that this does not take place without terrible agonies. No wonder, then, we cry out, sometimes even rebel against God, because it seems to us as if God is deceiving us, we who from the begin ning became involved with God on the understanding that God would love us according to our idea of love but now see that it is God who wants to be loved and according to God's idea of what love is. But, of course, God is still infinite, infinite love. Just hold fast to this – that it is out of infinite love that God performs this excruciatingly painful operation. Yes, it is painful, yet it is all the more necessary.
Christ's prayer, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," became a kind of sermon or word which converted the thief. In the same instance the thief 's faith was immediately put to the test. For very soon afterward he who had promised him that he should be with Him in paradise sighs and says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This was the one upon whom the thief had built his hope!
If a person is actually to be an instrument of God's will, then God must first of all take his will from him. A fearful operation!
If you want to love God in truth, you must show it gladly, adoringly letting yourself be totally shattered by God. Only then can he unconditionally advance his will.
In the case of temptation the right thing to do may be to fight it by avoiding it. In the case of spiritual trial, however, one must go through it. Temptation should be avoided? Try not to see or hear what tempts you? Temptation is best fought by running away? But this does not work with thoughts that try the spirit, for they pursue you. If it is spiritual trial, go straight toward it, trusting in God and Christ. When you are weak, he is strong.
The difference between temptation and spiritual trial is that the temptation to sin is in accord with inclination, the "tempta tion" of spiritual trial is contrary to inclination. Therefore the opposite tactic must be employed. The person tempted by sin does well to shun the danger, but in relation to spiritual trial this is the very danger, for every time he thinks he is saving him self by shunning the danger, the danger becomes greater the
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next time. The fleshly person is wise to flee from the sight of sin or the enticement. But for the one not so tempted but who is ridden with anxiety about coming in contact with it (he is un der spiritual trial) it is not so wise to shun the sight or the en ticement; for spiritual trial wants nothing else than to paralyze him by striking terror into his life and enslaving him in anxiety.
As long as there are many springs from which to draw water, anxiety about possible water failure does not arise. But when there is only one source! And so it is when Christ has become a person's one and only spring that spiritual trials begin. Spiritual trial is the expression of a concentration upon Christ as the only source. This is why most people have no spiritual trials.
It is much easier to suffer on account of one's sin than to suffer because one relates himself to God.
With regard to self-renunciation, who can ever say: I can go no farther, or I cannot go that far out? It ought to become a burr that helps you along by keeping you awake and in the striving.
It is a very special spiritual trial when a person in the strictest sense sins against his will, plagued by the anxiety of sin, when he has, for example, sinful thoughts which he would rather flee, does everything to avoid, but they still come. It is a special kind of spiritual trial to believe that this is something he must sub mit to, that Christ will come to console him as he bears this cross, plagued as he is by a thorn in the flesh. This kind of spiri tual trial is very painful and excruciating. It is an educational torture that is intended to break all self-centered willfulness.
Even when we talk confidentially about God testing us, this talk is meaningless unless God is holding on to us. We know that if God should put to the test our faithfulness to him, we know well that at the moment of testing, he himself must hold on to us, that is, we know that at bottom we are unfaithful, and that every instant it is he who at bottom holds us.
From your hand, oh God, we are willing to receive everything. And even if it seems that your arm is shortened, increase our faith and our trust so that we might still hold on to you. And if at times it seems that you draw your hand away from us, oh, then we know it is only because you close it, that you close it only to save the more abundant blessing in it, that you close it only to open it again and satisfy with blessing everything that lives.
Father in heaven! Well do we know that all seeking has its promise. But we also know that all seeking has its pain, and so too does the seeking that seeks you. Well do we know that to seek does not mean that one must go into the wide world; for the more glorious the thing one seeks, the nearer to him does it lie. And if one seeks you, oh Lord, you are the nearest of all things to him.
92 Suffering
Force ought never be used; this is the mind of Christ. Instead you ought to endure injustice, witnessing also to the truth until the other party cannot hold out in doing wrong and voluntarily gives up doing it. Suffering can have a paralyzing effect. Just as a hypnotist puts his subject to sleep, and one limb after another loses its vitality, so suffering endurance paralyzes injustice. No evil can ultimately hold out against it.
The use of force is in league with injustice. Perpetuating injus tice and in hasty impatience to want to protect oneself through force against injustice are essentially the same thing. At best there is an entirely accidental difference – the suffering party only lacks an opportunity to commit injustice.
They say Christ did not go out into the desert or enter a mon astery; he remained in the world: ergo – by saying this they think they have justified unlimited worldliness. But hold on! Undoubtedly Christ did not go out into the desert, did not en ter a monastery. He remained in the world – but not, however, to become decorated, a cabinet member, an honorary member of this and that, but to suffer. This was the advantage, and the only advantage he had from remaining in the world.
To suffer patiently is not specifically Christian – but freely to choose the suffering is.
Sorrow is like an arrow in the breast – the more vigorously the deer runs in order to run away from it, the more firmly the ar row becomes embedded in it.
To be an alien, to be in exile, is the mark of Christian suffering.
Is this not really the meaning of Christianity: Have you suf fered for the teaching? Then why all the bustle to get human as sistance? I must rather take care to prevent it, lest it possibly result in my scoring a success instead of suffering.
You are now thirty years old; you still have perhaps forty years to live, perhaps only ten, perhaps only a day. You can fill up this time with becoming just like the others, nice, amiable people, above all with whatever counts in having advantages in life, with whatever gains you pleasure. Let us assume that you suc ceed in making this kind of life for yourself, and then you die.
You desire, of course, to be saved. But have you ever pon dered this – I wonder if it is really true what the gushing preachers assure us, that "in eternity there is sheer joy and hap piness." Do you believe that "every suffering and pain is forgot ten"? I do not. The New Testament makes the very specific exception of one suffering: having suffered for the truth. Or do you believe that Christ's suffering, and for that matter, anyone else's who suffered for the truth, is forgotten in eternity? Now don't forget that you are going to live together with these glori
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ous witnesses for eternity, you who avoided suffering, even so much as a little bit, for the truth!
Consequently an eternity in this heavenly company and sev enty years at the most, perhaps only ten, perhaps only a day in this earthly company. Was it by judicious calculation, then, that you decided to choose to conform to this earthly company in order not to be conspicuous here – thereby making sure of be ing conspicuous for all eternity?
Adversities do not make a person weak, they reveal what strength he has.
He who himself does not wish to suffer cannot love him who has.
The intensity of suffering is greatest when you have the power to free yourself from it. I must use my energy to force myself out into the suffering and then use it to endure the suffering.
God punishes the ungodly simply by ignoring them. This is why they have success in the world – the most frightful punish ment, because in God's view this world is immersed in evil. But God sends suffering to those whom he loves, as assistance to enable them to become happy by loving him.
Voluntary suffering is suspect at three points. First, I must use my strength to compel myself to go forth into the suffering. Second, I must use my strength to bear it. And third, I must put up with the advice of relatives and sympathizers who insist that I go too far. Such is the way of Christian suffering.
Voluntary suffering provides the double collision which is the mark of everything essentially Christian: to become hated, cursed, detested, to have to suffer. No one ever thinks of persecut ing someone because he is in poverty against his will, but no one is as hated as the one who voluntarily renounces that in which people naturally center their lives. Only one who is marked by the voluntary can be entrusted with Christ's command.
To suffer rightly is to have a secret with God!
You do not dare for the sake of suffering, but you dare in order not to betray the truth.
How strange that the most coveted good in the world is inde pendence, yet almost no one covets the only way that truly leads to it: suffering.
Authentic Christian suffering has been abolished, suffering "on account of the Word" (Mt. 13:21), or "for righteousness' sake" (Mt. 5:10), and more. On the other hand, ordinary human sufferings have been dressed up to be Christian sufferings and in turn made out to be like the Pattern – what a masterpiece of upsidedowness! Hence the pastor preaches about Abraham who sacrifices Isaac, and the widower is eloquently portrayed as a kind of Abraham. There is naturally not a trace of sense in this kind of talk, but the widower likes it, gladly gives what he owes, and the congregation sits by idly, since each one expects his turn to come – should one not then be willing to pay for coming to resemble Abraham so easily! So it is also with respect to Christ, and in so doing we have
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managed to consign to total oblivion what is to be understood by authentic Christian suffering.
It takes moral courage to grieve; it takes spiritual courage to rejoice.
Oh Lord, not only do you know our sorrow better than do we ourselves, but you feel it, too. You understand the burden, the heavy grief that we bear. Make us humble, therefore, so that in our rebellion against life's injustices we do not turn for comfort to those who are like wandering stars, or to those who are like the raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame. You are our refuge and our strength, and there is none other.
93 Tribulation and Persecution
Christianity requires simply that we love others with our whole heart; it is not the fault of Christianity that this is re warded with persecution.
There is an almost mad self-contradiction in Christianity's re quirement. It sets a task and exclaims: In the same degree as you succeed in faith, you will come to suffer more and more. You will continually think: "But, Lord God, if I rightly love others – then…" The Christian answer to this must be: Stupid, did not the Savior of the world rightly love others, but was mocked, spit upon, and more? Has it not been this way for all true Chris tians? If you desire, humanly speaking, pleasant and happy days, then never get seriously involved with Christ.
The consequence of having seen God is madness, not in the sense that one becomes mentally ill, no, but that a kind of mad ness is set between you and others: people cannot nor will not understand you.
If you are a millionaire and give 100,000 dollars to the poor, you make people happy; if you give it all away, you will collide. Accept a big salary and a distinguished office in order to further
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Christianity, and you will perhaps make people happy; re nounce everything, every personal advantage, in order to pro claim Christianity, and you will be scorned.