Category: theology

The Devil, Hell, Demons, and Excorcism (enough to interest you yet?)

This is a rough draft of my sermon on Sunday (Mark 1:9-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22).  I will likely make some more edits and developments but I am curious if there is any feedback that I should take into consideration here.

At times the church gets criticized for holding on to outdated and backwards views of the world.  And we do need to be open to these criticisms and concerns.  But it is interesting to note that while many churches on the one hand are working hard to remove unhelpful ideas about mental illness being some sort of evil spirit or of heaven and hell as literal places in the clouds and in the center of the earth on the other hand we find so-called enlightened western culture fascinated with movies about books about zombies, vampires, demons, ghosts and all sorts of hellish creatures.  Out of curiosity I went online to search for videos on YouTube about demon possession and exorcisms and I found plenty, some with millions of views.  What is going on here?  How do we discern these matters as a church?  Is there a relationship between our current curiosities and interests in evil spirits and other hellish matters and what is happening with Jesus and the Devil in the wilderness and Jesus message to the spirits of the dead in prison?  I think there may be a connection but I think the connection is in their opposition to each other.  Let’s start by looking at our current and ongoing fascination with the realms of the dead.

Continue reading “The Devil, Hell, Demons, and Excorcism (enough to interest you yet?)” →

Kierkegaard on politics

In Kierkegaard’s Postscript to his treatise on authority and revelation, also known as The Book of Adler, Kierkegaard makes some telling political statements.  Kierkegaard is of course popularly criticized for his lack of politics but rarely is it mentioned that he is most often simply trying to maintain a rigorous qualitative distinction.  Some may simply disagree with his distinction but it needs to be clear that Kierkegaard is entirely intentional in what he develops.  Kierkegaard makes clear in his postscript that he this writing is ‘ethico-religious and has nothing to do with politics’.  The point of departure for the religious is from above, from God, “and the formula is this paradox that an individual is employed.”

Humanly understood, an individual, according to all reason, is infinitely nothing in comparison with the established order (the universal), so it is a paradox that the individual is the stronger. . . . When there are hundreds of men, what comes to pass is explained simply by the activity of the hundreds of men, but the paradox compels us (insofar as freedom can be compelled) to take notice of God, that he is taking part in it.

Kierkegaard then goes to talk about the political which comes from below, that is, how does politics attempt to change the established order.  I will include several excerpts as there are few times in all his published corpus that he speaks this directly.  The political as he understands it is being conceived and built now as a ‘monstrous multitude’.

“The multitude,” an absurd monster or a monstrous absurdity, which nevertheless is physically in possession of power, of outcries and of noise, and besides that has an extraordinary virtuosity in making everything commensurable for the decision of the hands upraised to vote or the fists upraised to fight.  This abstraction is an inhuman something, the power of which is, to be sure, prodigious, but it is a prodigious power which cannot be defined in human terms, but more properly as one defines the power of a machine, calling it so and so many horsepower: the power of the multitude is always horsepower.

This abstraction creates politics as a game and the game is played for the multitude whoever can win over the many legs.

This human mass becomes at last enrages by friction, and now demands – or rather it demands nothing, it does not itself know what it wills, it takes the threatening attitude only in the hope that something after all will come to pass, in the hope that the weaker side (the established government, the ruler) will perhaps become so much alarmed that it will go ahead and do something which neither the multitude nor those at the head of it, the stronger ones, the courageous ones (if there be any such), have the courage to speak out in definite words. . . . In alarm the king goes off and does something – and what the king does, that the human multitude then adores, maintaining that it had done it.

Kierkegaard then returns to the individual.

While the individual who truly connects himself with a religious movement [in the internal sense] must watch out and be ready to fight lest the dreadful thing should come to pass that this monstrous abstraction should wish to help him by going over with its legs to his side.

When the abstract of the multitude has finally taken the throne the result is idolatry.

Wherever this abstraction is set upon the throne there really is no government.  One is obedient only to the man whom he himself has boosted up, pretty much as the idolater worships and serves the god he himself has made, i.e. one obeys himself.  With the discontinuance of the rational State the art of statesmanship will become a game.  Everything will turn upon getting the multitude pollinated, and after that getting them to vote on his side, with noise, with torches and with weapons, indifferent, absolutely indifferent, as to whether they understand anything or no.

Kierkegaard’s politics are of course conservative but what I would want to further reflect on is the implications of his theology.  It will of course have political implications.  Is it necessary to label and criticize Kierkegaard’s politics as unduly conservative without considering the implication of what it would mean to be engaged in his aesthetic-ethical-religious movement?  For instance Kierkegaard, towards the end of his life, made the political gesture of abstaining from public worship on Sunday.  He sat outside at a cafe nearby the church so he would indeed be visible.  I am not convinced that Kierkegaard would have spoken out against various forms of progressive political theory. What seemed to be his concern was his perception that ‘these days everything is politics’.  This led for him inevitably to a herd mentality in which the ‘horsepower’ of the multitude would ultimately be wielded for destructive purposes.

I am hoping within the year or so to get into Hardt and Negri’s trilogy in which ‘the multitude’ is explicitly leveraged.  I am curious to see how that notion is developed.

Forced corruption

Remember. The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt.

This line is a quote from Slavoj Zizek’s speech at Occupy Wall Street.  I will not try and wade into the larger conversation about this movement (see here for frequent updates).  I want simply to focus on this line.  For me this line is a stumbling block; and I believe stumbling block is precisely the correct term.  I continue to believe in autonomous morality.  I continue to believe that it is possible for each individual to make a morally valid decision in real life circumstances.  I believe this despite the fact that I know it is not true.  And so I come to a stumbling block, an offense.

I sat with this line as I visited a man from my neighbourhood.  Our church is not exactly a hot spot for those seeking material support though we get our share of traffic.  The process is almost always the same.  There is prefacing story which sets the person both in morally acceptable or pitiable conditions.  This often includes acknowledging some religious conviction, some desire to work, and some immediate pressing need.  I will then wait for the second half of the conversation in which the person will move inevitably towards his (almost exclusively a male) best shot at getting something out of the exchange.

And there I sit, Solomon on his throne, judging how best to suggest sawing his child in half to reveal true motivations.  I stand as the face and gate-keeper of what should be the symbol of consuming charity.  Now to be sure charity is not paternalism but why does paternalism exist in the context of giving charitably?  Still one must learn to be responsible, correct?  To the extent that responsiblity lies in the realm of economics I will continue to be corrupt in my engagement with those in need.  To the extent that responsbility is integrated into a relational fabric there may be a chance to level out life experiences.  Current capitalist economics demands a responsibility based on severed points of accountability.  It demands I take care of my house.  And this is where existentialism remains important in conversations about social systems.  One must ultimately be converted into a larger house; a house that still has rooms and boundaries but a house that also has a larger and expanding commons.  The church in North America, by and large, cannot offer a commons to those who seek it.  And until then I may be forced to remain corrupt.

From here is eternity

I have not posted recently on my Kierkegaard reading.  Things continue to progress more or less on target.  I am currently in the middle of Christian Discourses.  I continue to have a mild reception to most of his religious writings.  The first section of CD comes off as firmly okay.  It is essentially an exploration of how living in light of eternity creates a reversal of popular (temporary) understanding.  So wealth and poverty are inverted, gain is loss, strength is weakness, etc.  There is nothing wrong with this approach in itself and there are moments of insight in Kierkegaard’s thinking here.  For instance when Kierkegaard develops the inversion of wealth and poverty he does so by demonstrating the nature of wealth.

Riches are indeed a possession, but actually or essentially to possess something of which the essential feature is losableness or that it can be lost is just as impossible as to sit down and yet walk – at least thought cannot get anything in its head except that this must be a delusion.  If, namely, losability is an essential feature of riches, then it is obvious that no essential change has occurred when it is lost, no essential change occurs in it by being lost.  Therefore, it is essentially the same, but then it is indeed also essentially the same while I possess it – it is lost – because it must indeed be essentially the same at every moment.  Lost, it is essentially the same; possessed, it is essentially the same, is lost; that is, in a deeper sense it cannot be possessed. (28)

A key element of how Kierkegaard energizes this dialectic is the role of eternity.  Eternity for Kierkegaard is a mode or posture of approaching the world.  In one key passage Kierkegaard describes how eternity creates a way of being more present as opposed to a future or spiritualized orientation.  In this section Kierkegaard is referring to self-torment as the next day.

The one who rows a boat turns his back to the goal toward which he is working.  So it is with the next day.  When, with the help of the eternal, a person lives absorbed in today, the decisively he turns his back to the next day; then he does not see it all.  When he turns around, the eternal becomes confused before eyes and becomes the next day.  But when, in order to work toward the goal (eternity) properly, he turns his back, he does not see the next day at all, whereas with the help of the eternal he sees today and its tasks with perfect clarity.  But if the work today is to be done properly, a person must be turned in this way.  It is always delaying and distracting impatiently to want to inspect the goal every moment, to see whether on is coming a little closer, and then again a little closer.  No, be forever and earnestly resolute; then you turn wholeheartedly to the work – and your back to the goal.  This is the way one is turned when one rows a boat, but so also is on positioned when one believes.  One might think that the believer would be most distanced from the eternal, he who has completely turned his back and is living today, whereas the glimpser stands and looks for it.  And yet the believer is closest of all to the eternal, whereas the apocalypt is most distanced from the eternal, then the next day becomes a monstrous confused figure, like that in a fairytale.  Just like those daimons we read about in the book of Genesis who begot children with mortal women, the future is a monstrous daimon the begets the next day. (74)

Kierkegaard’s privileged individual

I am about halfway through Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (UDiVS)and I have to say it is one of the least enjoyable reads so far.  Now perhaps the fault is my own and perhaps I should not even bother reading it.  Kierkegaard knew well that his ‘religious’ writings were not interesting and were not intended to be.  Most of them were written with the hope that perhaps an individual who was suffering might read them and through reading find some joy.  This is not my interest or posture in reading.  I am precisely looking for the interesting and innovative.

Now it is becoming clear to me that when Kierkegaard speaks of suffering he means very explicitly existential suffering.  The suffering people experience when they find themselves pulled and torn by paradoxes of life that result from humans being a synthesis of body and spirit.  There is a certain heaviness that hangs over humanity with some experiencing a greater darkness.  This suffering may be due to actual experiences of rejection or injustice but this sort of suffering comes to any who seek eternity in the midst of the temporal.  This is all sort of a paraphrase of how Kierkegaard talks about suffering.

I am also becoming more convinced that Kierkegaard probably really did suffer whether in some form of a clinical depression or just basic anxiety over life.  I read his ‘upbuilding’ discourses, like many of his other writings, as his own processing of belief and experience.  Faith speaks both of joy and suffering.  What could that mean?  This is the content of much of UDiVS.  Part of my increasing trouble with these discourses is the manner in which they are not interested and in fact reject any primacy in effecting change in external conditions.  So for instance,

Thus is one who is born a slave, in compliance with Apostle’s heartfelt admonition (for Christ did not come in order to abolish slavery, although this will follow and be a result of His coming), he is not concerned about it, and merely chooses freedom if it is offered: then he bears the heavy burden lightly.  How heavy this burden is, the unhappy slave knows best, and human sympathy understands it with him.  If he groans under the burden, as humanity groans with him, then he bears the burden heavily.  If he patiently submits to his fate, and patiently hopes for freedom, then he still does bear the burden lightly.  But the meek, who has had the courage really to believe in spiritual freedom, bear the heavy burden lightly: he neither relinquishes the hope of freedom, nor does he expect it (The Gospel of Suffering, 37).

What I can appreciate is that there may be a way of living in the midst of suffering that can actually alleviate the experience of suffering (that is, without changing conditions).  What I do not understand is why this can only be attained through the posture of resignation.  Isn’t the image of Christ one of resolute orientation (setting his face towards Jerusalem to encounter the crux of powers) towards the possibility of freedom?

So what I wonder about is the extent to which Kierkegaard’s message in his upbuilding discourses would offer comfort to those who already have a level of freedom and need to deal only with existential suffering or whether this message could actually help bring joy to someone in the midst of material and social bondage.  And if it did bring joy would this joy actually be an illusion?  For instance, would it teach the wife suffering domestic abuse to bear her burden with joy and patience?  Or would it create a strong base of individuality (that is a presence of being differentiated from the abuser) that could actually see the possibility of freedom that is before her and empower her to take it?  If the latter is not the case then I think Kierkegaard’s notion of the individual in these expressions needs further development.  I sense that the ‘individual’ is still a privileged individual who can be a ‘slave’ or ‘depressed’ (not to diminish these states) but who still carries a basic ‘ontological’ sense of their individuality as universal and valid.  Kierkegaard’s individual in these discourses still strikes me as basically a privileged individual.  And this would be in keeping with his biography as one who certainly suffered (internally and externally) but was always able to function with a certain autonomy and social power.

I don’t see this observation so much rejecting Kierkegaard’s overall aims but, as it is increasingly customary these days, it may be necessary to read Kierkegaard against himself and expose his ‘individual’ as not so much standing alone before God but as standing with a sort of minimum social power by which one is able to endure a level of psychological anguish.  The shift must be in making explicit the seizing of freedom that is available as the person enters into differentiated and empowered individuality.

And so with a great number of other readers I would have to say that Kierkegaard’s religious writings are certainly not among my favourite.

Kierkegaard on the present age

It has been wonderful to cover a couple of Kierkegaard’s shorter volumes.  Given my last post on my readings I was surprised at how social this volume was.  This volume is actually an extended review of a contemporary piece of fiction entitled Two Ages.  The two ages are the age of (the French) revolution and the present age.  While the opening sections do deal directly with the content of the novel it is the longer third section that gets the most attention as it is Kierkegaard’s own appropriation of the novel for his context.

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The super and sub human

So if you are interested in pondering the absurd then have a look at what a local 54 year old grandfather just accomplished.  Just a few highlights;

1. Cycled 6,055 km in 13 days, nine hours and change.  This stands as the fastest coast-to-coast cycling across Canada.

2. Breaking this record included an injury part way through (which required a 15 hr break!).

3. His pace demanded cycling a minimum of 20 hours a day.

These facts do not compute in my brain.  Through the medium of long distance cycling Arvid has raised over 1.5 million dollars.  His charity of choice is an organization that works with street kids in Kenya.  So why I am about to transition to some critical comments related to this story?  First a couple of qualifications.  No criticism is intended towards Arvid.  The fact that he found an expression that allows him to generate this type of support for what I will assume is a great cause can only be commended.  I also assume that other perspectives than the following could be taken (such the need of extreme behaviour to draw attention to extreme situations),  I want, however, to take a step back and ask one question and make one observation.

Why can herculean feats raise this type of money?  Is there not something bizzare or even perverse about the need for someone to perform at super-human levels to draw funds for those living in sub-human conditions?  I will go out on an unsubstantiated limb and venture a guess in saying that the vast majority of Arvid’s support comes from the corporate sector in which donors can only ‘win’ from their association with Arvid.  Arvid becomes the super-hero logo on their chest which invigorates the public imagination.  While Arvid remains out of the average person’s reach the corporation gives the public access to this imagination by acquiring their brand while also associating the average person with helping ‘the poor’ (this is the power of the corporation not Arvid) on the other side of the world.  This leads to my observation;

The owners of Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg created some ‘incentive’ for Arvid saying that if he broke the record they would present him with a check for $50,000 at the finish line.  Now I will also venture a guess in saying that Palliser would have donated the money regardless.  However, the scenario again focuses on some implicit value in this herculean accomplishment.  The money is not worth donating directly to street kids in Kenya, that is, bringing the conditions of a group of people’s life up to a minimally acceptable level.  Or to put it another way, the money is not worth donating to someone who simply demonstrates the need and effectiveness of the situation and organization represented.  Instead the money is worth wagering on the possibility of achieving the never before achieved.  When given the choice between bringing others up to a minimum level on the one hand or extending our reach beyond the maximum the choice is clear (though we are supposed to believe that the two work together).

To again be clear.  I have nothing but respect for Arvid’s accomplishments.  To have inspiring figures in various fields and expressions is part of the beauty of human nature.  What I am drawing attention to is the structure around extreme expressions like Arvid’s.  The amount of global economic resources that could be available from the world’s most wealthy is staggering.  And yet it is the folks without such resources that are required to enter the super-human before investors find enough ‘value’ to throw their tax-deductible donations at so they can still receive a return on investment.

The corsair affair and yet another rejection of politics

Volume 13, The Corsair Affair, is a collection of texts (many of which not written by Kierkegaard) that helps readers to understand what came to be known by this volume title.  The Corsair was a satirical journal that took aim at any culturally relevant figure in Denmark.  While the journal was notable and feared for its lampoons Kierkegaard (or Victor Emerita) was first mentioned in praise for work Either/Or.  Kierkegaard (Emerita) responded publicly by asking how he could be so insulted as to be praised in The Corsair.  While there are many layers involved in understanding why this exchange escalated the way it did one aspect was the growing awareness of Kierkegaard as the author of his pseudonymous works.  Once Kierkegaard’s indirect method became engaged directly he was skewered mercilessly for his own personal appearance, affect and mannerisms.  It is said that the phrases ‘Soren’ or ‘Either/Or’ became pejorative terms hurled at him in the streets.  He was also consistently compared to a local known as ‘Crazy Nathanson’.

What interests me is the extent to which this escalation reflects Kierkegaard’s vehement guard against directness.  To what extent was The Corsair taunting him to see if he would show his cards and lose composure.  Kierkegaard it seems never lost his composure though he appears to have been hurt considerably in the process.  I admit that my reading of this volume was a little more superficial as I found the historical understanding more interesting than the texts themselves.  I did however pause over an extended comment by Kierkegaard rejecting any notion that he is interested in changing externals (politics).  It seems as though from the very beginning people were interested in leveraging a political theory out of him.  I thought it worth offering his comments almost in full.

In Ursin’s Arithmetic, which was used in my school days, a reward was offered to anyone who could find a miscalculation in the book.  I also promise a reward to anyone who can point out in these numerous books a single proposal for external change, or the slightest suggestion of such a proposal, or even anything that in the remotest way even for the most nearsighted person at the greatest distance could resemble an intimation of such a proposal or of a belief that the problem is lodged in externalities, that external change is what is needed, that external change is what will help us.

. . .

There is nothing about which I have greater misgivings than about all that even slightly tastes of this disastrous confusion of politics and Christianity, a confusion that can very easily bring about a new kind and mode of Church reformation, a reverse reformation that in the name of reformation puts something new and worse in place of something old and better, although it is still supposed to be an honest-to-goodness reformation, which is then celebrated by illuminating the entire city.

Christianity is inwardness, inward deepening.  If at a given time the forms under which one has to live are not the most perfect, if they can be improved, in God’s name do so.  But essentially Christianity is inwardness.  Just as man`s advantage over animals is to be able to live in any climate, so also Christianity’s perfection, simply because it is inwardness, is to be able to live, according to its vigor, under the most imperfect conditions and forms, if such be the case.  Politics is the external system, this Tantalus-like busyness about external change.

It is apparent from his latest work that Dr R. believes that Christianity and the Church are to be saved by ‘the free institutions.’ If this faith in the saving power of politically achieved free institutions belongs to true Christianity, then I am no Christian, or, even worse, I am a regular child of Satan, because, frankly, I am indeed suspicious of these politically achieved free institutions, especially of their saving, renewing power. . . . [I] have had nothing to do with ‘Church’ and ‘state’ – this is much too immense for me.  Altogether different prophets are needed for this, or, quite simply, this task ought to be entrusted to those who are regularly appointed and trained for such things.  I have not fought for the emancipation of ‘the Church’ an more than I have fought for the emancipation of Greenland commerce, or women, of the Jews, or of anyone else. (53-54)

Kierkegaard continues on in this letter to drive home with all clarity that external institutions and systems cannot essentially hinder or encourage Christian faith.  The question I have with respect to contemporary forms of ‘liberation theology and thought’ is whether this reading and presentation within Kierkegaard’s larger project can truly be said to move towards the liberation of the individual, that is, beyond political/economic (Greenland), gender (women), or religious (Jew) boundaries.

Whether or not Kierkegaard is being completely ironic he concedes space for those who can understand and interpret the larger social systems (different prophets).  I also think it is important that he encourages any who can improve on their surroundings to do so.  I say this is important not because it is a minor concession by Kierkegaard but because it is assumed.  If someone would try to critique him on this level he would likely ask how ignorant that person is in thinking that someone should not improve conditions around them only that something must transcend the quantitative value (and it still is value) that externals can play in life.

Total guilt

I am drawing close to the mid-way point of Kierkegaard’s writings.  Appropriately enough this coincides with Concluding Unscientific Postcript which represents a sort of culmination of his earlier writings (which he actually attempts to integrate in one section of CUP).  As I understand it this work was potentially to be  his last and subsequent works are called his ‘second authorship’ many of which reflect a more ‘concrete’ engagement with social issues.

I want to offer an extended quote here as it helped to clarify certain lingering thoughts that have surfaced in various areas of my life namely the interplay of guilt and action.  How does one reconcile (if that is the appropriate method) the call of the Gospel, the limitedness of humanity, and the unwieldy variables of life?  In many ways I find my own experience partially reflected in a heightened and intensified way through recent posts by Dan O (here and here . . . in many ways it is the comments [particularly on the second site] that capture what I am talking about).

What I find intriguing in the quote is how it forms part of Kierkegaard’s attempt to shift guilt-consciousness towards a category of ‘totality’ rather than remain in an ethical category.  To remain under the ethical is to remain under the numerical (I think I am getting this right).  To remain under the numerical is to forever have the more hanging over our head that while aimed at being life-giving tends towards death-dealing in the one desiring to be a practitioner of the Gospel.  This death comes in the externalizing of guilt-consciousness which can never be integrated directly into another individual and so becomes a law unto itself.  There is no amount of ‘good’ that will resolve this guilt.

Now perhaps Kierkegaard’s ethical and religious domains are infinitely caught up in ‘beginning’ and never become as political as people want them to be but I think he should be well heeded in also acknowledging that running furiously in the wrong direction is also not much better . . . likely worse.

The second half of this quote gets a little diluted but the first half reads well in terms of the line between much guilt and total guilt.  Particularly poignant is the line about the one bound up with happiness, by the finest thread, as it were, by the help of a possibility that continually perishes.  There is a possibility that holds us even if the possibility continually perishes.  The emphasis added belong is mine.

In the eternal recollecting of guilt-consciousness, the existing person relates himself to an eternal happiness, but not in such a way that he now has come closer to it directly; on the contrary, he is now distanced from it as much as possible, but he still relates himself to it.  The dialectical that is present here, still within immanence, creates resistance that intensifies the pathos.  In the relation that is the basis of the misrelation, in the intimated immanence that is the basis of the dialectic’s separation, he is closely bound up with happiness, by the finest thread, as it were, by the help of a possibility that continually perishes – for this reason the pathos, if it is there, is so much the stronger.

The guilt-consciousness is what is decisive, and one guilt joined together with the relation to an eternal happiness is sufficient, and yet it is true of guilt, more than of anything else, that it sows itself.  But the total guilt is what is decisive; compared with it, making oneself guilty fourteen times is child’s play – this is also why childishness always keeps to the numerical.  When, however, the consciousness of the new guilt is in turn referred to the absolute consciousness of guilt, the eternal recollecting of guilt is thereby preserved, in case the existing person should be on the point of forgetting.

If someone says that no human being can endure such an eternal recollecting of guilt, that it is bound to lead to insanity or to death, then please not who it is who is speaking, because finite common sense frequently speaks that way in order to preach indulgence.  And this way of speaking rarely fails, provided three or four people are gathered together.  I doubt that anyone in solitude has been able to deceive himself with this talk, but when a number of people are together an one hears that the others are behaving in this way, on is less embarrassed – how inhuman, also, to want to be better than others!  Once again a mask; the person who is alone with the ideal has not knowledge at all about whether he is better or worse than others.  So it is possible that this eternal recollecting can lead to madness or death.  Well, now, a human being cannot endure very long on water and bread, but then a physician can discern how to organize things for the single individual, not in such a way, please note, that he ends up living like the rich man but that the starvation diet is so carefully calculated for him that he can just stay alive.  Just because the existential pathos is not the pathos of the moment but the pathos of continuance, the existing person himself, who in pathos is indeed inspired and is not, spoiled by habit, peeking around for subterfuges, will seek to find the minimum of forgetfulness needed for enduring, since he himself is aware, of course, that the momentary is a misunderstanding.  But since it is impossible to find an absolute certainty in this dialecticizing, he will, despite all his exertion, have a guilt-consciousness, once again totally defined by his never having dared to say that, in his relation to an eternal happiness, he had done everything he was able to do in order to hold fast to the recollecting of guilt. Concluding Unscientific Postscript 535-537

When a religious person speaks: On the love of selfishness

When [a religious person] speaks it is only a monologue; occupied only with himself, he speaks aloud, and this is called preaching; if there is anyone listening, he knows nothing about his relation to them except that they owe him nothing, for what he must accomplish is to save himself.  Such a right reverend monologue that witnesses Christianly, when in its animation it moves the speaker, the witnessing, because he is speaking about himself, is called a sermon.  World-historical surveys, systematic conclusions, gesticulations, wiping of sweat from the brow, a stentorian voice, and pulpit pounding, along with the premeditated use of all this in order to accomplish something are easthetic reminiscences that do not even know how to accentuate fear and pity properly in the Aristotelian sense.

. . .

The religious speaker who purifies these passions through fear and compassion does not in the course of his address do the astounding thing of ripping the clouds asunder to show heaven open, the judgment day at hand, hell in the background, himself and the elect triumphantly celebrating; he does the simpler and less pretentious thing, the humble feat that is supposed to be so very easy: he lets heaven remains closed, in fear and trembling does not feel that he himself is finished, bows his head while the judgment of the discourse falls upon thought and mind.  He does not do the astounding thing that could make his next appearance lay claim to being greeted with applause; he does not thunder so that the congregation might be kept awake and saved by his discourse.  He does the simpler and less pretentious thing, the humble feat that is supposed to be so very easy: he lets God keep  the thunder and the power and the honor and speaks in such a way that even if everything miscarried he nevertheless is certain that there was one listener who was moved in earnest, the speaker himself, that even if everything miscarried and everyone stayed away there was still one person who in life’s difficult complications longed for the upbuilding moment of the discourse, the speaker himself.

. . .

Therefore, says the religious person, if you were to see him in some lonely, out-of-the-way place, deserted by everyone and positive that he accomplished nothing by his speaking, if you saw him there you would see him just as inwardly moved as ever; if you heard his discourse, you would find it as powerful as always, guileless, uncalculating, unenterprising, you would comprehend that there was one person it was bound to upbuild – the speaker himself.  He will not become weary of speaking, for attorneys and speakers who have secular aims or worldly importance with regard to eternal aims become weary when what they accomplish cannot be counted on their fingers, when crafty life does not delude them with the illusion of having accomplished something, but the religious speaker always has his primary aim: the speaker himself. (Stages on Life’s Way, 463-465)

However one might interpret this suggestion more broadly I am coming to see it as a fair characterization of Kierkegaard’s authorship.  Through the various pseudonyms that he employs and often brings in conversation with each other (particularly in CUP) one is let in on what Kierkegaard was interested in no matter the audience.  No doubt he was affected by his literary reception or lack of it but I still get the impression he would have done this work even if he did not have the means to publish them or to the extent he could carve out time to do it.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that there is an appropriate ‘selfishness’ that is the best way we can possibly hope to love our neighbour.  This selfishness can keep us from objectifying our neighbour,  keep us from vanity, and allow us a creative productivity freed from external ends.  Life is never so uncomplicated but I see this route as far more inspiring, liberating and motivating than duty and law.  It is the appropriate inverse of what we commonly perceive as Jesus’s call.  Jesus called us to lose our lives that they might be found.  But what is life lost?  Might it not be the one constructed by local law, custom and structural power?  To lose it then is to find it in the selfishness of particularity and in the process see your neighbour through those new eyes.