Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Provocations

Instead of reviewing the anthology of Kierkegaard quotes I have read, I will just produce the ones that touched me most right here.

"If one who lives in the midst of Christendom goes up to the house of God, the house of the true God, with the true conception of God in his knowledge, and prays, but prays in a false spirit; and one who lives in an idolatrous community prays with the entire passion of the infinite, although his eyes rest upon the image of an idol: where is the most truth? The one prays in truth to God though he worships an idol; the other prays falsely to the true God, and hence in fact worships an idol."

"Christ says: Do according to what I say - then you shall know. Consequently, decisive action first of all. By acting, your life will come into collision with existence and then you will know the reality of grace. Nowadays we have turned the whole thing around. Christianity has become a worldview. Thus, before I get involved I must first justify it. Good night to Christianity! Now doubt has surely been conquered. And this doubt can never be halted by reasons, which only nourish doubt. No, doubt can only be halted by imitation."

"That Jesus Christ died for my sins certainly shows how great his grace is, but it also shows how great my sins are."

"The anguished conscience alone understands Christ."

"Is this the test: to love Christ more dearly than mother and father, than gold and goods, than honor and reputation? No, the test is this: to love the Savior more than your sin."

"That God could create beings free over against himself is the cross that philosophy could not bear but upon which it has remained hanging."

"The greatest danger for a child, where religion is concerned is not that his father or teacher should be an unbeliever, not even his being a hypocrite. No, the danger lies in their being pious and God-fearing, and in the child being convinced thereof, but that he should nevertheless notice that deep within there lies a terrible unrest. The danger is that the child is provoked to draw a conclusion about God, that God is not infinite love."

"Today's Christianity is a matter of being elevated for an hour once a week just as in the theater. It is now used to hearing everything without having the remotest notion of doing something."

"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."

"That a person wants to sit and brood and stare at his sin and is unwilling to have faith tht it is forgiven is itself a further guilt. It simply ignores what Christ has done."

"Only through the consciousness of sin is one admitted; to want to enter by any other road is high treason agains Christianity."

"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 thives do cries out already here on earth."

"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."

"The opposite of sin is faith. And this is one of the most decisive definitions of all Christianity - that the opposie of sin is not virture but faith."

"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."

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