The importance of understanding your own Christianity
I’m currently about 25% of the way through Søren Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom”, and he has some incredibly interesting things to say about Christianity, the church, the difference between the two, the role of offense and suffering in Christianity, and what all of these should mean to each of us personally.
To help summarize the setting for Kierkegaard’s book, let me pull a summary of the book from Wikipedia:
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard… was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticized both the Hegelianism of his time, and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish church. Much of his work deals with religious problems such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices…
Kierkegaard’s final years were taken up with a sustained, outright attack on the Danish People’s Church by means of newspaper articles published in The Fatherland (Fædrelandet) and a series of self-published pamphlets called The Moment (Øjeblikket).[18] Kierkegaard was initially called to action after Professor Hans Lassen Martensen gave a speech in church in which he called his recently deceased predecessor Bishop Jakob P. Mynster a “truth-witness, one of the authentic truth-witnesses.”[19]
Kierkegaard had an affection towards Mynster, but had come to see that his conception of Christianity was in man’s interest, rather than God’s, and in no way was Mynster’s life comparable to that of a ‘truth-witness.’
A final bit of set up from the commentary at sorenkierkegaard.org:
Throughout his writings, and especially during this period, he maintained that conversion to Christ necessitated a qualitative leap of faith and hence involved the entire person. The Lutheran church, on the contrary, maintained that all Danes were born Lutheran and thus de facto Christians, which reduced to nothing the radical conversion to Christ. It must, however, be said at once, for this is often misunderstood: Kierkegaard’s attack was unusual, since he attacked the Church from within, as a believer.
The important piece of that summary is the last paragraph, and it’s on this that Keirkegaard focuses much of the book. The discussion throughout the book revolves primarily around what it means to truly be a Christian, and furthermore, what it means to be a “witness to the truth” for Christianity. As I’ve been taking notes as I’ve been reading, and here are a few quotes in particular that caught my attention:
Page 25:
Thou who readest this, say to thyself: Was I not in the right, and am I not, in saying that first and foremost everything must be done to make it perfectly definite what is required in the New Testament for being a Christian; that first and foremost everything must be done in order that at least we might become attentive?
Page 26:
We have what one might call a complete inventory of churches, bells, organs, benches, alms-boxes, foot warmers, tables, hearses, etc… A statistician for example, when he had assured himself of the existence of this Christian inventory, would think that he was thoroughly justified in putting into his statistics the statement that the Christian religion is the prevailing one in the land…
I have not the least doubt that every single individual in the nation will be honest enough with God and with himself to say in solitary conversation, “If I must be candid, I do not deny that I am not a Christian in the New Testament sense; if I must be honest, I do not deny that my life cannot be called an effort in the direction of what the New Testament calls Christianity, in the direction of denying myself, renouncing the world, dying from it, etc.; rather the earthly and the temporal become more and more important to me with every year I live.”
Next, a quote from another of Kierkegaard’s works, Practice in Christianity (from which I’ve read only briefly. This is my next to read on my book list.):
Page 106:
for to truly be a Christian… means to be [Christ’s] imitator, yet not a kind of prinked-up, nice-looking successor who makes use of the firm and leaves Christ’s having suffered many centuries in the past; no, to be an imitator means that your life has as much similarity to his as is possible for a human life to have.
I won’t pretend to offer commentary on Kierkegaard’s work here, but I wanted to offer these passages for us all to think about. While I’m still hardly one-fourth of the way through the book, I highly recommend it.
As I think through Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the difference between saying “I am a Christian” and actually living out a truly Christian life, I’m reminded of the following verses. Both of these below I think are of particular importance when reading Kierkegaard’s thoughts on Christianity and the role of suffering.
That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
This verse in Romans offers a fantastically succinct snippet of the topic of that entire book, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest the entire book of Romans as applicable for this discussion in particular.
The Narrow and Wide Gates
13“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
A Tree and Its Fruit
15“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. 21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
This last passage, verses 15 through 23 in particular, I think are extremely significant when examining one’s own faith.
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