Practice in Christianity by Soren Kierkegaard

Author:Soren Kierkegaard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Classics, Kierkegaard
ISBN: 9780691020631
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1968-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

VI [XII 213]

Lord Jesus Christ, you did not come to the world to be served109 and thus not to be admired either, or in that sense worshiped. You yourself were the Way and the Life—and you have asked only for imitators [Efterfølgere].110 If we have dozed off into this infatuation, wake us up, rescue us from this error of wanting to admire or adoringly admire you instead of wanting to follow you and be like [ligne] you.

John 12:32: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself.

111In Christendom, sermons, lectures, and speeches are heard often enough about what is required of an imitator of Christ, about the implications of being an imitator of Christ, what it means to follow Christ, etc. What is heard is generally very correct and true; only by listening more closely does one discover a deeply hidden, un-Christian, basic confusion and dubiousness. The Christian sermon today has become mainly “observations”:112 Let us in this hour consider; I invite my listeners to observations on; the subject for our consideration is, etc. But “to observe” can mean in one sense to come very close to something, namely, to what one wishes to observe; in another sense, it signifies keeping very distant, infinitely distant, that is, personally. When one shows a painting to a person and asks him to observe it, or when in a business transaction [XII 214] someone looks at [betragte], for example, a piece of cloth, he steps very close to the object, in the latter case even picks it up and feels it—in short, he comes as close to the object as possible, but in this very same movement he in another sense leaves himself entirely, goes away from himself, forgets himself, and nothing reminds him of himself, since it is he, after all, who is observing the painting and the cloth and not the painting and the cloth that are observing him. In other words, by observing I go into the object (I become objective) but I leave myself or go away from myself (I cease to be subjective). In this manner, by means of its favorite way of observing what is the essentially Christian, which is just by “observation” and “observations,” the sermon presentation has abolished what Christianly is decisive in the sermon presentation—the personal: this You and I, the speaker and the one being spoken to; this, that the one who is speaking is himself personally in motion, a striver, and likewise the one spoken to, whom he therefore stirs up, encourages, admonishes, and warns, but all with respect to a striving, a life; this, that the speaker will continually not go away from himself but come back to himself and will help the listener, not to go away from himself but to come back to himself. In our day, the sermon presentation has itself first totally disregarded, and subsequently has contributed to its being totally forgotten, that the Christian truth cannot really be the object of “observations.

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