Kierkegaard's Writings, V by Kierkegaard Søren; Hong Howard V.; Hong Edna H

Author:Kierkegaard, Søren; Hong, Howard V.; Hong, Edna H. [Kierkegaard, Søren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1990-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

HE MUST INCREASE; I MUST DECREASE [IV 157]

JOHN 3:29-30

This joy of mine is full. He must increase; I must decrease.

An old saying states that everyone would rather see the rising sun than the setting sun. Why everyone? Do you suppose this includes someone whose sun it is that is setting? But why shouldn’t he? The rising sun shines for him just as for all the others—indeed, perhaps shines most brilliantly to his eyes precisely because its luster obscuringly hastens the setting. If a person could ask such a question seriously, he presumably would be so young that he would not understand at all what is being discussed, or so inexperienced that he would deceive himself with an extraordinary and fancied anticipation of the magnanimity with which he would do great deeds in his life; or he might be a man who was trying to toughen his soul the way others toughen their bodies to an ugly and bad toughness; or, finally, a man who used the hardening of the understanding and the cold inflexibility of its conclusions to ridicule people, used against them what he did not use against himself, preached this wisdom to them for their instruction, although he himself nevertheless did not believe it, indeed, even during the preaching kept a back door open through which his secret vanity, like the woman of ill repute (James 2:25), let in the spies of vanity. Everyone else would presumably understand what is being discussed and really understand that self-knowledge is a difficult matter; although it is easy to understand the rest of the world, the understanding suddenly changes very [IV 158] substantially when it pertains to oneself. This should never be forgotten, and just as the child uses a pointer in order not to miss a single letter, so a person should not, if life is to have deeper meaning, become accustomed to understand everything in general, should not be in a hurry to understand everything, but should patiently follow the pointer that continually points to himself. And even though in every other sense it is just a figurative expression to say that we see the finger of God in life, a person who is concerned about himself understands it quite literally, because all deeper and more inward self-knowledge is under divine guidance and continually sees the finger of God that points to him. To miss one letter confuses the whole word, and yet this confusion is nothing compared with the confusion that occurs when a person, in understanding life in its totality and the history of the human race, skips over one human being—himself—since the individual human being is, after all, not like a single letter, in itself a meaningless part of the word, but is the whole word. And yet this happens very frequently, and therefore very little is learned from life. Even one who lives the most secluded and forgotten life is bound to have a great abundance of examples, admonitions, warnings, and disciplines if only he

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