More Kierkegaard: Thoughts on American Christianity

No, Kierkegaard himself didn’t have any thoughts on American Christianity, but as a citizen of a country (Denmark) where becoming a citizen also meant instantly becoming a Christian, even his less explicit thoughts on the relationship between a state and faith hold relevance for us. Here’s a quote from Problem III of ‘Fear and Trembling’:

“The ethical is the universal and as such in turn the divine. It is therefore right to say that every duty, after all, is duty to God, but if no more can be said, then one is saying as well that I really have no duty to God. Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into relation to God.”

In other words, saying “I’m doing these things for God, man” too often becomes an abstract concept. We don’t actually encounter God. Actions like that, and living with a duty to God (we might use the words “worship” or “constant prayer”) can become about detaching ourselves from the action and dedicating them elsewhere. If I see my homework as a duty to God in an abstract sense, then I fail to see what the homework itself might do to draw me closer to God. (For example, reading Kierkegaard for a religion class has provoked conviction in my own life).

I’ll let Kierkegaard say a little more (this directly follows the above quote): “For instance, it is a duty to love one’s neighbor. It is a duty by its being referred to God, but in the duty I do not enter into a relation to God but to the neighbor I love. If I say then in the connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really only stating a tautology insofar as ‘God’ here is understood in an entirely abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. the duty … God becomes an invisible vanishing point, an impotent thought, his power being only in the ethical, which completes existence.”

For Kierkegaard, faith is all about transcending the ethical. We can certainly apply that to a legalistic brand of Christianity. Let’s begin to pursue a relationship in knowing God through what we do, rather than viewing what we do through some abstract lens.

~ by ericmonek on November 12, 2008.