"Whom Shall I Fear?"
One of Kierkegaard's most cutting psychological insights is that fear obstructs true Christian life in a way few sins can. Cowardice, rather than some more glamorous sin, often leads to our greatest moral failures--the greatest of which is perhaps our failure to live fully and deliberately. What is it that holds us back from a fuller engagement with the promises and directives of Christian life? What prevents us from taking risks? Are we finally most frightened of each other and especially of that Kierkegaardian bugaboo, "The Crowd"? How have you been helped or hindered in a leap by the experience and opinions of others?
Suggested Readings in Kierkegaard:
Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, Charles E. Moore, ed. (New York: Orbis, 2003)
78. The Individual (315-19)
64. The Crowd (239-44)
5. The Task (19-22)
6. Against the Crowd (23-24)
9. Purity of Heart (34-38)
13. Truth is the Way (51-54)
Recommended Fiction and Poetry:
Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Ernest Hemingway, "Indian Camp"
Suggested Readings in Kierkegaard:
Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, Charles E. Moore, ed. (New York: Orbis, 2003)
78. The Individual (315-19)
64. The Crowd (239-44)
5. The Task (19-22)
6. Against the Crowd (23-24)
9. Purity of Heart (34-38)
13. Truth is the Way (51-54)
Recommended Fiction and Poetry:
Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Ernest Hemingway, "Indian Camp"
posted by Living the Leap at 2:42 PM
2 Comments:
“I am afraid of taking risks because I’m afraid of being a beggar on the street.”
There are very few, if any, risk taking beggars. But we are all bankrupt. We don’t have anything. A person is a beggar because they have failed at something. We’ve all failed over and over again. We’re all beggars. Where are we left?
Don’t be afraid of taking risks because of fear of bankruptcy. Someone will always give you credit. Screw up a 100 times, a million times, and someone will still always give you credit. What has been forgiven is past, it’s forgotten. Ask for it at your bank’s local branch. Your bank account is infinite, it’s eternal. There is no way that you’ll spend it all- even if your life extended into eternity. So! Invest in sure things, buy junk bonds, invest in sure failures, fly by night operations. If you try to give all of you bank account away, then you will know failure. You will fail if you try to exhaust the grace of God. I’m sorry, but you are simply not good enough at sin to exceed God’s grace. God gets a good laugh at our silly pride when we think so. It’s like jumping off furniture into a big pile of pillows. You can’t hit the floor. But this is a hard lesson, so we need many many encounters with grace to see that our bank account is infinite. And we need to give others many many encounters with grace. Jesus is my bank. And he will never turn down a loan application.
If you had a million dollars, what would you do?
I have a comment on fear. I’ve heard that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Others say love’s opposite is fear. I think both statements are true because fear and indifference are related. The fear of being taken for a fool and having to wear the hot face of shame we all learned as children when we were laughed at for being what we were—children. It didn’t take me long to learn to be what I wasn’t. I became indifferent to my real self to the extent that I needed to be born again from above, outside, to start to become again who and what I was: a really big child this time and not to be messed with by the petty powerful. And as a really big kid of the kingdom I can be less indifferent to the weak and maybe even make up some of the in the red difference in their lives.
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