2/17/2004 09:18:00 PM|||Andrew|||I'd like to take this chance to quote Kierkegaard again, this time in much greater length. I want; I must preface it by making clear that this is not in particular Kierkegaard himself speaking; it is him speaking through one of his characters, so to speak. The quotation comes from the first portion of Either/Or, from a character called A, a character deeply aesthetic in his world view. He presents a ghastly image...

"Let others complain that the times are evil. I complain that they are wretched, for they are without passion. People's thoughts are as thin and fragile as lace, and they themselves as pitiable as lace-making girls. The thoughts of their hearts are too wretched to be sinful. It is perhaps possible to regard it as sin for a worm to nourish such thoughts, but not for a human being, who is created in the image of God. Their desires are staid and dull, their passions drowsy. ... That is why my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There one still feels that those who speak are human beings; there they hate, there they love, there they murder the enemy, curse his descendants through all generations--there they sin."

While I must of course disagree with A when he says that the evil people point out in the world is not sin, I think that Kiekegaard, through his character, is making a valid point by shocking his reader. One way to view the distasteful world around us is to see it as a world gone mad, a world that has rejected the good gifts of God in favor of man made promises and gods. And of course, this is exactly how Paul makes his case in Romans 1. In fact, it reminds me of an idea called Christian Hedonism, notably promulgated by John Piper. Rather than thinking of sin as something better that God withholds from the Christian, it is more accurate to consider sin as something lesser; God holds out so much more to the believer. We should be sad that the unbeliever settles for "thoughts [that] are as thin and fragile as lace."

I'm reminded of another Biblical passage as I read through the latter part of A's statement, when Christ addresses the church of Laodicea:

"3:15 ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot! 3:16 So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth!"

It seems to me that A has somehow got it right when he says that he prefers the apologetic sinners of the Old Testament to the dispassionate masses of the modern age. And just imagine with me for a moment! If Kierkegaard, through A, is writing a polemic against the people of his time, how much more does that apply to today! People of the modern age, (I can't stop now, even for fear of offending some) particularly in the US have no passion, whether for good or ill. The church in the US, by and large, is emminently summed up in the term: lukewarm. Where is excitement for God? Where is a bold preaching of his truths? Instead I see complacency, a over concern with tolerance, and a boring, weak view of the LORD God Almighty. May A's polemic rain down upon the world, upon the US, and upon the church in the US most of all.|||107708149118138423|||