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The Single Individual ‘…with invisible letters behind every word in Holy Scripture a disturbing notice confronts (the reader) – for there it reads: go and do likewise.’ Works of Love
If you grew up in Christian churches since childhood, like I did, you may have played games in Sunday School. The games were usually centered on learning something about the Bible and in one way or another involved competition. One popular game, at least in the Northeast part of America, was the sword drill. Perhaps you played it as well, and have memories of something similar to this … The classroom was a damp one tucked in the corner of a dying Baptist church outside of Philadelphia. To my left and right there formed a haphazard circle of other pre-adolescent Christians, each wearing a slightly different shade of khaki pants. We sat in our metal folding chairs, our trembling hands held tightly to our Bibles, ready for action at the call. We waited in suspense. Seconds felt like hours. Cheap candy was at stake. ‘Matthew 28:19!’ our teacher ordered. We all hastily shuffled the thin paper that comprised the pages of our Bibles, franticly searching for the verse. I don’t remember who won, but whoever it was stood proud and read the passage,
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likely caring more about being a sword drill winner than about the contents of the verse. We were ten, after all. It’s funny how much a sword drill mentality to the application of scripture has followed us from childhood into adulthood. Contemporary evangelicalism, for all its success, has centered on possessing the correct beliefs not only about scripture, but on life’s more complicated issues. Sadly, the ‘answers’ given are often reached with the same speed and certainty as the proud young sword drill winner. A fun game for a child has led into a rather absolute attitude at an adult level. I can’t decide if the world is as diverse as the colors of the rainbow or filled with many shades of grey. Either way, it’s not the easy black and white world that our churches have so often painted. And it’s time we started acting accordingly. My family and friends who know me best are not surprised that I am writing a book so heavily influenced by Søren Kierkegaard’s ideas. I’ve long said that Kierkegaard is the person who knows me best. It’s an odd claim given that the famous ‘Father of Existentialism’ died about 150 years prior to my birth. Yet the more I study Kierkegaard, the more convinced I am that he is the thinker for our time. Kierkegaard’s criticism on the Christian society of his day was sharp and needed, despite being unappreciated in his own time. As we will see through this book, his words are as poignant for twenty-first-century America as they were for nineteenth-century Denmark. It is my hope through this book that Kierkegaard, as baffling as he often can be, can be used to provide substantive guidance to our contemporary conversations and increasingly small, pluralist world. Kierkegaard understood the complexity of living and grappled with the daunting way that life confronted us. The Method Today’s Christianity is a corporate one. It centers agreement of doctrine and morals as the binding force of what makes 14
The Single Individual
one a Christian. Kierkegaard believed Christianity centers the individual. That is to say, to be a Christian is an individual choice - for you and for me – to make and integrate into our lives. While many incorrectly confuse Kierkegaard as making a claim that makes Christianity seem individualistic, what he is instead advancing is that the decision to be a Christian is one we must all make for ourselves in light of our individual lives. Christianity demands the life of the single individual. Kierkegaard is the single individual. I am the single individual. And so are you. For those who might remember Kierkegaard from an intro to philosophy class in college, this emphasis on the individual should not be surprising. After all, Kierkegaard is an existential philosopher. You may be asking, what is existentialism? That’s a fair question, although perhaps the wrong question to ask. Existentialism is not easily definable. Providing an agreed upon definition is challenging. Existentialism is evasive. Have you ever been in a room with a fly zipping around? You swat at it through the air, but no matter how close you get, it seems to escape? That’s existentialism. It’s this branch of philosophy that comes and goes but is never caught by our desire to define. If the question of what existentialism is continues to zip past us, the better question to ask is what do existentialists do. This question gets more traction. Existentialists make philosophy more concrete, about how we live each and every day. Common themes among existential thinkers are about freedom of choice, the meaning (or lack thereof) of life, and how to live with a purpose, as well as what that purpose might be. Questions based on these themes is precisely why existentialism cannot and should not be reduced to a rigid definition. That would be restrictive to what these thinkers do, Kierkegaard included. These themes also provide insight into why Kierkegaard gravitated to this concept of the single individual. The answer to these questions will vary from person to person. Indirectly, Kierkegaard embraced the beautiful diversity of humanity. 15
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Indirect Communication With the single individual the focus of Christianity, Kierkegaard forms his entire authorship in order to wrestle with the fundamental issue facing us all: how to become a Christian. His approach is rather … unusual. He writes under the guise of various pseudonyms. If you were to take all of Kierkegaard’s books and place them in linear order, you’d see the progression of his thought through the various pseudonyms with each leading to what is called the ‘Christian writings.’ Unlike its traditional usage, the use of the pseudonym is not meant to hide Kierkegaard’s identity as the author of many of his books. To the contrary, at the time of publication, most knew it was Kierkegaard who authored these books. Through the use of the pseudonyms, Kierkegaard created an entire personality to go along with the stage of belief (or disbelief) of Christianity each pseudonym represents. The pseudonyms toil with some aspect, be it faith, or truth, or selfhood, related to Christianity, pondering whether or not to incorporate Christianity into daily living. The process of faith is a difficult one – the most important choice one makes in life, in Kierkegaard’s view. The pseudonyms make this difficulty more relatable and present than if Kierkegaard had just written under his name. They offer diversity of perspective and of thought. They represent the deeply personal element that faith requires. That is precisely why faith is difficult. In The Point of View for my Work as an Author, a book in which Kierkegaard provides an explanation to the labyrinth that is his authorship, he writes, ‘the problem with the whole authorship: becoming a Christian.’1 The pseudonyms invite the reader on the journey to discover the topic at hand. And for this reason, the communication is considered indirect. Kierkegaard has wisdom that he wants to impart on his reader, but is communicating indirectly through the 1 Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author: A Report to History, trans. Walter Lowrie. New York: Harper & Row, 1962, p. 13.
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use of his pseudonyms and their perspective to make the reader individually grapple with how to integrate to their own lives. Perhaps a mainstream example will help. For years, comedian Stephen Colbert portrayed an ignorant, conservative version of himself on the American program, The Colbert Report. Colbert’s ‘pseudonym’ helped his viewers understand his point of view – often in outlandish (and funny!) ways. Colbert’s tool to effectively use satire to embolden the caricature of himself is similar to Kierkegaard’s use of irony to make his pseudonyms work. Kierkegaard lived in Denmark in what is historically known as Christendom – a state in which all citizens are ‘Christian’ regardless of whether or not they practice Christianity in one form or another. Christendom deeply troubled Kierkegaard. As he saw it, Christendom did not possess the essence of what it means to be a Christian, and likewise elevated a false Christianity to a state of power. Those in Christendom were under an ‘illusion’. This illusion, Kierkegaard says, ‘can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed.’2. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms help expose the illusions of false Christianity in his nineteenth-century Denmark. I think they can likewise serve a similar purpose for twenty-first-century Western Christianity. As will be evident throughout this book, Kierkegaard contends that Christianity transcends dogmatic religion, and it is certainly more than a set of required cognitive claims to which one must ascend. Christianity is an experience, something which we must choose to live each day. Christianity is, as the saying goes, an ‘idea with legs.’ Christianity loses its essence if it is not lived out, specifically in a way that challenges our desires and preferences.
2
Ibid., p. 24.
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Theological Correctness In many ways, living Christianly has been reduced to holding correct beliefs. The present age is an age in which many feel the need to assert our rightness on a vast number of topics. This urge is heightened by the plethora of opinions and stories seen via social media outlets. Be it a quick ‘thumbs up’ to something we like, or the response made to a post in haste, it seems that many are compelled to contribute and add their voice. When I was in graduate school, it was hammered into us that there was a sound objective argument for nearly every subject, and certainly so when it came to issues of religion. So, I took to Facebook or Twitter to make my case on various socio-religious issues as they became the hot topics before fading into internet obscurity. I was convinced I could convince. Conversations rarely worked out as I had planned. I either became frustrated that the other person(s) would not ascent to my ‘clearly superior’ reasoning or I disregarded them as unreasonable people unable to see truth. Kierkegaard would be most dissatisfied with my approach. In his view, Christianity is not a set of claims that someone could be argued into. Instead, it is a matter of choice that each individual has to apply. Later in Point of View, Kierkegaard admits, ‘It is impossible for me to compel a person to accept an opinion, a conviction, a belief. But one thing I can do: I can compel him to take notice.’3 In addition to the perspectives that the pseudonyms provide, they also invite empathy into conversations about Christianity. Kierkegaard writes, ‘one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there. This is the secret of helping others.’4 By writing as pseudonyms, Kierkegaard is putting himself into the shoes of others and trying to see a different perspective for himself. 3 4
Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 27.
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This is the invitation made to the readers as well. Kierkegaard’s method not only offers perspective, but offers empathy for those in similar situations and stages of life. The Church has become a place of judgment and criticism, especially of those whose beliefs differ from our own. Disagreement is met with admonishment. Admonishment creates fissures in our communities. Richard Rohr writes the following on disagreement, ‘…we get so upset. We don’t know how to recognize friends, and we create enemies for no good reason.’5 In conversations about what we believe to be true, about what we are so passionately motivated by, we forget to be empathetic to the person we are engaging. In that same Baptist church I referenced at the beginning of the chapter I learned a classic Christian song. In it was a refrain that went ‘they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love …’. It is this Christian love, if lived out, that Kierkegaard says is compelling about Christianity. Yet the song is a double-edged sword, and works equally as both an attractive appeal and ugly distaste for Christianity. That is, if Christians scream from the rooftops ‘We are Christians!’ yet fail to embody the captivating virtues that Jesus preaches in the Gospels, hypocrisy results, and worse, to the eyes of the world the life of Christ appears as a deception. The world recognizes our lack of love. In Luke’s Gospel, we are introduced to the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan. Here, a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus, in typical fashion, responds with a question, here asking what the Torah commands. The lawyer answers correctly, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;
5 Richard Rohr and Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance. New Kensington, Pennsylvania: Whitaker House, p. 140.
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and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ‘You have answered correctly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’6 Jesus instructs the lawyer to do this, and eternal life shall meet the man. The lawyer, apparently dissatisfied with Jesus’ unambiguous command, asks the question: who is my neighbor. If you’ve spent your entire life in evangelical settings like I have, you know the answer to be the obvious everyone. Interestingly enough, Jesus does not answer the lawyer’s question. I surmise that it is because Jesus predicts our easy ‘everyone’ answer. Instead, Jesus gives the Parable of the Good Samaritan which provides the answer to the question the lawyer should have instead asked: What sort of neighbor shall we be? The Samaritan is the loving neighbor, the neighbor who allows Christ’s love to transcend cultural barriers and recognizes the inherent worth in each individual. This is the model of love Christians are commanded to emulate. As difficult as it may be to embody, the command Christ gives is quite clear: love your neighbor as yourself. Kierkegaard’s brilliant analysis of this command will be discussed in much greater detail in chapter seven. For our present purposes, attention first needs placed on a rather heavy indictment from Kierkegaard on a lack or absence of love. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. It’s obvious that Kierkegaard is critical of the Christianity of his time. I surmise that he would find some troubling similarities about how Christians live and treat others if he were alive today. It’s important to note Kierkegaard was not critical for the sake of being critical, a lovely departure from today’s millennials (I say 6
Luke 10:27-28.
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that as one of them!). He was deeply concerned that Christianity had turned into something contrary to the life and words of Jesus, a system of belief devoid of living Christianly. Kierkegaard’s ‘problem,’ that of becoming a Christian, is one Christian communities must face again 200 years after his birth. Regardless of a different time and context, there are many conversations occurring in our world, and in Christianity in particular, that are strikingly similar to those Kierkegaard had (or wanted to have) in his Denmark. Each chapter of this book brings Kierkegaard into conversation with us as they relate to this problem of becoming a Christian. The foundation for Kierkegaard’s problem in our context is the dissonance between the moment one ‘accepts Jesus’ into one’s life and the subsequent requirement to live Christlike. A few years ago in one of my Introduction to Theology classes, a student posed a question about halfway through the course during a section focused on theories of atonement. ‘Professor Stark,’ the student began, ‘all this stuff we are covering. It seems so… abstract.’ In the conversation that followed the student provided further elucidation to his comment. The many theological ideas and methods we were studying seemed too distant from Christ’s command to go into the world and make disciples of the nations. This young college freshman was on to something. He recognized the disconnect between the attempt to understand something cognitively and understanding how to live. Systematic Theology is a wonderful benefit to its studiers. It breaks down difficult ideas and beliefs into manners we can better comprehend. The common pitfall, however, is the heightening of what can be called ‘theological correctness.’ This results in the mentality that the sign of a good Christian is holding the correct beliefs, or at least the beliefs that are communally accepted. A misunderstanding of this proportion is significant as it often has negative practical implications for our communities, both internal and external to Christianity. With this mindset, we tend to determine who is 21
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deemed worthy enough to be in community based on a series of intellectual check-marks. Philosopher René Descartes wrote perhaps one of the most famous statements of all time, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Christian culture seems to have caught on and added a slight revision: ‘I think well, therefore I am good.’ Let me be clear: I am not criticizing theological studies and the pursuit of a robust theology. Holding a sound theology is a fine endeavor stemming from a virtuous desire to deeply know what one believes. Growing in knowledge in this manner can enrich both the intellectual and spiritual parts of life. However, the temptation many fall prey to is the failure to recognize that faithbased beliefs are largely interpretations, no matter the probability of those interpretations being accurate. This often results in a hubris that fosters the mentality that my position is the correct position, and if others could only see how right my position is, then everything would go more smoothly. Kierkegaard fervently objected to Christianity being an intellectual ascent. As we will examine in chapters two and three, faith in the Kierkegaardian framework sometimes works against reason. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus finds himself in a tangled mess as he attempts to rationalize the incarnation of Christ, a doctrine that is called ‘the absurd.’ Here, Climacus writes, ‘The question of what Christianity is must not be confused with the objective question about the truth of Christianity.’7 Something might be understood cognitively, but not lived-out accordingly. Climacus is applying this dissonance to Christianity. Christians might have a perfect box of theological rightness and never understand what it means to be a Christian. Faith is not the quickness to find the passage and have the upper hand in theological debate. It’s not a sword-drill where the quickest draw is the first with the right answer. Christianity is 7 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 371.
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true through embodiment. Living the life Christ commanded is precisely the narrative embedded throughout all of scripture. It is from that reality where Kierkegaard implores those who claim to be Christian to pay attention to each word in all of scripture because the command is the same throughout: Go in love. I realize this first chapter has been heavy. To help you brace for it, the following two chapters will be as well. Kierkegaard is difficult to grapple with, and his words are often critical. Philosopher Walter Kaufmann once said, ‘criticism is a splendid thing, as long as we are spared.’8 Criticism will likely be difficult, but Kierkegaard’s focus is for upbuilding. We cannot grow past complacency unless we first know where the problem is founded. We have become so accustomed to framing Jesus into our own image that at times we need another figure who gets Jesus to point out where we are blind. Kierkegaard is that person for our age. This book started as a series of conversations between Kierkegaard and myself, and ultimately some tumultuous but edifying talks with God. It is my hope that this book does the same for you. Doing my best to model Kierkegaard, I do not purport to be an expert on these topics. The application of this material is entirely up to you, my reader. I write specifically for those nauseated with endless talks of culture wars and one-upmanship in regard to positioning before God. We are all in this together, but on our own unique journeys. Each journey will face unique challenges and conversations. I hope Kierkegaard meets you like he met me.
8 Walter Kaufmann, introduction to The Present Age by Søren Kierkegaard. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010, p. xiv.
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Truth ‘Truth is Subjectivity.’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Sign Here _______ for Truth In my years as both a student and as a professional in Christian education, I have signed documents, usually upon admission or on hire, indicating that I adhere to the held beliefs of the institution. Some of statements are quite general and open. They simply read as basic Christian statements of faith, such as the identity of Jesus Christ. Others were much more complex. They involved specific beliefs of a particular denomination in which I was being considered for employment. I remember one particular statement that seemed, indirectly, to require agreement with the political positions of a major party in the United States. I asked some questions, received clarification, and then went and did my job. Statements of faith are quite common in the Church and in Christian education. Statements of faith are well-intentioned. And when done with good conscience, they can serve a lot of good. They help form the identity of the community and the approach it will take in pursuing its mission. I’ve had the privilege of working for two Christian Reformed schools (one high school, one college). Despite not personally affiliating with that denomination, I appreciated their focus on the holistic, redemptive