Lessons from Kierkegaard

"The Inviter really thought that sin is man's ruin." - Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

One of the more curious developments these days on the road to relativism is the attempt made by various Christian sects to extract the reality of sin from Christianity. Sure, even the most watered down Christian will hold that murder, or snatching an old lady's purse are "sins," something one simply shouldn't do. It's just not very nice, after all. (Precisely how "sin" is defined and understood by the New Age Christian is still unclear to me.) Malcolm Muggeridge made a good point when he said that Original Sin is, at the same time, the least popular and yet most conspicuously obvious of Christian dogmas. In the arena of ethics, especially sexual ethics, there really is no such thing as going too far, to the point of committing a sin, according the sufficiently sanctimonious, culturally sensitive Christian. Consent is the infallible sanction for a fellow to do whatever the heck he wants with his body.

I am paging through Søren Kierkegaard's fabulous book, Training in Christianity and I am finding his reflections on the demands of Christianity incredibly refreshing. His book stands as a much-needed bucket of cold water tossed on the cadre of ubiquitous revisionist theologians tirelessly scheming to gut Christianity of its essential teachings. Kierkegaard's observations are so direly needed in this world of Designer Christianity, where, more and more, folks in society are acclimating themselves to the dangerous (and blasphemous) opinion that Christianity is basically the equivolant of a paper doll religion, where one is at total liberty to accessorize it, dressing it up or down, depending on a personal whim or passion.

Addressing the youth of the world in the preface to YouCat, the new catechism for youth, Pope Benedict XVI writes, "This supplement to the catechism does not flatter you; it does not offer easy solutions; it calls for a new life on your part; it presents to you the message of the Gospel as the 'precious pearl' (Matthew 13:45) for which there is need to give everything..." Much like the Holy Father, Kierkegaard reminds the reader that Christianity, far from being a religion of ease, fancy and comfort, places serious, heavy demands on the individual, demands which require great sacrifices that come from the very depths of one's soul.

He [God] will not suffer Himself to be transformed by men and be a nice human God: He will transform men, and that He wills out of love. ... Christianity came into the world as the absolute-not for consolation, humanly understood; on the contrary, it speaks again and again of the sufferings which a Christian must endure, or which a man must endure to become and to be a Christian, sufferings he can well avoid merely by refraining from being a Christian.

These citations from the pope and Kierkegaard are a far cry from the ersatz, do-it-yourself brand of Christianity in vogue today. Modern, feel-good Christianity, which really isn't authentic Christianity at all, never talks about this kind of hard decision making, self-renunciation (what Kierkegaard calls "abandon" and "divine compassion"), and the trials and struggles against self will. Rather, this newfangled perversion of Christianity is all about affirming the self will and passions. To deny sufferings and not the self however, is to deny the cross, which is, in essence, to deny Christianity.