Faith

- Soren Kierkegaard -

 

Endless volumes have been written to show how one is to recognize what true Christianity is. This can be done in a far simpler way. Nature is acoustic. Pay attention to what the echo answers, and you will know at once what is what.

When one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers: "Glorious, profound, brilliant, articulate Christian, you should be exalted with high praise," know that this signifies that this preaching is a base lie. Though it is not absolutely certain that he who walks with chains around his ankles is in fact a criminal (for there are many cases when the powers that be have condemned an innocent man), it is eternally certain that he who by preaching Christianity wins honor and prestige is a liar, a deceiver, who at one point or another has falsified the truth.   It is simple: It is impossible to preach Christianity in truth without having to suffer for it in this world.

When one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers, "He is mad," or "What nonsense," know then there are considerable elements of truth in his preaching. However, this is still not the Christianity of the New Testament. He may have hit the mark, but he does not press hard enough, especially not by the preaching of his life.

But when one preaches Christianity in such a way that the echo answers, "Away with that man, he does not deserve to live," know that this is the Christianity of the New Testament.

Capital punishment is the penalty for preaching Christianity as it truly is. Does Christ s life indicate anything different? Hating oneself to love God; hating everything in which one s life consists, everything to which human beings cling. Capital punishment is the penalty for preaching Christianity in character. Preaching less, appealing to forms of the interesting, the relevant, or the controversial, is nothing but a religious falsification.

 

Christianity is not so much related to transforming the intellect but to transforming the will. But this transformation is the most painful of all operations, comparable to a vivisection. And because it is so appalling, to become a Christian was changed long ago. Now it is only a matter of remodelling the intellect.

 

What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be sacrificed.

 

To see yourself is to die, to die to all illusions and all hypocrisy. It takes great courage to dare look at yourself something which can take place only in the mirror of the Word. You must want only the truth, neither vainly wish to be flattered nor self-tormentingly want to be made a pure devil.

 

Yes, who in all the world can or dares risk involvement with God when you consider that your serial number in the race is, for example, No. 27,000,000,000 and so on? But you ought not think this way. You should simply shut your eyes, think only of God, become a poor single human being to whom God s infinite love gives childlike openness, and above all rejoice in the fact that every human being has permission to do this yes, he shall do this.

Oh, that you would learn to think humanly of God! I do not mean that you should become buddy-buddy with God. No, first of all, first the infinite conception of God s infinite majesty, and then, then the next, the childlike openness to become involved with him earnestly and in truth. Unfortunately Christianity has made God so sublime that in the long run we really have spirited him away and smuggled him out of life.

 

We clever humans prefer to treat faith as if it were something finite, as if it were something for the betterment and enjoyment of temporal life. It is supposed to bring us meaning and fulfilment, happiness and direction. This kind of religion is nothing but a deception. If you were honest and if you would look at it more closely, you would see that this really is contempt for religion, a dangerous and culpable irreligion. True faith insists on being an either/or. To treat it as if it were like drink and food is fundamentally to scorn it. But this is precisely the way of mediocrity.

 

I will work on with energy and not waste time looking back, not like the man who was caught in quicksand and began calculating how far down he had already sunk, forgetting that all the while he was sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have discovered, not looking back as did Lot s wife, but remembering that it is a hill up which we have to struggle.

 

A golden key, it is said, fits every lock. But decision and determination also unlock doors, and that is why they are called resolution. With resolution the door is opened to the noblest powers of the soul.

 

As a rule, to go to school means that I go wherever the teacher is. Spiritually it means that I act decisively. At once, there is the teacher. I desire to be educated spiritually and yet I do not desire to act decisively? Nonsense!

 

It is a proud thing to dive into danger, and it is a proud thing to battle with untold horrors, but it is also wretched to have an abundance of intentions and a poverty of action, to be rich in truths and poor in virtues.

 

Let me tell a story. Somewhere in the Orient there lived a poor old couple. They possessed nothing but poverty.  Naturally, anxiety about the future increased as they grew older. They did not assail heaven with their prayers, for they were too pious for that; but nevertheless they continually cried to heaven for help.

 Then it happened one morning that the wife, going out to the oven, found a precious stone of great size upon the hearth. She immediately showed the stone to her husband, who saw at once that they were well supplied for the rest of their life. A bright future for this old couple what joy! Yet, God-fearing as they were, and content with little, they resolved that since they had enough to live upon for another day, they would sell the jewel not that day, but the following. And then a new life would begin.

That night the woman dreamed that she was transported to paradise. An angel took her around and showed her all the glories an oriental imagination could invent. Then the angel led her into a hall where there were long rows of armchairs adorned with pearls and precious stones, which, the angel explained, were for the devout. Finally the angel showed her the chair that was intended for her. Looking more closely, the woman saw a large jewel was missing from the back of the seat. She asked the angel how that had come about. Now be alert, here comes the story! The angel answered, "That was the precious stone you found on the hearth. You received it in advance, and so it cannot be inserted again." In the morning the woman related the dream to her husband. She felt they should hold on to the stone for a few years longer rather than let the precious stone be absent throughout eternity. And her devout husband agreed.  So, that evening they laid the stone back on the hearth and prayed to God that he would take it back.

In the morning, sure enough, it was gone. Where it had gone the old couple knew: it was now in its right place.

Oh, remember this well! You may perhaps be cunning enough to avoid suffering and adversity in this life, you may perhaps be clever enough to evade ruin and ridicule and instead enjoy all the earth s goods, and you may perhaps be fooled into the vain delusion that you are on the right path just because you have won worldly benefits, but beware, you will have an eternity in which to repent! An eternity in which to repent, that you failed to invest your life upon that which lasts: to love God in truth, come what may, with the consequence that in this life you will suffer under the hands of men.

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself! Even if it were possible in relation to the eternal to take  something in advance, you would yet be deceiving yourself by asking something in advance and gain an eternity in which to repent.

 

It is the Spirit who gives life. The life-giving Spirit is not a direct heightening of our natural powers what blasphemy! How horrible to understand the Spirit in this way!  Christ brings new life! A new life, yes, and this is no platitude such as we use every time something new begins to stir in us. No, it is a new life, literally a new life because, mark this well, death goes in between life and the new life on the other side of death. Yes, that is a new life.

Christianity teaches that you must die. Your power must be dismantled. And the life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you. The first thing this Spirit says is that you must enter into death, you must die to yourself. The life-giving Spirit that is the invitation. Who would not willingly take hold of it? But die first there s the rub!   You must first die to every earthly hope, to every merely human confidence. You must die to your selfishness, and to the world, because it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you. Naturally there is nothing a human being hangs on to so firmly indeed, with his whole self as to his selfishness! Ah, the separation of soul and body at the hour of death is not as painful as being forced to be separated from our flesh when we are alive! Yes, we human beings do not hang on to this physical life as firmly as we do to our selfishness!

What, exactly, does it mean to die to yourself? It is more than not seeing your wish fulfilled or to be deprived of the one that is dearest to you. True, this is painful enough, and selfishness is wounded. But it does not follow that you are dying. No, but personally to shatter your own fulfilled desire, personally to deprive yourself of the dearly desired one who is now your own: this is what it means to wound selfishness at the root, as it was with Abraham when God demanded that he sacrifice Isaac.

Christianity is not what we are all too eager to make it. It is not a quack doctor who is promptly at your service and immediately applies the remedy but then bungles everything. Christianity waits before it applies its remedy. This is Christianity s severity.  It demands a great sacrifice, one which we often despair of  making and can only later see why it was necessary to hold out and wait.

Surely you have experienced, as I have, that when you begin to moan, and say, "I can t take any more," that on the next day you discover that you could. Consider a team of horses that groan and pant, feel exhausted, and feel that a handful of oats is just what is needed. However, they also don t realize that with only a momentary halt the heavily loaded wagon will roll back down the hill and plunge them and driver and everything into the abyss. Is it cruel of the driver that the lashes fall more dreadfully than ever before, especially on this team of horses who are as dear to him as the apple of his eye is this cruel or is it kind? Is the driver cruel when the lashing is finally the only thing that can save the horses from ruin and help them pull through? So it is with dying to yourself and to the world.

But then, my listener, remember that then comes the life-giving Spirit. When? When you are dead to everything else. When does the Comforter come? Not until you have died to your selfishness and come to the end of your own strength. Not until you in love to God have learned to hate yourself, even your ability, not until then can there be talk of the Spirit, of life, of new life.

 

We creep before we learn to walk, and to want to fly is always precarious. To be sure, there are great decisions, but even in regard to them the main thing is to activate your resolution, lest one become so high-flying in the resolution that one forgets to walk.

 

Many have gone astray through not understanding how to continue a good beginning.

 

A conviction is not firmly fixed when everyone presses upon it equally and holds it firm. No, its true stability is revealed when everything is in question.

 

If it is hard to bear the world s persecution, it is harder still to bear the responsibility for not having acted, to stand ashamed in eternity because you did not win the bold confidence that transforms shame into honour.

 

Ah, how many ways there are to choose in the hour of decision!  And yet there is only one true way; the others are deviations.

 

By God s help and by your own faithfulness something good will always come from the uncompromising beginning.

 

Decision is the eternal protest against fictions.

 

Only when he becomes the way, the truth, and the life for you, only then does he become everything to you. Christ must be all or nothing for you. But only when his mighty voice speaks to you and says, "I will be everything to you," will he be everything for you.

 

Nothing, neither the most trifling nor the most important thing, must stand between you and Christ. No, the commitment must be unconditional. Only then can you pray that you won t be treated too unjustly. Committing yourself to Christ, which is a matter of the spirit and of dying to the world, means that you run the risk of Christ making things so tangled for you that you almost despair. This is what is so appalling to the flesh. So must it be, but at the same time remember that Christ is grace, that it is to grace that you can so commit yourself.

 

However tenderly the actor and actress embrace one another and caress one another on stage, it remains only a theatrical union, a theater-marriage. So also in relation to the unconditional. All this thing of "to a certain degree" is theatrical, it grasps an illusion. Only either/or is the embrace that grasps the unconditional.

 

Father in heaven! Teach me to walk in your sight and let not my thoughts and deeds be as strangers from afar paying a brief visit to your mansions. Let me never forget that faith is a life course, so that even if I stand at the farthest border of your kingdom, far away by myself like the publican of old, I only stand with my face toward you with staff in hand ready to go not like him who put his hand to the plough and then turned around.

 

In the world of the spirit, there is neither luck nor chance. The only one who is shut out is the one who shuts himself out. In the world of the spirit, all are invited; if spirit pertains to one single person it pertains to all.

 

In making a choice it is not so much a question of choosing the right as of the energy, the earnestness, the passion with which one chooses. This is how personality is consolidated. Even if a person chooses the wrong, he will nevertheless discover precisely by reason of the energy with which he chose, that he has chosen the wrong.

 

Christianity is not the doctrine of denying oneself. Christianity is to deny oneself.

 

Faith s conflict with the world is not a battle of thought with doubt, thought with thought. It is a battle of character. The person of faith is a person of character who does not insist upon comprehending everything. Now comes the conflict. The world insists that to believe what you cannot comprehend is not only blind obedience but obscurantism, stupidity, and so on. The world wants to alarm the believer against such foolishness. This is precisely why faith is a task for the person of character.

 

Have you lived in such a way that truth was in you, that there was something higher for which you actually suffered? Or has your life revolved around profitable returns?

 

The eternal is acquired in one way, and it is different from everything else precisely because it can be acquired only in one single way. It is the difficult way that Christ indicated by the words: "Small is the gate and narrow the way, that leads to life, and few are they that find it." The comfortable precisely the thing in which our age excels absolutely cannot be applied with respect to an eternal blessedness. When, for example, the thing you are required to do is to walk, it is no use to make the most astonishing inventions in the way of the easiest carriages and to want to transport yourself in these when the task prescribed to you is walking. And if the eternal is the way in which it is acquired, it doesn t do any good to want to alter this way, however admirably, in the direction of comfort. The eternal is acquired only in the difficult way.

 

On the whole there can be no schoolmaster, strictly understood, in the art of existing. With respect to existing, there is only the learner; for anyone who fancies that he is in this respect finished that he can teach others and on top of that himself forgets to exist and to learn is a fool. In relation to existing there is for all persons one schoolmaster existence itself.

 

The essential sermon is one s own existence. A person preaches with this every hour of the day and with power quite different from that of the most eloquent speaker in his most eloquent moment. To let your mouth run with eloquent babbling when such talk is the opposite of your life is in the deepest sense nonsense.

 

It is one thing to introduce a new doctrine into the world, it is something else to live it.

 

All this talk about wanting to know the truth is gibberish, illusion, and hypocrisy. Every person understands the truth a good deal more than he lives it. Why does he not do more, then? Ah, there s the rub!

 

It is one thing to let ideas strive with ideas, to battle and be victorious in a dispute; it is something else entirely to be victorious over your own mind in the battle of life. For however close one battling idea comes to another in life, however close one combatant comes to the other in an argument, all this strife is still at a distance and like shadow-boxing. The measure of a person s fundamental disposition is determined by how far is what he  understands from what he does, how great is the distance between his understanding and his action.

 

It would indeed be a ludicrous contradiction if an existing person asked what Christianity is and then spent his whole life deliberating on that. In that case, when would he ever exist in it?

 

To say that Christianity is empty of content because it is not a doctrine is only chicanery. When a believer exists in faith, his existence has enormous content, but not in the sense of a yield in paragraphs.

 

If an existing person relates himself with passion to eternal happiness, then his life will express the relation. If the eternal does not absolutely transform his existence, then he is not relating himself to it.

 

A speculative thinker has finished on paper and mistakes this for existence.

 

If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.

 

Between understanding and willing lie excuses and evasions.

 

Just as air in a sealed space becomes poisonous, so the imprisonment of reflection develops a culpable resentment if it is not ventilated by action.

 

In the world of spirit, to change place is to be changed yourself.

 

The passion of faith lies not in testifying to an eternal happiness but in transforming one s own existence into a testimony to it.

 

It is in the interest of faith to make a final, absolute decision. It is in the interest of the understanding to keep "deliberation" alive. Just as the police would be embarrassed if there were no crimes, so the understanding is embarrassed if deliberation were completed. Faith wants the absolute; the understanding wants prolongation of thought.

 

Proofs are able to lead someone not to faith, far from it, but to the point where faith might come into existence. At best they are able to help someone become aware and come into the tension where faith breaks forth: Will you believe or will you be offended?

 

Can the absolute be praised, commended, served by reasons? No. Anyone who does this reveals that he is a blockhead who cannot think two thoughts together. "Reasons" transpose the absolute into relativity. The absolute must not be intellectually speculated about in the remotest way, researched, chattered about no, it is the unconditional, so hold your tongue.

 

Faith is the movement of infinity within itself, and it cannot be otherwise. Everything previous is preparatory, preliminary, something which disappears as soon as the conviction arrives. Otherwise, there would be no resting in a conviction, for then to have conviction would mean perpetually to repeat the reasons. Faith itself is the testimony, faith is the justification.

 

Have you seen a ship aground in a spongy bog? It is almost impossible to get it afloat again because it is impossible to drive piles. No pile reaches ground firm enough so that one can rely on it. In just the same way our whole generation is stuck fast in the spongy bog of reason; and there is no grief over it no, there is self-satisfaction and conceit, which always accompanies reason and the sin of reason. Oh, the sins of the heart, the sins of passion how much closer they are to salvation than the sin of intellect!

 

In the New Testament faith possesses an ethical character. The apostle speaks of the obedience of faith. Faith is set to a test, is tested, not by reasons, but by life.

 

God can no more prove his existence by way of something else than he can swear; he has nothing higher than himself to swear by.

 

In teaching a child to walk you get in front of the child and turn towards it. You do not walk alongside the child but are the goal toward which the child is to walk. Even though you standso far away that you cannot reach the child, you stretch out your arms and motion with them as if you already embraced the child, although there is still some distance between you and the child. That much solicitude you have, but more solicitous you cannot be, for then the child does not learn to walk. So it is with Christ. Christ gets in front of us, does not walk beside his disciples, but is himself the goal toward which we are to strive while we are learning to walk alone. There he stands at the goal, turning toward us and stretching out his arms just as a mother does.

 

You must venture out into life, out on the sea, and lift up your voice, even though God does not hear it, and not stand on the shore and watch others fighting and struggling. Only then does the understanding acquire its official sanction. To stand on one leg and prove God s existence is a very different thing from going on your knees and thanking him.

 

Faith is a restless thing. It is health, but stronger and more violent than the most burning fever.

 

The inward person looks not upon the gifts but upon the Giver.

 

Imagine a violinist. If, without having learned the least bit of music, he were to take his seat in the orchestra and right away begin playing, he would not only be disturbed but would disturb others. No, for a long time he practices by himself, alone. As far as possible not a thing disturbs him there; he sits and beats time etc. But his aim is to play with the orchestra. He must be able to tolerate the profusion of the most varied instruments, this interweaving of sounds, and yet be able to attend to his violin and play along just as calmly and confidently as if he were home alone in his room. Oh, this again makes it necessary for him to be by himself to learn to be able to do this but the aim is always that he play in the orchestra. It is the same with faith and the task of living it out.

 

He who loves God without faith reflects upon himself; he who loves God in faith reflects upon God.

 

Ethically speaking, what Abraham planned to do was to murder Isaac. Religiously, however, he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. In this contradiction lies the very anguish that can indeed make anyone sleepless. And yet without that anguish Abraham is not the one he is. Neither would faith be what it is.

 

Resignation by itself does not require faith. It has only to comply with the eternal. It renounces, but does not gain. Faith, however, does not renounce anything. On the contrary, in faith I receive everything. Herein lies the crucial difference. It takes a purely human courage to renounce the world of temporality in order to win eternity; but it takes a humble and paradoxical courage to take hold of what is temporal and to do so for the sake of the eternal. That courage is the courage of faith. Through faith Abraham did not renounce his claim on Isaac. No, through his faith he received Isaac.

 

In relation to Christ, there is only one time, the present. Eighteen hundred years makes absolutely no difference; they neither change Christ nor reveal who he was, for who he is is revealed only to faith.

 

People seem to forget that there is a limit to the passion of making assurances and that this limit lies where the passion of action should begin. And when this is lacking, verbal assurances become the more vehement and shrill, all the more a declaration that what is said is a lie in the assurer s throat.

 

In a verbal dispute there is no essential difference between an admirer and an imitator, except that perhaps the imitator does not have such a copious vocabulary and is not at all inclined to give assurances.

 

Imagine a solitary traveller, a desert wanderer. Almost burned by the heat of the sun, languishing with thirst, he finds a spring. Oh refreshing coolness! Now God be praised, he says and yet it was merely a spring he found. What then is he who finds God!

 

With respect to God, the how is the what. He who does not involve himself with God in the mode of absolute devotion does not become involved with God. In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is "to a certain degree."

 

A second-hand relationship to God is just as impossible and just as nonsensical as falling in love at second-hand.

 

To become involved with God in any other way other than being wounded is impossible.

 

To believe is not an indifferent relation to something that is true. It is an infinitely decisive relationship. The accent always falls upon the relationship.

 

To be a true Christian is so agonizing that it would not be endurable if one did not continually need Christ s second coming and expect it as imminent. It is wonderful that in the Danish language the word nourishment is related to near. To the degree that the need is greater, the nourishment is nearer; the nourishment is in the need, and even if it is not the need, it still is the nearest.

 

Longing is the umbilical cord of the higher life.

 

However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. The authentically human factor is passion. But no generation can learn from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning.

The highest passion in a human being is faith, and here, again, no generation begins other than where its predecessor did. Every generation begins from the beginning, and the succeeding generation comes no further than the previous, provided the latter was true to its task and didn t betray it. Therefore, no generation has the right to say that its task is wearisome, for each generation has its own task.

 

Always remember that the task is toward being able to hold fast to the thought of God more and more for a longer time, not the way a dreamer does, idling and flirting, but by clinging to it within your work. God is pure act.

 

Life very much depends upon being alert to catch one s cue.

 

Christianity cannot be proclaimed by talking but by acting. Nothing is more dangerous than to have a bunch of high-flying feelings and exalted resolutions go off in the direction of merely eloquent speaking. The whole thing then becomes an intoxication, and the deception is that it becomes a glowing mood and that they say, "He is so sincere!" alas, yes, in the sense of the mood of the moment.

Preaching by means of action is more like a fast, and therefore the audience does not flock to it. Such preaching is almost boring, and what is boring is that it promptly makes an issue of doing something about it.

 

Biblical Christianity is concerned with our will, with changing the will. Everything touches this, all the instructions (renouncing the world, denying one s self, dying to the world, and so on, also to hate oneself, to love God) are connected with this fundamental idea: the transformation of the will.

 

Purity of heart: it is a figure of speech that compares the heart to the sea, and why just to this? Simply for the reason that the depth of the sea determines its purity, and its purity determines its transparency. Since the sea is pure only when it is deep, and is transparent only when it is pure, as soon as it is impure it is no longer deep but only surface water, and as soon as it is only surface water it is not transparent. When, on the contrary, it is deeply and transparently pure, then it is all of one consistency, no matter how long one looks at it.

No storm may perturb it. No sudden gust of wind may stir its surface, no drowsy fog may sprawl out over it. No doubtful movement may stir within it; no swift-moving cloud may darken it. Rather it must lie calm, transparent to its depths.

 

He who is not himself a unity is never anything wholly and decisively; he only exists as a shell.

 

We can flee evil either out of fear for punishment like slaves, or out of hope for reward like hirelings, or out of love of God like children.

 

God in heaven, let me rightly feel my nothingness, not to despair over it, but all the more intensely to feel the greatness of your goodness.

 

How shall God be able in heaven to dry up your tears when you have not yet wept?

 

Teach me, oh God, not to torture myself and not to make a martyr of myself in suffocating introspection, but to take deep and wholesome breaths of faith!

 

The one who is truly resolved is silent. It is not as if being resolute were one thing and being silent another. No. To be resolute means to be silent; for silence alone is the measure of power to act.

 

The opposite of sin is faith. And this is one of the most decisive definitions of all Christianity that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

 

There has to come a moment (specifically, when all our purely human world of concepts is toppled), when God seems to be a deceiver. Yes, we will have many weak moments when we will long for the good old days, when it will seem to us that we could love God better if our relationship with him were as it once was, when God pulled us along by adapting to our own ideas. But God in his love will not comply.

Anyone who has the faintest idea of what it actually means to die to the world knows that this does not take place without terrible agonies. No wonder, then, we cry out, sometimes even rebel against God, because it seems to us as if God is deceiving us, we who from the beginning became involved with God on the understanding that God would love us according to our idea of love but now see that it is God who wants to be loved and according to God s idea of what love is.

 

If a person is actually to be an instrument of God s will, then God must first of all take his will from him. A fearful operation!

 

If you want to love God in truth, you must show it gladly, adoringly letting yourself be totally shattered by God. Only then can he unconditionally advance his will.

 

Surely Christianity s intention is that a person use this life to venture out, to do so in such a way that God can get hold of him, and that one gets to see whether or not he actually has faith.

 

Practicing Christian faith is not very useful and it is highly impractical. Indeed, is there anything more impractical than offering one s life for the truth? Is there anything more foolish than not looking to one s own advantage? Is there anything more ridiculous than making one s life difficult and strenuous and being rewarded with insults? Is there anything more impractical than being labelled not with titles and honours but with abuse and ridicule? For a sailor to die at sea where he risked his life in the hope of profit, for the soldier to fall in battle where he risked his life in the hope of becoming a general that is more like it, that is practical but to die for the truth!

 

A person can distress the spirit by venturing too much. Yet there is comfort in knowing that discipline will surely come and will help him if he honestly humbles himself under it. But a person can also distress the spirit by venturing too little. Alas, but this comes home to him only after a long time, perhaps after many years when he is living in the security he sought by avoiding danger. Now he must experience the truth that he was untrue to himself.

Perhaps it does not come until old age, perhaps not until eternity. In any case, the thing to do about venturing too little is to admit humbly before God that you are coddling yourself. Unless you do this, you will begin to imagine that what you are doing is mighty clever alas, for then you are lost forever. At that very moment the eternal flickers out, your relationship with God closes up, the truth in you dies, and you become untrue.

If, on the other hand, you make the humble admission perhaps you are sick and therefore despondent, perhaps you are too hard on yourself in judging yourself you at least preserve your relationship to God. Your admission will keep you awake and alert, and will not permit you to become happy in a dearly purchased security, distanced from danger. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a year, faith and confident boldness will rise up in you and you will once again be able to venture.

 

During the first period of a person s life the greatest danger is to not take the risk. When once the risk has been taken then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking you turn aside and serve trivialities. By risking too much, you turn aside to the fantastic, and perhaps to presumption.

 

A bold venture is not a high-flown phase, not an exclamatory outburst, but arduous work. A bold venture, no matter how rash, is not a boisterous proclamation but a quiet dedication that receives nothing in advance but stakes everything.

 

God cannot stand good works in the sense of earning merit. Yet good works are required. They shall be and yet shall not be. They are necessary and yet one ought humbly to ignore their significance or at least forget that they are supposed to be of any significance. Good works are like a child giving his parents a present, purchased, however, with what the child has received from his parents. All the pretentiousness which otherwise is associated with giving a present disappears when the child understands that he has received from his parents the gift which he gives to them.

 

Imagine a girl in love: for a time she will find it sufficient to express her love in words, but there will come a moment when this will no longer satisfy her, when she will long to embrace her beloved. So also with the believer in relation to God expressing his gratitude in words. He will finally reach a point where he must say: I cannot stand it, this no longer satisfies my need. You must, oh God, permit me a far stronger expression for my gratitude works.

 

True ethical enthusiasm consists in willing to the uttermost of one s capability, but also, uplifted in divine jest, in never thinking that one thereby achieves something.

 

One cannot serve God as one serves another Majesty who, humanly speaking, has a cause. Action is indeed true worship, but it is true worship only when it is freed from all busyness, as if God had a cause. To give up everything not because God must make use of you as an instrument, no, by no means to give up everything! This is what it means to worship and serve God.

 

It is no good for us to bow and scrape before God in words and phrases and in such activities as building churches and binding Bibles in velvet. God has a particular language for addressing him the language of action, the transformation of the mind, the course of one s life.

 

You can worship only by becoming weak. Woe to the presumptuous person who in his proud strength is audacious enough to worship God! The true God can be worshipped only in spirit and in truth but precisely this is the truth, that you are entirely weak. In fact, you are nothing.

 

The simple and humble thing is to love God because you need him. It may seem so lofty a thing to love God because he is so perfect, it may seem so selfish to love him because you need him, yet the latter way is the only way in which you can in truth love God. Woe to him who would make bold to love God without needing him! The one who most deeply recognizes his need of God loves him most truly. You should not presume to love God only for God s sake. No, you should understand that your life s welfare eternally depends on your need, and for this reason and this reason alone you should love him.

 

One who rows a boat turns his back to the goal towards which he labours. So it is with the next day. When by the help of eternity one lives absorbed in today, he turns his back to the next day. The more he is absorbed in today, the more decisively he turns his back upon the next day, so that he does not see it at all. If he turns around, eternity is confused before his eyes, it becomes the next day. But if for the sake of labouring more effectually towards the goal (eternity) he turns his back, he does not see the next day at all. By the help of eternity he sees quite clearly today and its task.

If you are to labour fruitfully today, you must be in this position. It always involves delay and distraction to want to look impatiently every instant towards the goal, to see if you are coming a little nearer, and now a little nearer. No, be eternally and seriously resolved, turn completely to the labour and turn the back to the goal. Such is one s position in rowing a boat, but such is also the position when you believe.

You might think that the believer would be very far from the eternal when he turns his back to it and lives today, while the glimpser stands and looks towards it. And yet it is the believer who is nearest the eternal, while the apocalyptic visionary is farthest from the eternal. Faith turns its back to the eternal in order precisely to have this with him today.

 

When a fisherman has caught a fish in his net and wishes to keep it alive, what must he do? He must immediately put it in water; otherwise it becomes exhausted and dies after a time. And why must he put it in water? Because water is the fish s element, and everything that is kept alive must be kept in its element. And what about love? Love s element is infinitude, inexhaustibility, immeasurability. If you wish to keep your love, you must take care that it remains in its element. Otherwise, it droops and dies not after a time, but at once, which itself is a sign of its perfection, that it can live only in its element the infinite.

 

A human being is only an instrument and never knows when the moment will come when he will be put aside. If he himself does not at times evoke this thought, he is a hireling, an unfaithful servant, who is trying to free himself and to cheat the Lord of the uncertainty in which he comprehends his own nothingness. Even the highest mission in the spiritual world is only an errand.

 

Love is like a spring that lures by the murmuring persuasion of its rippling. The stream almost begs one to go along the path, and yet it does not wish to be discovered or its secret revealed. Love is like the rays of the sun that invite us to observe the glory of the world but reproachfully punish with blindness the presumptuous who try, inquisitively and impudently, to discover the origin of the light. The suffering is always most painful when the surgeon penetrates into the more vital, hidden parts of the body. In the same way, the suffering is most painful and most devastating when someone, instead of rejoicing in the works of love, wants the pleasure of penetrating it, by disturbing it. 

The hidden life of love, in its most inward depths, is unfathomable, and still has a boundless relationship with the whole of existence.  As the quiet lake is fed by the flow of hidden springs, which no eye sees, so a human being s love is grounded in God s love. If there were no spring at the bottom, if God were not love, there would be neither a lake nor human love. As the still waters begin obscurely in the deep spring, so our love mysteriously begins in God s love.  The life of love is hidden, and yet its hidden life is itself in motion and has the eternal in itself. As still waters, however quietly they lie, are really running, so love flows, however still it is in its hiddenness.

 

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