Kierkegaard: A challenge to the believer

[Dionysus]

Quite simply—I want honesty. I am not, as one man with the best of intentions has desired to represent me, I am not Christian severity contrasted with Christian leniency. Not at all. I am neither severity nor leniency—I am mere human honesty. I want honesty. If that is what this race and this generation want, if it will uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly rebel against Christianity and say to God, "We can, but we will not be subject to this authority"—but observe that it must be done uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly—well then, strange as it may seem, I am for it; for honesty is what I want. And wherever there is honesty I can take part. An honest rebellion against Christianity can only be made when one honestly admits what Christianity is and how one is related to it.

• Søren Kierkegaard, “What Do I Want?”

The chief Christian virtue, above even agape, is honesty. Kierkegaard, a devout believer, utterly despised the ‘Christiandom’ of his day because it demanded of all men that they be equally, democratically, religious; you were to profess belief and, so long as you took no action directly opposed to the stated belief, you were a ‘Christian’.

Not so for Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard wrestled with his faith. Calling it a ‘sickness unto death’, faith, for Kierkegaard, was not some frivolous ‘lovefest’, but a deep and intensely personal relationship with a force beyond all human comprehension. By this I most emphatically do not mean the sort of ‘personal relationship’ that modern sheep feel “distinguishes Christianity from religion”, but an intensely, almost unutterably horrific encounter with the divine.

Kierkegaard said this of faith, writing in his essay Practice in Christianity:

Just as the concept “faith” is an altogether distinctively Christian term, so in turn is “offense” an altogether distinctively Christian term relating to faith. The possibility of offense is the crossroad, or it is like standing at the crossroad. From the possibility of offense, one turns either to offense or to faith, but one never comes to faith except from the possibility of offense…

What I here mean to propose is something almost ‘Rasputinian’. It certainly is Khlystian, insofar as the Khlysty sect of Tzarist Russia held something similar to this as one of their doctrines:

No Christian above would disagree with Kierkegaard. Faith without sin is utterly pointless: there is nothing to be redeemed from. And yet Christians want always to make the world ‘sinless’! Many want to ban pornography, ban homosexuality (subtly, through banning homosexual marriage), and altogether blot out anything which might lead one to sin or might otherwise contribute to a ‘falling away from God’.

My point here is this:

1. It is dishonest - it is a wanting-to-hide-from-oneself, an absolute denial of one’s own’ ‘sinful impulses’; and, also,

2. It is an implicit rejection of faith: it utterly denies that which makes faith possible.

To put it simply, the conservative Christian is not a Christian. He belongs to Christianity - but he is, himself, no Christian.

This is the challenge. Can you not only agree upon the necessity of sin, but will such, as a means to faith? This means not only not proselytizing, but actively repudiating all efforts to subtly (and not-so-subtly) enforce social morality in the personal religious sphere?