I do mean to single out christ but not Kierkegaard
I read on this forum that someone identified themselves with Kierkegaard, i couldnt help but ask why. To learn more about the person i stumbled upon this quote.
Passion for Christ is nothing more than a letter to Santa clause as a young kid. It’s time to grow up. As in any religion a child never doubted the concept of god, faith, religion, parents and gravity. As one gets older all of those fall down except gravity (no pun intended). When you pray to god is is as if you reached his answering machine “God is on vacation, please call back later [beep].” Then there’s faith, you have faith in people, in religion in yourself but it all fails and you learn to be self sufficient. Religion may not even play a role since not too many people attend church every sunday, and you parents are not superman and wonderwomen, they make mistakes, lie, cheat, steal, everything they were not suppose to do. When you mature that is when you his the Rock Bottom, the hard ground. and learn to be sufficient so i am greatly amused by views of devout christians, especially the philiosphers
How old are you to say…as one gets older? Some older still might say something different. Maybe they would say all fall down only to get back up again, especially when death is imminent? I don’t know but I do find a post like this rather odd. Is it that misery loves company? Or, like gossip columnists, love to spread bad news? Something in you just isn’t right and you need to deal with it.
You know, Kierkegaard’s father would have the young Soren eavesdrop on his dinner parties with the elite of Copenhagen. Afterward, he would make Soren sit in the empty chair of each guest and set forth the argument which that person had espoused during dinner.
Soren was also sent to Latin school with instructions from his father to bring home the third best grade.
See, its easy for a genius to earn the best grade, but to get the third best, well, that’s a trick. Soren had to figure out who was the second and fourth smartest boys, and place his own work between theirs.
I love Kierkegaard. When I’m in a pickle, I always seem to go back on what he says. When I’m backed in a corner, I always try to adopt his …well… almost biblical style of writing. Parables and metaphor… I love Kierkegaard. He is a master of philosophy,
Kierkegaard was extremely concerned with the creation of the self, as the quote you posted states, but your argument about faith in christ is flawed. It is not a childs affair as you suggest, for if faith in Christ was, to use your comparison placed in different words, a real act predicated on the belief of a fictitous character, then all faith would be invalid. Faith also has a substantive power associated with it, which is what I tink Kierkegaard was more concerned with, beause to have a faith is to have a desire to life, within judgement and character.
I’m also curious to know if you have ever read Kierkegaard
itel7,
What exactly does S.K. have to do with what seems to be your opinion? I’m not sure of your intent in this thread. And like someone in previous posts asks, have you ever read S.K. - or rather the translations of S.K.? I do not mean commentaries on him. I’m not suggesting you cannot ask questions on him if you haven’t read him - it just makes more sense in terms of the understanding you can gain.
From my understanding (and I may be incorrect), S.K. felt the individual was superior to any collective. Hence, personal faith is superior to the popular Christianity of strictly going to Church every Sunday, providing money during the offering, then driving home and going on with societal life oftentimes in complete contradiction to even the popular form of the faith. For S.K., faith was life. I think he went as far as saying a ‘group of Christians’ is in itself contradictory because a true Christian must be an individual as Jesus was, to suffer as Jesus did, etc. One would not be a true Christian if he/she was not tested/oppressed as Jesus was - hence, a group, in which members can rely on others for support (physical/mental), would be contradictory. This comes from his ideas on the ‘Knight of Faith’ if I remember correctly.
It is worthy of reading, I’d say. And it doesn’t apply only to Christianity, but to any dogma.
Also, I think it was him who criticized others of not ‘living in the house they create’. Meaning, they come up with the philosophy, but it cannot be followed - and was not consistently followed by the philosopher, so how real could it be?
