The Wise And The Simple

When the child chatters away, his chatter is perhaps simple enough, and when the wise person says exactly the same thing, it has perhaps become the most ingenious of things.

This is how the wise person relates himself to simplicity. When he enthusastically venerates it as the highest, it honors him in turn, because it is as if, in him, the simple became something else, even though it in fact remains the same.

The more the wise person considers simplicity, then, ... the more difficult it becomes for him.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

My wife and I recently watched a film about the life of a London art mueseum curator. He is so loathed by his coworkers for his simple, primitive ways that they will do anything to get rid of him.

A speaking invitation from southern California arrives requesting an art expert to give a speech. The occasion is the reception of a famous portrait from overseas. The museum staff sends the simple curator, because they consider him an annoyance.

The painting depicts whistler's mother. She sits in her colonial American garb looking to the left of the frame while casually rocking.

When the curator -who is a very simple man- stands up to give to give the speech everyone expects to hear him talk about the ideology behind the work or the technique of the artist.

The curator begins:

'My job is to go around ... and look ... at the paintings.'

Everyone is amazed. To just go around and look at the paintings? How primitive and yet how profound.

He continues in a similar way. Toward the end he says,

'This artist decided to paint a picture of his mother. Even though she was an old homely woman he still decided to paint her picture ... and I think that is marvelous.'


If a child had stood up and spoken in such a way, he would probably have been disregarded.

A sympathetic adult might have said to such a child, 'Your words were all very nice, but let us hear what wonderful things you'll have to share after you've studied art history.'

But when the simple man came and spoke simply under the banner of wisdom, everyone was amazed.

Jesus told his disciples that no one would enter life unless they made themselves to be like little children.

Consider a trained theologian who addresses other theologians and says, 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so'. His words seem very different from the words any child might say at Sunday school, and yet couldn't they be the same words?

Cannot we all become like little children?

Parable of the Speedy Arrest

A man seated in a glass case is not put to such embarrassment as is a man in his transparency before God. This is the factor of conscience.

By the aid of conscience things are so arranged that the judicial report follows at once upon every fault, and that the guilty one himself must write it. But it is written with sympathetic ink and only becomes thoroughly clear when in eternity it is held up to the light, while eternity holds audit over the consciences.

Substantially everyone arrives in eternity bringing with him and delivering the most accurate account of every least insignificance which he has committed or has left undone. Therefore to hold judgment in eternity is a thing a child could manage; there is really nothing for a third person to do, everything, even to the most insignificant word is counted and in order.

The case of the guilty man who journeys through life to eternity is like that of the murderer who with the speed of the railway train fled from the place where he perpetrated his crime. Alas, just under the railway coach where he sat ran the electric telegraph with its signal and the order for his apprehension at the next station. When he reached the station and alighted from the coach he was arrested. In a way he had himself brought the denunciation with him.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death. p. 255
Parables of Kierkegaard. p. 37

This passage has been on my mind lately. A number of people are having intellectual difficulty accepting the existence of a literal hell.

I have no interest in defending the doctrines of hell, or citing evidence to confirm it, or discussing (philosophically) what hell is. I think my behavior before knowing Christ has suffeciently demonstrated the existence of a literal hell.

I am drawn to this passage in Kierkegaard particularly because modernity has no understanding of what inner anguish is. And it has no interest in it. It just understands physical suffering regardless of who deserves it, and it is totally indifferent to the quality of their faith.

The difficulty for the critics of hell is that every person holds sway over an invisible court with which they are continually condemned over and over. They didn't learn this from the noisy Baptist preachers or any "third person" as Kierkegaard says.

The matter is just that many, many people carry the weight of their imperfect actions on their shoulders and it is slowly killing them. The reality of this weight has nothing to do with what can be shown on the outside (microscopes, reporters, opinion polls). It has everything to do with what is going on inside.

Jesus once said everyone who sins is a slave to sin. A man can live his entire life on the surface and never breath a word of his hidden guilt, but this does nothing to negate the guilt inside the man. This does not make his suffering any less real, for he is truly a slave.

Parable of the Letter

I had it all set in my mind to post another passage from one of Peter's letters, but I've been reflecting lately on how one hears God's voice. SoulFoodDude had some questions which I believe everyone needs to answer.

At any rate I came across this passage in Either/Or this week and I find it relevant to the same task. Kierkegaard frequently writes on three or four levels at the same time, and there have been several times in my life where this passage has been on my mind:

If someone possessed a letter which he knew or believed contained information concerning what he had to consider his life's blessedness, but the written characters were thin and faded, the handwriting almost illegible, he would read it and reread it, with anxiety and disquiet certainly, but with passion.

At one moment he would get one meaning out of it, the next another. When he was quite sure he had managed to read a word, he would interpret everything in the light of that word.

But he would never pass beyond the same uncertainty with which he began. He would stare, more and more anxiously, but the more he stared the less he saw; sometimes his eyes filled with tears, but the more that happened, again the less he saw. In due course the writing became weaker and less distinct; finally the paper itself crumbled away and he had nothing left but his eyes blinded with tears.

Either/Or. Penguin Classics. p. 187

Life presents us with difficult choices.

As humans I find we tend to lean on outward observation, general opinion, and the so-called assurance of the experts. In this confidence I often feel like something is slipping away. It's something difficult to describe, and like everything valuable it is seldom appreciated until it is gone.

The Element of Love

There is something to do, therefore. And what must be done in order to be in the debt of love to each other? 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 which shall be kept alive must be kept in its element.

But love's element is infinitude, inexhaustibility, immeasurability. If you will to keep your love, then, by the help of the debt's infinitude, imprisoned in freedom and life, you must take care that it continually remains in its element; otherwise, it droops and dies -not after a time, for it dies at once-which itself is a sign of its perfection, that it can live only in infinitude.

Soren Kierkegaard
Works of Love
pp. 175-176

The way Kierkegaard describes the infinitude of love stands out to me. Human love always seems to set conditions like: "As long as you stay out of my way, I love you," And, "Just don't say anything stupid and I will care about you."

The love God demands of us is blind in the sense that it is to our neighbor. As long as a person remains our neighbor, we are required to love that person.

This seems so different in comparison to the way I generally love people.

Kierkegaard's View of Suffering

In the last moments of his life, Kierkegaard endured heavy physical trauma.

In times of physical agony, one often asks what meaning the suffering has and why he was chosen for it. Kierkegaard provides a profound description of how God sees the devotion of those who suffer:

What does God really want? He wants to have souls that can praise, adore, worship, and thank him-the business of angels. That is why God is surrounded by angels. Because the sort of beings of which there are legions in 'Christendom,' the sort who for 10 rixdollars will roar and trumpet to God's honor and praise-that sort of being does not please him.

No, the angels please him. And what pleases him even more than the praises of angels is this: When, during the last lap of this life-when it seems as if God transforms himself into sheer cruelty and with the most cruelly devised cruelty does everything to deprive a person of all lust for life-when a human being nonetheless continues to believe that God is love and that it is from love that God does this-such a human being then becomes an angel.

And he can certainly praise God in heaven, but of course the time of instruction, schooltime, is always the strictest time. It is as if a person had the idea of traveling the whole world over to hear a singer with a perfect voice: That is how God sits in heaven and listens. And every time he hears praise from a human being whom he has brought to the most extreme point of weariness with life, God says to himself, 'Here is the voice.'"

Edifying Quotations

Over the last two years I have sent out work emails concluding with signature quotes. I would most like to come out and tell everyone about what a difference Jesus has made in my life, but I feel indirect communication is required. Note this: the practice I have developed is in open violation of company email policy. When I told a friend and fellow believer I was doing this, he told me he would never do it. On the other hand, no one has asked me to stop, and as for myself I have no regret.

Feel free to copy and use them as your signature quotes. I usually added a new one every week. Here they are:

The greatest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if nothing at all had happened.
Anticlimacus

To have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man, but at the same time it is eternity's demand upon him.
Anticlimacus

It is the minor players that make up the cast of the drama of life ... for they are life!
Bob Kane

The most improbable things sometimes turn out to be quite true!
Batman (Bob Kane)

The apostle of humiliated thought will find at the very end of humiliation the means of regenerating being to its very depth.
Camus

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives ... inside ourselves.
Camus

Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief.
Charles Saunders Peirce

No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong.
John Chrysostum

No one is free who does not reign over himself.
Cladius

Existence itself mocks everyone who is engaged in becoming purely objective.
Climacus

Immortality is subjectivity's most passionate interest, and it is precisely in interest that the proof lies.
Climacus

If truth has to be true for all, then it is no more than a consensus of generalized opinion.
Climacus

The thinker who can forget in all his thinking also to think that he is an existing individual, will never explain life.
Climacus

Be careful not to let the world squeeze you into its mold.
Craig Englert

Genuine punishment, the only effective kind, that deters and pacifies ... is contained in an awareness of one's own conscience.
Dostoyevski

In the majority of instances human beings, even the evil-doers among them, are far more naive and straightforward than we suppose. And that includes ourselves.
Dostoyevski

Beauty is not only a terrifying thing - it is also a mysterious one. In it the Devil struggles with God, and the field of battle is the hearts of men.
Dostoyevski

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
Goethe

I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is.
Forest Gump

Most people want to be some place else. Few want to be where they are.
Martin Heidigger

You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.
Hendrix

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.
Hendrix

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.
Lou Holtz

Nothing is beautiful from every point of view.
Horace

A bruised reed He will not crush.
A smoldering wick He will not snuff out.
Isaiah

Some people are so fond of bad luck they run half way to meet it.
Douglas William Jerrold

Clean the inside of the cup and the outside will be clean as well.
Jesus

Narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Jesus

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough troubles of its own.
Jesus

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka

Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice ...
but the voice of eternity within a man it cannot drown.
Kierkegaard

The more definitely conscience is developed in a person, the more expansive he is, even if in other respects he closes himself off from the entire world.
Kierkegaard

At the hour of death there is only this one consolation,
that one has not avoided opposition but has survived it.
Kierkegaard

A genius is not a little candle that goes out in the wind, but is a raging fire that the storm merely incites.
Kierkegaard

The measure of a man's fundamental disposition is this:
how far is what he understands from what he does?
Kierkegaard

Human beings are perfectible. One can easily get them to do one thing as another, just as easily get them to fast as to live in worldly entertainment - only one thing is important to them, that they are just like the others.
Kierkegaard

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
Kierkegaard

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo. The more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.
Kierkegaard

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
-Lennon

I don't care what they say I won't stay in a world without love.
John Lennon

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well...
Rene Magritte

I only know that when I'm in it, love isn't silly at all.
-McCartney

Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'
Mickey Mantle

The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.
Parkinson's Law

At the far end of an infinite distance, a coin is being spun. How will you wager?
Pascal

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Pascal

Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself in what he approves.
Paul

Where there are tongues they will be stilled.
Where there is knowledge it will pass away.
Paul

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.
Paul

On wild trees, the flowers are fragrant, on cultivated trees, the fruits.
Flavius Philostratus

Time goes by … and when it’s gone … love goes on and on.
Robin Hood

Discovering the truth about outselves is a lifetime's work, but it's worth the effort.
Mister Rogers

Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others.
Mister Rogers

Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you.
Sartre

Life begins on the other side of despair.
Sartre

Heat not a furnace for thy foe so hot that it do singe yourself.
Shakespeare

Leaves appear green while they are alive.
Only after their death do we see their true color.
The Shepherd of Canaan

The calculated often fool themselves, but even a fool can fall in love.
The Shepherd of Canaan

The age demands comedy. If this were actually what our generation needed, then the theater perhaps needs a new play in which someone's dying for love is made ludicrous.
John the Silent

Spiritually speaking, he is only deceived who deceives himself.
John the Silent

In eternity, there is not the slightest complication to make the accounting difficult and the evasion easy.
SK

Alas the door of fortune does not open inwards so that one can force it by charging at it; it opens outwards and so there is nothing one can do.
SK

I would rather speak with children. For one may still dare to hope that they may become rational beings; but those who have become that-- God help us!
SK

What do busy botchers achieve? Are they not like the housewife who, in confusion at the fire in her house, saved the fire-tongs? What else do they salvage from the great fire of life?
SK

The distinction which the world makes is namely this: if a person wants to be all by himself in being selfish - which, after all, is rarely seen - the world calls it selfishness, but if in selfishness he wants to form a group with several other selfish people, the world calls it love.
Kierkegaard

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
SK

There is a lot of talk in the world about treachery and faithlessness-and, God help us, it is all too true-but still let us never because of this forget that every man has in himself the most dangerous traitor of all.
SK

The law is like a ponderous speaker who cannot say everything in spite of all his efforts, but love is the fulfillment.
Kierkegaard

The past can be regarded as nececssary only if one forgets that it came into existence,
but is that kind of forgetfulness supposed to be necessary?
Kierkegaard

He who in truth loves his neighbour loves also his enemy.
The distinction friend or enemy is a distinction in the object of love,
but the object of love to one's neighbour is without distinction.
Kierkegaard

Every man has in himself the most dangerous traitor of all.
Kierkegaard

The poet understands everything, in riddles, and marvellously explains everything, in riddles, but he cannot understand himself, or understand that he himself is a riddle.
Kierkegaard

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.
Will Smith

The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates

You are not ready to face so great an enemy. Not until you have vanquished the enemy within yourselves.
The Sphinx

Patience, my son. To summon your power for the conflict
to come, you must first have power over that which conflicts you.
The Sphinx

When you doubt your powers, you give power to your doubts.
The Sphinx

He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.
The Sphinx

The wise man knows that he is weakest when he thinks himself strong.
The Sphinx

It is certain because it is impossible.
Tertullian

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women.
Margaret Thatcher

The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.
Tillich

The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements (as well as one's deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.
Tillich

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Tolstoy

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
-Wittgenstein

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.
Wittgenstein

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed "Wisdom." And then I know exactly what is going to follow: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
Wittgenstein

The one who lies to himself and believes his own lies comes to a point where he can distinguish no truth either within himself or around him, and thus enters into a state of disrespect towards himself and others.
Zosima

Esthetics: A Footnote To God's Love

One of the strangest things I find in life is the way good looks can command attention, and yet how vain and deceitful they are in the absence of a devoted heart. The following quote is taken from Fear and Trembling III.145. The text is from a part of a footnote, but a sobering footnote indeed!

Esthetics just sees to it that the lovers find each other and does not concern itself about the rest. If only it would see what happens afterwards, but it has no time for that and promptly proceeds to slap a new pair of lovers together. Of all the branches of knowledge, esthetics is the most faithless. Anyone who has really loved it becomes in one sense unhappy, but he who has never loved it is and remains a dumb brute.
-Silento

So many fashion magazines ... so little zeal.

How I Came To Despise Apologetics

Apologetics can be defined as the practice of using evidence to defend Christianity. A few years ago I was keenly interested in it.

I labored for a long time investigating philosophy, forensics, and science, but at one point my interest died suddenly and completely.

How do I begin?

Over a period of three or four years I had read a number of non-Christian materials and some apologetics material with the express intent of having a ready Christian response. I read the Book of Mormon (cover to cover), Farewell to God by Charles Templeton, The Case for Christ, an intro to Derrida, The God Who Is There by Schaeffer, and lots and lots of Plato. I read a lot more than that, and I'm not even counting the ones I had to do for class!

At some point in my reading I began to do devotions less often. I couldn't fit the words of Christ into any system described by an apologist, and I began to favor the message of the theologians and scholars.

One day I had to go to the hospital in Lafayette for an appendectomy. I was reading Strobel and I came across an interview with a professor who said faith was more important to the Christian life than reason. How I hated those words! In my spirit I demanded he have "justification" for his claims. He quoted Jesus saying:

"Blessed are those who do not see and still believe."

And so I spent hours and hours doing mental gymnastics with myself trying to explain Christ's words.

While I sat in my hospital room they brought in a Mormon who I got to know. He was a youth group leader and his kids were so devoted to him. They brought him all kinds of cards and even made a giant postcard, which they all signed.

I considered myself an expert in witnessing to Mormons. I spent hours discussing the Bible with a certain bishop who (I believe) still lives a few blocks from my house. I also spent a spring break in Utah witnessing to the Mormons at BYU and St. George.

I shared my faith and I was very careful to sound as intelligent as I could about it. The more intelligent I tried to sound the more futile my words sounded to me. Part of the problem was a voice in the back of my mind saying: "You can say anything you want because you are so superior to him!"

This was my flesh speaking to me. The voice my apologetic training had cultivated.

The Mormon man said, 'Look, I was going door-to-door in England and I met a guy who covered his hands over his ears and shouted as loud as he could. Then he slammed his door in my face. I don't want to stop listening to people, but to me faith means trusting God even when things look different.'

At that moment I considered the Mormons to be full of lies. I still do.

But I thought about how he had resolved to trust God even when everything seemed to demand the opposite response.

Logic, reason ... even objectivity itself.

The anesthesiologist came in and said, "Now listen ... strange things happen in the operating room. People get attacked by Zebras in the streets. It's terrible, but it's very rare. Don't worry about it."

As silly as it probably sounds this was one of the first times in my life I had seriously considered dying. I looked at Stobel's book and asked myself if the materials I had read had given me one proof that there was going to be an afterlife if I died during surgery.

I thought and thought.

I considered many persuasive arguments, but nothing convinced me. They started to pull me into the operating room and I thought to myself, "Wait! Stop! This is madness! I could die here! I need to do something!"

As my thinking slowly gave way to sleep I thought about the Mormon believing without seeing and I envied him. In the secrecy of my thoughts, nothing seemed more beautiful to me. In a moment of infinite clarity, I found it was the most wonderful thing I had ever considered (and to think I would have despised it a few hours earlier!).

The surgery was successful and I went back to school three days later, but even as I left the hospital I distracted myself with the expressed intention of forgetting everything that had happened there.

The task at hand was convincing teachers that I understood Boethius and Aquinas. I hid my reflections in a distant, dark corner of my mind. I told myself never to go looking there again.

Now it so happened that one day I decided my work load was so small (15 units) that I could be studying more non-Christian material to bring people to Jesus.

In highschool I was introduced by my philosophy teacher to an obscure Danish writer who a lot of unbelievers were reading. And so I decided to read some of his material for myself.

So one day at the university library I looked up 'Fear and Trembling' in the card catalogue. I spent two months reading the book looking for a way to bring these people to Jesus. After all, he was writing about Abraham. I thought I knew a lot about Abraham.

Instead of finding a way to bring them to Jesus, I instead found that not only (1) did I not understand Kierkegaard's arguments (2) I did not even know what he was trying to say! But my spirit was drawn to his writings.

I forgot about the strange writer for a while.

One day I found myself in the philosophy section of Borders. I saw a book titled, An Introduction to Kierkegaard. I was glad to find a simple explanation of what this man was saying. It was here that I read this sentance:

"All decisiveness inheres in subjectivity.
To pursue objectivity is to be in error."

My first thought was, "No wonder these people need Jesus! They're nuts if they think like this!"

I was enraged as I walked toward the exit. "How could anyone think this way?!".

I stopped in the aisle and thought, "If I'm going to tell these people about Jesus, I need to know what is driving them to accept this absurdity. But when have I ever viewed anything in this way?"

My eyes widened as I recalled a distant memory. When was it?

My devotions.

And so I began to rethink my relationship with reason and evidence.

I considered that there were a number of Bible verses which seemed to categorically oppose apologetics. "If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not know as he ought to know." "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." "Knowledge puffs up but love builds up". Etc.

For my purposes here it is enough to say that they weighed heavily on my thoughts and the more I tried to reason them the more it felt like I was really trying to explain them away.

My roommate in college, Christopher, had a large collection of DVDs. One day I went through them and saw a movie called Meet Joe Black. This seemed like a movie that was trying to say something, so I figured it would be good to have a Christian response to it. The movie blew me away.

Here was the story of a man, Bill Perish, who was trying to live an honorable life. Early in the movie he encounters death, and this encounter changes his entire perspective on everything.

He suddenly learns the importance of being honest about his priorites ... even if they cost him everything. About listening to that inner voice the rest of the world cannot hear. And it is only by finding this inner strength that he is able to oppose death, which he does. He wasn't trying have a valuable life in the eyes of others.

If that description seems a little funny, I understand.

I simply cannot explain it.

After watching the film I was a different person. The person who pushed play to watch the movie was not the same person who pushed stop. When it was over I sat on the couch and I wept.

I wept and I wept and my other roommate, Eric, had no idea what to think about it.

I decided right then, that very night that my relationship with God was going to be under completely different terms. I didn't have a secret stash of marijuana or a party lifestyle, but I was certain of this: my spiritual life was a big lie.

Except I wasn't lying to my parents or my friends. I found that I was lying to myself and to God.

I decided I was going to do it for real - even if no one understood what was going on.

To sum up my change in perspective: there are only two domains, the world everyone can see (the external domain) and the heart that only God can see (the internal domain).

In the world everyone runs after two things: the acceptance of other people (which is external) and distractions (which are also external). What are they distractions from? They are distractions from simply this question: "Is MY life worth living?"

... A question the theologians have hardly any interest in answering ...

In matters of spirit things are different. Here the important person isn't necessarily the one with the most popularity, the most money, the most good appearances. Here the question is not how "good-looking" a thing is, for the spirit knows exactly what it finds good - and if it finds itself to be good. This is the only place a person can find to exist as themselves.

Consider the merchant who found the treasure in a field. He buried it, and he then sold all his possessions to buy that field. To the world around him he must have looked crazy. Why was he spending so much money on this piece of property? Who could understand it?

Perhaps only the merchant could understand before he could show off his physical treasure. As believers we cannot show the riches God has in store for us right now, and so who can understand us here in this life?

So much for explaining subjectivity - to live as a single individual. You either want to live that way or you do not - I can't make that choice for another person.

To me apologetics is a great evil - a betraying of Jesus with a kiss - a supreme slander against God - a total failure of expressing devotion to Him.

SK Journal Excerpt

Soren Kierkegaard wrote about a thing he called "subjective truth". Those who are new to his writings have had difficulty with this term, but he used it consistently within what he called his 'life view'.

This journal excerpt was probably written before he had a lot of his categories clearly defined, but the elements of his later writings were certainly there. This is a favorite passage of mine.

"What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not about what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Deity really wants me to do. It is a question of finding a truth that is truth for me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die.


And what would it profit me if I discovered a so-called objective truth; if I worked my way through the systems of the philosophers and was able to parade them forth on demand; if I was able to demonstrate the inconsistencies within each individual circle...-what would it profit me if I were able to expound the significance of Christianity, able to explain many individual points, if it held no deeper significance for me and for my life? ... What would it profite me if the truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I acknowledged it or not, calling forth an anguished shudder rather than a confident submission?

I will certainly not deny that I still believe in the validity of an imperative of knowledge that has an influence upon men, but it nonetheless must become a living part of me, and this is what I now understand to be the heart of the matter. It is for this my soul thirsts, as the deserts of Africa thirst for water."

Garff. Soren Kierkegaard. p. 58