Beware of strangers bearing gifts.
If someone wants to sell, teach, or instill - faith, religion, spirituality, mysticism etc. to, or into, you run away – quickly.
Sometimes when I start to think I have some philosophical, ethical, spiritual answers I find it useful to go back to some difficult philosophers. Maybe Nietzsche, Hegel, Wittgenstein, or good old Søren Kierkegaard to give me a dose of confusion, something to think about, reason to believe - how little I know.
Some people say Kierkegaard's book, "Fear and Trembling" is the most accessible of his works. It's short – as far as being easy to understand – no.
It's a discussion of ethics, faith, paradox and maybe salvation based around the Biblical story of Abraham climbing Mount Moriah to kill his beloved son Isaac, as he has been ordered to by God.
Killing is universally accepted as wrong, is it acceptable in this particular instance for a father to kill his son? How could the father of Judeo Christian Islamic traditions be a would-be murderer? If God is love how could God ask a father to hate his own son – to the point of killing him?
Soren thinks and thinks and thinks. He wraps himself around ideas and won't let go. He brings forward very difficult ideas and won't back down. What are we to make of it when the Gospel of Luke tells us –
"If any man cometh unto me and hate not his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:26
Who knows the answers? If someone claims to know the answer – should you run away fast?
Here's the part of Kierkegaard's work that strikes me as meaningful this morning –
In talking about people who would mistakenly think they could show another "the way" he writes,
"He does not comprehend what it is all about, that if another individual is to take the same path, he must become entirely in the same way the individual and have no need of any man's guidance…The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and therein lies his deep humanity."
Note: If, and I'm assuming this to be true for most people, you don't have the time or the inclination to try and wade through Kierkegaard – but would like to learn something about him, open up the text of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling in your browser and search through it for the phrase, "knight of faith". Read the surrounding sentence. I think Soren was talking about himself and what he would aspire to be when he uses the phrase "knight of faith". If you try this experiment I think you will get a pretty good feel for what the old Dane was talking about..hey and if you do - could we talk about it? I'd like to know too ;-)
