I just forgave Soren Kierkegaard today. For the last couple of years I haven't been able to hear his name spoken without a deep stirring of resentment for the way he ruined my life during my last year of college. Fear and Trembling hit me right when I was weakest from heartbreak and faltering faith, and as a result of the book's emo metaphors and intuitive writing style, my heart continued to break and my faith continued to falter for the rest of the calendar year and beyond.As I remember it, Kierkegaard takes his well-warranted amazement at the story of Abraham and Isaac as an opportunity to construct an apology for faith, always with the caveat of "I don't know what it is, I only know what it is not." This seems like a holy transcendence until you realize, after bitter experience, that he's excusing himself from making any true statement worthy to provoke dispute or provide direction. But like I said, I've forgiven him. It's not his fault that I continually threw my heart at someone who didn't want it--picked it up off the ground and lobbed it again and again, until my throwing arm got tired. It wasn't Kierkegaard's advice to blame the failure of my game on God and to hold him hostage until he gave me, at the age of twenty-five, what I thought was the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle of my life. He didn't assign me the homework of obsessive circumstantial analysis which I told myself was prayer and submission of my requests to God. He just wrote a book about faith and illustrated it with a fairy tale about a knight and a princess and, cleverly, left out the end. He had a hard life, himself--that should have been a clue that his book is not an instruction manual. But we believe things that we hope are true--it is easier than believing some things that are true.
That's what I realized today, that helped me cut Kierkegaard some slack. Submitting our requests to God is not like submitting a list to our personal shopper. It's like submitting a manuscript to an editor--there will be changes made. He doesn't promise to grant our requests in return--he promises peace, that transcends all understanding. And I'd suggest that peace is at the bottom of all our requests, anyway. God, I need a job! (...so I won't have to worry about money anymore) God, I need a fulfilling job! (...so I won't have to worry about money or wasting my life away anymore) God, I need a boyfriend! (...so I won't have to be alone anymore) God, I need a cool thing I can't afford! (...so I won't have to be obsessed with thinking about it anymore) Ad nauseam.
My prayers are so often mere lists of my anxiety triggers, not actual submissions. I'm not seeking peace when I pray, I'm seeking service. From God. Wow.
Half the time, my anxiety triggers are desires for good things. Things like provision, relationships, friends' salvation from hell--things that we are supposed to pray for. But to fling them at God like he's my assistant undercuts the nature of prayer as a spiritual discipline. Prayer is really more about me knowing my place than about getting results. God will manufacture results whether I ask him to or not. (Back me up, Calvinists.)
And though it sounds harsh in my proud, American, educated, feminist ears, knowing my place is actually quite freeing, and staying in it is quite peaceful.
What I realized about Kierkegaard particularly is that he is really very devout. He doesn't advise doing anything against God's will to obtain that good thing I desire. Abraham knew God wanted him to have a son, but God told him to kill the son he had. Rather than argue the point, he believed what God had promised and he also proceeded to do what God had said to do. He was able to separate the knowledge of "God wants me to have a son" from the knowledge that "God said to sacrifice this son that I have."
Furthermore, Kierkegaard advocates silence. I wish I had paid a lot more attention to that feature of the book. He says that the greatest faith is, on the face of it, ironic, and that the greatest irony is inexpressible in words. You know what God said, and you know what God said to do--sometimes they are incompatible, a paradox. (The use of that word has returned to me.) You can't reconcile them, so you don't try--you just shut up.
There's a lot in the book that I ought to read again. There's a lot in the book that is still pretty emo and will find its primary audience in angsty post-teens high on unrequited love. But it's not Kierkegaard's fault if we take his writing as an excuse to stay there.
I just wanted to issue this public apology, and to endorse Fear and Trembling. Buy it for your friends for Christmas. It's a perfect read for Valentine's Day.
