How horrible it must have been for the apostles when it seems as if Christ had deceived them – luring them with attractive prospects – and then reversing the whole thing so dreadfully on the cross.
But it cannot be otherwise in our relationship with God. There has to come a moment (specifically, when all our purely human world of concepts is toppled), when God seems to be a deceiver. Yes we will have many weak moments when we will long for the good old days, when it will seem to us that we could love God better if our relationship with him were as it once was, when God pulled us along by adapting to our own ideas. But God in his love will not comply.
This is the truth. Really and truly. Anyone who has the faintest idea of what it actually means to die to the world knows that this does not take place without terrible agonies. No wonder, the, we cry out, sometimes even rebel against God, because it seems to us as if God is deceiving us, we who from the beginning became involved with God on the understanding that God would love us according to our idea of love but now see that it is God who wants to be loved and according to God’s idea of what love is. But, of course, God is still infinite, infinite love. Just hold fast to this – that it is out of infinite love that God performs this excruciatingly painful operation. Yes, it is painful, yet it is all the more necessary.
“If a person is actually to be an instrument of God’s will, then God must first of all take his from him. A fearful operation!”
Taken from Provocations – Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard, complied and edited by Charles E Moore. Section VI - Thoughts that radically Cure: Excerpts and Aphorisms
Thursday, July 17, 2008
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