26 November 2009 No Comment

I love this quote so much that I am not sure if I have posted it before. Give me anything by Kierkegaard as well…

‘The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you?’

Source: Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. Charles Moore

Thinking of moments back in theological college when people gathered around the pool table arguing theology when all I wanted to do was play pool and ‘hear some sounds that recognised the pain in me’.

The hymn is HP522- it is a pearler- the shortest and most realistic hymn I have ever heard about human nature.

‘Dear Master in whose life I see,

All that I would and fail to be,

Let thy clear light for ever shine,

To shame and guide this life of mine.

 

Though what I dream and what I do

In my weak days are always two,

Help me, oppressed by things undone,

O thou, whose deeds and dreams were one!’