[From Part I Chapter III.B, "Love is a Matter of Conscience"]
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5 ESV)
“If one were to indicate and describe in one simple word the victory Christianity has won over the world, or even more accurately, the victory in which it has more than overcome the world… I know of nothing briefer, but also nothing more decisive, than this: it has made every human relation between man and man a relationship of conscience. Christianity has not wanted to hurl governments from the throne in order to set itself on the throne; in an external sense it has never striven for place in the world, for it is not of this world…. [Just as if a man] had a divine fluid in his arteries instead of blood, so does Christianity want to breathe eternal life, the divine, into the human race. For that reason Christianity has been called a nation of priests, and for that reason when considering the relationship of conscience one can say that they are a nation of kings.”[1]
I must confess, for whatever reason I struggled with this chapter more than the others. It took me a while to understand just what Kierkegaard meant when he said that Christianity makes love a “matter of conscience.” He speaks so highly of this fact, claims that it overturns nations, and yet I don’t quite see what he’s getting at. Ultimately, I understood by looking at what he says about kings. Kierkegaard continues:
“This is the miracle of Christianity, more wonderful than changing water into wine, this miracle, without a hand stirring, of quietly making every man in a divine sense a king, so easily, so deftly, so miraculously that the world in a certain sense does not need to find out about it. In the external world the king should and ought to be the only one who rules according to his conscience, but to obey for the sake of conscience—this shall be permitted to everyone. Yes, no one, no one can prevent this. And there within, far within, where Christianity lives in the relationship of conscience, there everything is changed.”[2]
When Kierkegaard says that the king ought to be the only one who rules purely by conscience what he means is this: under a monarchy, everyone owes loyalty to someone, except the king. Everyone has obligations and duties, except the king. And everyone has someone higher to tell them what to do, except the king. The king is bound by no one, and he owes no one an explanation. Ultimately the king makes decisions at his own discretion, subject only to his own conscience. The rest of us have obligations to fulfill and orders to follow.
When Kierkegaard says that love becomes a matter of conscience, what I think he is saying is this: that as Christians we are free always to love—not free in that we get to decide whether we love or not, since God has said, “you shall love,” but free in the sense that no other power on earth can forbid us from loving; indeed, no force can stop us from loving. Christ has freed us from an obligation which would overrule our obligation to love. A lowly washerwoman (one of Kierkegaard’s examples), even though she has no real power and is at the bottom of the social ladder, has the discretion to love. She has been given the freedom to love no matter what orders she has received. The king himself may order her not to show love to a person but for her it is a matter of conscience, not of political power. And she may love in spite of the king. In this way, every Christian is herself a queen, or a king.
And yet for me this realization is not all empowerment and defiance—it is also a heavy responsibility. For the king is also a subject—of God—and so he too is answerable for his actions. A king does not have the excuse of subordination. If he chooses poorly, he cannot lay the blame on some higher official or a binding set of orders. He rules by conscience, and the buck stops with him. As Christians, then, we are under the same judgment. We are free to love, and so we bear the responsibility for our own actions. We cannot lay the blame at the feet of any other person.
There is a scene in the Crusades-era film, Kingdom of Heaven, in which the king of Jerusalem expresses this idea very well to the main character. His words have always struck a chord with me:
“None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, ‘But I was told by others to do thus,’ or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.”[3]
I believe that what this character says is correct: when we do stand before God it will not work to say, “showing love was against my orders,” or, “my boss told me to do” such and such. These excuses will not work because we are subjects of the King of Heaven, answerable to him above all, and he has told us, “you shall love.” We are, each of us, empowered to follow our conscience—tempered by the words of Scripture and the leading of the Spirit—regardless of what the powers of this world may command of us.
Dear Father,
By the work of your Son you have turned the nations upside down. You have overturned the power structures of the world so that it is the poor, the meek, the righteous who are blessed, and not the rich, the powerful and the vicious. Make me to be an agent of that kingdom. Make me into a servant who acts in love regardless of the pressures and the forces of this world, who acts by conscience rather than by pragmatics or economics. Purify my conscience so that it may conform to your good truth. And may your kingdom come in its fullness soon.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who will return with his kingdom to make all things new,
Amen.
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