Thoughts from my friend S.K.

Rebeccas comments on chimichanga faith reminded me of a story by an old friend of mine. I have a lot of friends I have never met. Blaise Pascal, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Dallas Willard, John Ortberg, and others. Included in my list of friends I've never met is a guy named Soren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard lived in the 19th century. He wrote the following:

Imagine that geese could talk – and that they had planned things in such a way that they, too, had their divine worship services. Every Sunday they gathered together and a goose preached. The gist of the sermon was as follows: What a high destiny geese have, to what a high goal the creator – and every time this word was mentioned the geese curtsied and the ganders bowed their heads – had appointed geese. With the help of their wings they could fly away to distant regions, blessed regions, where they really had their homes, for here they were but alien sojourners.

It was this way every Sunday. Afterwards, the assembly dispersed and each one waddled home to his family. And so to church again next Sunday, and then home again – and that was the end of it. They flourished and grew fat, became plump and delicate, were eaten on St. Martin’s Eve – and that was the end of it.

Yes, that was the end of it. Although the Sunday discourse was so very lofty, on Monday the geese would discuss with each other what had happened to the goose who had wanted really to use his wings according to the high goal set before it – what happened to it, what horrors it had to endure. Of course the geese would not talk about it on Sunday; that, after all, was not appropriate. Such talk would make a fool of God and of themselves.

Still, there were a few individual geese among them who looked poorly and grew thin. The other geese said among themselves: There you see what happens when you take seriously this business of wanting to fly. Because they harbor the idea of wanting to fly, they get thin, and do not prosper, do not have God’s grace as we have it, and become plump, fat, and delicate. For by the grace of God one becomes plump, fat, and delicate.

So it is with our Christian worship services. We, too, have wings, we have imagination, intended to help us actually rise aloft. But we play, allow our imagination to amuse itself in an hour of Sunday daydreaming. In reality, however, we stay right where we are – and on Monday regard it as a proof that God’s grace gets us plump, fat, delicate. That is, we accumulate money, get to be a somebody in the world, beget children, become successful, and so forth. And those who actually get involved with God and who therefore suffer and have torments, troubles, and grief, of these we say: Here is proof that they do not have the grace of God.

Such are the words of my friend S.K.