Dec 25, 2012

"Conversion" by Kierkegaard

Conversion goes slowly.  As Franz Baader rightly observes, one has to walk back by the same road he came out on earlier.  It is easy to become impatient: if it cannot happen at once, one may just as well let it go, begin tomorrow, and enjoy today; this is the temptation. — Is this not the meaning of the words: to take God's kingdom by force—?


This is why we are told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, for it is not finished or completed; backsliding is a possibility. — No doubt it was in part this unrest which drove people to seek so zealously to become martyrs, in order to make the test as brief and momentarily intense as possible, a test which is always easier to endure than a prolonged one.


June 13, 1836