Training in Christianity: The invitation and the inviter
Already “tired of winning”
It is no secret that the first two months of the new administration have been chaotic and dispiriting. The rapid fire combination of unjust firing of thousands of federal workers, market manipulation, sabotaging alliances, national leaders endangering our military by discussing defense strategy on unsecure comms, and the warrantless disappearance of legal US residents has left me more than a little emotionally frazzled.
Writing my reflections on Soren Kierkegaard fell by the wayside. Simply putting one foot in front of the other was all that I was able to do.
Now that the complicated reality of what we will be facing for the next several years has begun to sink in, the shock is beginning to wear off. In the past month I have begun connecting with other like minded people, attended protests advocating for due process and the protection of the vulnerable, and am beginning to feel less isolated and overwhelmed.
An invitation I needed to read once more
It is in that somewhat more grounded context that I began rereading some of the earlier chapters of Training in Christianity, and am very glad I did. A great deal of what my favorite grumpy Dane writes sounds like it could have been ripped directly from today’s headlines. In section 3 of part 1 he reflects on the seeming incongruity of so few people accepting the grace-filled invitation of Christ the Inviter. He struggles with the fact that people in such great need offered such a tepid, if not outright hostile, response to the divine compassion available to humanity.
If I am honest with myself, this is also a struggle I have. Far too many people in the claiming the name of Christianity have allowed themselves to become beholden to power, privilege, and money. Oppression is not only tolerated, it is celebrated, sometimes in the very name of the Inviter who has called us to live in a wholly different way. Unfortunately, as Kierkegaard points out living as a true Christian “cannot but be interpreted by men as a sort of insanity” (Kierkegaard, 1850, p. 53) in the eyes of the world.
In light of that disconnect between the expectations of the world (which Kierkegaard labels “Christendom”), and the expectations of Christianity, I appreciate the thought experiment he offers about the scorn a rich person would experience if they tried to truly live a divinely compassionate life. While Christendom might give credit to someone who was benevolent while paternalistically maintaining their superior status, that same society would ultimately reject that same person if they made a radical Christian commitment “seek his society among the poor, live completely with the humble classes, with laborers, hod carriers, mortar mixers, and the like!” (Kierkegaard, 1850, p. 53)
Like our world today, the Christendom of Kierkegaard’s era had “a thousand ways of explaining that it is by reason of his eccentricity and obstinacy and pride and vanity that he lives thus” (Kierkegaard, 1850, p. 53). Essentially, by discounting compassion, especially divine compassion, Christendom excuses itself from truly responding to the divine invitation of the Inviter. While people might offer some compassion to those around us, or most like us, Kierkegaard claims that compassion rarely moves beyond one’s class or place in society.
Although it is almost two centuries since Kierkegaard wrote, very little has changed. We are also living through a cultural tug-of-war of what it means to be a Christian. The Christendom of the contemporary United States simultaneously celebrates the example of former President Jimmy Carter while also speaking about the “sin of empathy.”
In that milieu, I am incredibly grateful for Kierkegaard’s reminder that Christ, the divine Inviter, experienced the humility and darkness of our world. His profound resistance to evil demonstrated what true compassion is supposed to look like, as well as provided a yardstick by which we should measure the realities of the world around us.
Invitation for me in this chapter is allow his humility to shock me out of my complacency, and to encourage me to actually “come hither” to the one who has divine compassion for all.
Reference:
Kierkegaard, S.K. (1850). Training in Christianity. Vintage Spiritual Classics.
