I can never read one book at a time. I always have four or five going at once with two or three more on the periphery. At times I’ve tried to buckle down and focus on one or two, but it never works out, and I’ve come to accept that this is how I like to read. One of the gifts of this diffuse reading habit is the contrasts that can come, the insights that arise from one book in conversation with another.
This happened to me recently as I read Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Crossroads at the same time I was reading, Bruce Kirmmse’s recent translation of The Sickness Unto Death by Kierkegaard.
Franzen has a profound understanding of people in all our paradoxes, our self-delusions, our tragicomic foibles. He writes with compassion for his characters, but at the same time a sly grin—we take ourselves so seriously, believe so strongly in our powers, and yet we tend toward such disastrous failures. This is the mirror Franzen hold up to us, all the while making room for the grace that comes when thing inevitably fall apart.
Crossroads is the story of Russ Hildebrandt and his family living in New Prospect, a fictional suburb of Chicago, in the early 1970s. Russ is an associate pastor of a large progressive church with a chip on his shoulder. He lives in a rundown parsonage, with no sight of advancement, and he has been rejected from his role in the large, popular youth group, “Crossroads.” As a result much of Russ’s animosity is aimed at the hip, psychologically manipulative youth pastor, Rick Ambrose. Relegated to increased pastoral duties and leading a women’s circle to offer help to an inner city parish, Russ turns his frustrations toward seeking an affair with an attractive young widow that recently joined the congregation.
I won’t give away the plot of this novel that runs over 500 pages, but I will say that I think it is Dostoevskian in its psychological depth and essential reading for anyone considering pastoral ministry. In my own seminary training, I remember a professor saying that “rationalization is the root of all sin.” That professor was later dismissed for having an affair, proving his point. Franzen so profoundly bears witness to the power of such rationalization that it can be uncomfortable to watch. And yet, he continues to show the grace that come through despite ourselves.
At one point in the novel, after Russ puts himself in one among a series of self-induced binds, Franzen offers this line: “It was strange that self-pity wasn’t on the list of deadly sins; none was deadlier.” That line has been sitting with me these last couple of weeks, proving true again and again.
I had it on my mind when I turned to the closing pages of The Sickness Unto Death. This book, which Kierkegaard published first in 1849, is rich with insight into the fundamental problem of human life. Human beings tend to fall into two problems, both of which lead us away from a true grounding of the self. On the one side, we flee from ourselves, trying to ground our being in some other person or group. On the other side, we assert ourselves, living into the ideal of the self-made person. Both of these tendencies lead us toward despair, what in contemporary parlance could be called shame on the one side and pride on the other.
For Kierkegaard to be a full and flourishing self, free of despair, the self “in relating to itself, and in willing to be itself…is grounded transparently in the power that established it.” To put another way, only when we have grounded ourselves completely and transparently in God can we be ourselves without despair.
The book moves on to analyze the ways these forms of despair operate in our lives. The passage that particularly intersected with my reading of Crossroads came late in the book in the section titled “The sin of despairing over one’s sins.” For Kierkegaard, despair is ultimately a state of sin, and this state can be intensified by despairing over one’s sins. As Kierkegaard describes it:
“Despair over sin is an attempt to survive by sinking even deeper; as when a person who ascends in a balloon rises higher by casting off weights, the person in despair sinks by casting off, with ever-increasing determination, everything that is good (for the weight of the good is what lifts a person up).”
In worrying about our sins, in “not forgiving ourselves” or being lost in self-pity as Russ Hildebrandt was, Kierkegaard says that we are breaking with repentance. This is why such a despair over sin is an intensification of it. The sin itself is a rejection of the good, but to then not accept forgiveness of that sin is to also reject repentance, a sort of doubling down.
This is a profound human tendency in which pride and shame come together. While they seem to be opposites, Kierkegaard shows that pride and shame are two species of the same genus. It is a truth that I witness regularly in pastoral conversations, particularly with those mired in sin of an addictive nature. Rather than remorse and repentance, these people tend to wallow in the fact of their sinfulness and yet never address its reality before God.
Kierkegaard paints the picture of such a person who, after failing to resist a temptation, is deeply distressed over his sins. “[T]he direction of this distress,” writes Kierkegaard, “is clearly away from God, a concealed self-love and pride.” And yet, in that concealment, such a despairing sinner can sometimes gain the praise of pastors or loved ones. “In sorrow, he may perhaps sink into the darkest melancholia—and a fool of a pastoral counselor would perhaps come close to admiring the profundity of his soul…And his wife—yes, she feels profoundly humbled in comparison to such an earnest and holy man who is capable of sorrowing over his sins.” Kierkegaard will have none of it.
This does not mean that sin should be taken lightly, or that we shouldn’t feel deep remorse for the wrongs done. Instead, the solution for despairing over sin is humility. When we fail, it is a chance to admit our powerlessness, our total dependence upon God’s mercy and grace, and our gratitude for it. Instead of acting surprised that someone so good as ourselves is a sinner, we should once again recognize that we are fragile, finite beings very much in need of God’s empowerment toward any good.
I’m an associate pastor in a mainline protestant church. I share good deal in common with Russ Hildebrandt on paper. I hope, dear God, never to be anything like him. Yet, in the mirror of Franzen’s novel I recognize my own rationalizations, my own ways of holding onto pride, even if it might look like remorse.
With Kierkegaard’s help, I can see those tendencies for what they are, another attempt to escape that reality that will ultimately make me whole—a humble dependence upon God. To try to be myself, or to try to escape myself, will both lead me toward despair. The only answer, the only fullness, is to be found in grounding my self in the life of the God who made me and loves me and is always extending grace and mercy.
“In a sense, therefore, the first words of the Lords Prayer represent the goal towards which we are working, rather than the starting point from which we set out. It is no doubt true, here as elsewhere, that the end of all our striving will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”- N. T Wright
The fundamental problem of human life is of course death. The beloved in all of its forms disintegrates and dies.
That having been said please check out an Illuminated Understanding of death and everything else too via these references:
http://www.easydeathbook.com/purpose.asp The Purpose of Death - beautiful prose
http://www.adidaupclose.org/death_and_dying/index.html
http://deathanddyingwisdom.com
http://beezone.com/1main_shelf/death_message.html The Death Message