Soren Kierkegard and Meta Religion

"Don't suppose for a minute that I ahve come to demolish the Scriptures - either God's Law or the Prophets. I'm not her to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama."
Matthew 5:17 The message Bible remix

Soren Kierkegard (1813-1855) is thought of today by many as the Father of Existentialism. He began life as the son of a very religious father who was bitter against God and the state run church. He wrote what would be an equivelent of a PhD dissertation on The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. I have great interest in this as my son's masters thesis at the University of Iowa is on Plato's antagonism to the use of Irony and is a written creative dialogue of several contradictory voices analysing modernity. There are many illustrive ideas in the journals and many writings of Kierkegard. I have been reading his works on Love. Something that is very interesting since he had such a struggle in this area. He fell in love with an beautiful intelligent 18 year old girl named Regina. They became engaged but he was such a thinker and a natural meloncholy person who also believed that his life was cursed by God because of the sins of his father that he knew that he would bring nothng but pain to the love of his life. After much thought and anguish he decided to break off the engagement and to help her save honor by spreading the word that she had broken up with him because of his unfaithfulness. He wrote about this under one of his many pseudonyms telling the story and having it end in the philosphers suicide. When he found out that she became engaged to a prominent person in copenhagen social life he changed the ending to this being the reason or muse for the philophers success. Later in life he asked her husband for permission to speak to her and he was denied but he loved her until the end of his life and left everything in his will to her. Kierkegaard was a great critic of organized Christianity which brings us to his point of discussion in looking at Meta Religion. Christianity which transends religion. He did write about faith becoming personal as more important than universal and he discussed the concept of a leap of faith which he believed applied to faith in God and love. Even in all of his criticism of organized Christianity he said, "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." (written August 1, 1835 from the Journals of Soren Kierkegaard) Some of the main points of his attacks on Christianity were:

*Church congregations are meaningless: The idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsiblity for their own relation to God. Kierkegaard stresses that Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual.

To me this runs contradictory to both scriptural christianity and historic christianity. It is understandable when people are kept in a state of dependence on a leader and they never discover and use thier gifts - work collaboratively or agree to disagree. If the local church is not a conversation of disagreement and unity than it is exactly what Kierkegaard is talking about.

*Christianity has become secularized and political.

If Christianity is nothing more than a religious political party and the political lines must be inforced than it becomes meaningless as a personal faith and a relational journey with a living God and a thinking individual.

*Christianity has become an empty religion. Thus it reduces faith to fashionable agreement. This is nothing more than another religion for what he calls philistines who do not what to think or are not bold enough to be themselves.

Attacking the incompetence and corruption of Christian churches. Kierkegaard seemed to have anticipated philosophers like Nietzche who would go on and criticize the Christian religion. of course Adorno disagreed with his philosophy and considered it the most irreesponsible ever and that he is incoherent and incomprehensible. Sarte in being and nothingness attacks Kierkegaards faith as a point to attack the existence of God at all.

Kierkegaard regards life as spheres. There is a civic life which includes marriage, career and social responsiblity, A religious life with involves conforming to social norms. An ethical life as not just a strategy to escape pressure from boredom and dispair but everything tha trelates to the eternal. Then their is the aesthete. A peson may be an aesthete who is trying to live in the religious sphere and it is not working. Or they may be civic person who is trying to live as an aesthete and that is not working. Each individual life cannot be viewed from the outside as was the mission of philosphy and religion.

While this seems to leave one in boredom and dispair as Kierkegaard points out to me genuine meta faith which transends religion must become aboslutly authentic. If God is there he will show himself to the honest searcher. We only need to open our eyes and be authentic in our journey. God is not afraid of our doubts or questions because you can not have faith without first doubting and you cannot find an answer without first a question. And I think all of us would agree that religion as a noun has many that are simply conforming when faith can become personal and authentic when we discover a personal relationship with the living God. What are your thoughts?