To Be or To Be
Behold, I was brought forth in guilt, and in sin my mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5 NASB
Brought forth – There is hardly any verse in the Bible that has created more suffering and despair than this one. Why? Because coupled with Genesis 3, this verse is the proof that everyone, you and I, are born guilty. We had nothing to say in the matter. Adam propelled us all into damnation. His guilt passed to us and we inherited his offense before God. Because of a verse like this, the doctrines of Original Sin and the Federal Headship of Adam reigned over Christian thought for centuries. As my Italian friend said, “Every Italian knows he is guilty. He just doesn’t know why.”
The hidden consequences of these Christian ideas have shaped our view of God, “Jesus,” and missionary evangelism. It also encouraged rebellion in the form of paganism. “Christianity, Kierkegaard insists, is heterogeneity and separateness from the world. Therefore, a man must renounce this world; he refers to it as a penal establishment. The meaning of life, according to Kierkegaard, then, is found in the possibility of suffering. One cannot avoid pain where the eternal and temporal meet each other. ‘It was because of Christianity’s hostility toward life that paganism called it odium generis humani [hatred of the human species].’ This charge is true, says Kierkegaard.”[1]
Christianity rests upon the . . . presupposition that the human race is a lost race, that every individual who is born is by being born a lost individual. Christianity then would save every individual, but it makes no disguise of the fact that, when this is taken seriously, this life becomes the direct opposite of what is to man’s taste and liking, being sheer suffering, anguish, misery.
The forgiveness of sins cannot be such that God wipes out all guilt, with one blow, obliterating all its consequences. Such a desire is only a worldly longing, which does not rightly know what guilt is. It is only the guilt which is forgiven, the forgiveness of sins is not more. It does not mean to become a new man under happier circumstances, but to become a new man in the consoling assurance that the guilt is forgiven, even though the consequences of sin remain.[2]
This sense of inherited guilt, without behavioral choice, left the world in utter disrepair. The only real solution was not within the grasp of human beings. If God didn’t intervene and rescue some out of the world, then we were lost, trotting the hopeless path to our destruction, fulfilling God’s unconditional choice of who survived and who didn’t. God existed in supreme self-sufficiency, devoid of human corruption, transcendent in power and knowledge . . . and without any need whatsoever for human existence. Paganism, with its emphasis on sensual reality, appealed to all who could not conscience such a totalitarian, ex-temporal God.
“Kierkegaard reproaches Luther for de-emphasizing the requirement [of remaining unmarried] and turning Christianity into Judaism . . . Fruitfulness and propagation belong to Judaism where those who fear God are happy and blessed and where the promises apply to this earthly life. But Christianity’s kingdom is not of this world . . . The reason for this difference between Judaism and Christianity lies in their differing orientation to eternity. Essentially Judaism is the temporal without the eternal: in Christianity everything is directed toward eternity.”[3]
Christianity’s missionary emphasis on salvation is the direct result of the belief that the world is essentially lost, and must be rescued from the world in order to be fit for heaven. But notice Heschel’s remark: “ . . . the sense of inherited guilt . . . There is no indication of it in his [the Kotzker] personal life, nor is there a place for it in Jewish thought. Classical Jewish literature firmly rejected such a concept.[4]
Kierkegaard stressed God’s absolute self-sufficiency. Judaism teaches that God needs man to carry out His acts through history, that man depends in his very being on God, and that, within the dimension of history, the relationship between God and man is a covenant, a reciprocity, in which the partners have obligations toward each other. True to the meaning of the covenant, God is in need of the cooperation of man.[5]
A sense of irreparable disorder caused by sin or of a catastrophe and final loss of God are inconceivable in Jewish thought; nor is inherited guilt . . . Judaism maintains that human existence is a state of involvement. Man is involved with the Creator by his very being; for in being he obeys the command, ‘Let there be!’ Just to be is holy. Being is not a predicament of guilt but rather a triumph, a tribute to Him Who has created the world. Just to be is a blessing. Being is a continuous bestowal of blessing. The problem is not being. How to be is the dilemma.[6]
To be . . . or to be: that is the real question. You might ask yourself how much of your own idea of self-worth is a consequence of inheriting Christianity’s view of man’s depravity.
Topical Index: original sin, inherited guilt, evangelism, paganism, Psalm 51:5
[1] Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 245.
[2] Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon “Christendom,” p. 226, cited in Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 248.
[3] M. M. Thulstrup, “Kierkegaard’s Dialectic,” in A Kierkegaard Critique, p. 274, cited in Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 246 with this footnote: “The last sentence in this quotation echoes an unfortunate misinterpretation of Judaism common in Christian literature.”
[4] Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 242.
[5] Ibid., pp. 242-243.
[6] Ibid., p. 249.
