David Lentz's Reviews > Works of Love

In his genius Kierkegaard wants us to know that by “works of love” he is describing the rigor of being a loving Christian. Kierkegaard advises that God wants us to love our neighbors, which Kierkegaard considers God’s “royal law.” Kierkegaard stresses this point three times with the emphasis on three different points: YOU shall love your neighbor. You SHALL LOVE your neighbor. You shall love YOUR NEIGHBOR. But who is your neighbor? Your neighbor is anyone whom you see. Your neighbor lives next to you. He is a homeless man in the street. Your neighbor collectively is humanity. So how shall we love our neighbor? Kierkegaard believes that in his words: “Love builds up.” By this he means that love is a constructive spiritual force working for humanity in our universe. The opposite of love tears down, deconstructs and destroys. So a loving person builds up his neighbor and in doing so strengthens both himself and his neighbor, as well as their community. This continuous method of conducting yourself every day in the best interests of your neighbor may be considered “eccentric” by many of your neighbors. You are expected by your neighbors always to act of out of self-interest. But it is by conducting yourself as a loving person by acting in the best interest of others that you achieve integrity and integrity has a positive power of its own. Through self-renunciation one gives up oneself to gain one’s own soul -- very gnostic. K. says that we should, however, not conduct ourselves with love with the expectation that it will be reciprocated because then this act of love simply becomes another expression of self-interest. “Love seeks not its own,” he advises us. Kierkegaard says that love believes all things and yet is never deceived. We are not deceived by our works of love because an omniscient God sees them and expects them no matter what other people may think. This is the height of understanding and can never be perceived as leaving you a victim of deception because God is love and God knows what you’re doing when you love your neighbor: an omniscient God cannot be deceived. Love hides the multiplicity of sin. This recognizes that sin has a natural tendency to have a multiplying effect on other people, including you. But you do not need to add to the effects of a sin. You often have an opportunity to prevent its damage from multiplying and spreading to create more damage. When a loving person sees an opportunity to keep sin from multiplying he or she can seek to prevent its multiplicity. How? You can through your own love offer forgiveness. Kierkegaard writes: “Christianity’s view is: forgiveness is forgiveness; your forgiveness is your forgiveness; your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness: the forgiveness that you give you also receive… If honestly before God you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy, then you dare to hope for your own forgiveness.” You can also prevent the multiplicity of sin through your own love when you offer mercy. You can act through love not to make matters worse. If you are a victor over an adversary, then you can build up your adversary. When you love your adversary in this way, then you construct a bridge for both of you to build up an enduring relationship based upon love. Is there a neighbor whom you cannot love or forgive or offer mercy? If so, why is that so? Perhaps, you harbor illusions about why you consider that neighbor unworthy of your love, forgiveness and mercy. Kierkegaard writes:” You can expect good from even the lowest fellow, for it is still possible that his baseness is an illusion.” As a homeless man, Kierkegaard knew this truth from his own experience. "Christianly understood, loving is loving the very person one sees." “Christian love teaches love of all men, unconditionally all.” You can offer love, forgiveness and mercy to your neighbor because God is your omniscient partner, your co-worker, and God is love. Mercy and forgiveness are works of love. "They are the ways that love conducts itself." Rather than argue to God for self-interest “the lover who forgets himself is remembered by love. There is One who thinks of him in God and in this way it comes about that the lover gets what he gives.” So is hope, which is to pray for the best possible result for your neighbor -- whose future is unseen and in jeopardy: this is the divine use of hope and it is a work of love. God knows what to do: leave God's business to God. Only a loving person hopes because hope is "a faith in the possibility of the good... Blessed is the man of faith: he believes what he cannot see. Blessed is the lover: he believes away what he can see.” Kierkegaard advises that the work of love of remembering one who is dead is a work of the most unselfish love. A proof of human love is that it abides. When loves abides within you, then you know that you are experiencing love within the context of God’s view of time. God’s view of time is one that looks toward eternity: infinitising the moment. And “love is the flower of eternity.” Love is the most powerful force on earth and "it is God who put love in man." Kierkegaard also wrote “Fear and Trembling” about the miraculous faith of Abraham when he understood that God wanted him to sacrifice his beloved son as a proof of faith. In his faith Abraham became father of three of the world’s great religions. Kierkegaard quotes Paul on love in 1st Corinthians: 13 – “Love is patient…Love does not insist on its own way… Love does not rejoice at wrong… Love bears all things. Love believes all things… Love hopes all things… Love endures all things.” God is love. “Beloved, let us love one another.” Because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living for.