{"id":183,"date":"2009-10-09T12:29:13","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T12:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html"},"modified":"2009-10-09T12:29:13","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T12:29:13","slug":"christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html","title":{"rendered":"“We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers.” Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Picked up this quote from Soren Kierkegaard on my friend Peter Walker’s<\/a> blog today. For me, it dovetails with yesterday’s question<\/a> regarding the point at which believing may or may not become poor judgement.\u00a0Kierkegaard writes:<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

“The matter is quite simple.\u00a0<\/span>The Bible is very easy to understand<\/span>. But we\u00a0<\/span>Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers<\/span>. We\u00a0<\/span>pretend<\/span>\u00a0to be unable to understand it\u00a0<\/span>because we know<\/span>\u00a0very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to\u00a0<\/span>act accordingly<\/span>. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to\u00a0<\/span>act accordingly<\/span>. My God, you will say, if I\u00a0<\/span>do<\/span>\u00a0that my whole life will be\u00a0<\/span>ruined<\/span>. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can\u00a0<\/span>continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close<\/span>. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, balancing this with\u00a0the last post<\/a>, how does one strike a balance between having a radical, countercultural faith without falling into self-righteousness, spiritual arrogance or cultishness?<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picked up this quote from Soren Kierkegaard on my friend Peter Walker’s blog today. For me, it dovetails with yesterday’s question regarding the point at which believing may or may not become poor judgement.\u00a0Kierkegaard writes: “The matter is quite simple.\u00a0The Bible is very easy to understand. But we\u00a0Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We\u00a0pretend\u00a0to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"yoast_head":"\n"We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers." Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard. - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers." Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard. - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Picked up this quote from Soren Kierkegaard on my friend Peter Walker’s blog today. For me, it dovetails with yesterday’s question regarding the point at which believing may or may not become poor judgement.\u00a0Kierkegaard writes: “The matter is quite simple.\u00a0The Bible is very easy to understand. But we\u00a0Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We\u00a0pretend\u00a0to…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-09T12:29:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joan Ball\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers.\" Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard. - Flirting with Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers.\" Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard. - Flirting with Faith","og_description":"Picked up this quote from Soren Kierkegaard on my friend Peter Walker’s blog today. For me, it dovetails with yesterday’s question regarding the point at which believing may or may not become poor judgement.\u00a0Kierkegaard writes: “The matter is quite simple.\u00a0The Bible is very easy to understand. But we\u00a0Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We\u00a0pretend\u00a0to…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html","og_site_name":"Flirting with Faith","article_published_time":"2009-10-09T12:29:13+00:00","author":"Joan Ball","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html","name":"\"We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers.\" Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard. - Flirting with Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-10-09T12:29:13+00:00","dateModified":"2009-10-09T12:29:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/581859119d5895db46006b4beb0c1f27"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/10\/christians-are-a-bunch-of-scheming-swindlers-pretty-harsh-mr-kierkegaard.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“We Christians are a Bunch of Scheming Swindlers.” Pretty Harsh, Mr. Kierkegaard."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/","name":"Flirting with Faith","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Joan Ball","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/581859119d5895db46006b4beb0c1f27","name":"Joan Ball","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6b5\/6b5b96362ce68b986f37a822881ca1f5x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6b5\/6b5b96362ce68b986f37a822881ca1f5x96.jpg","caption":"Joan Ball"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/author\/jball"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}