I can’t really recommend Soren Kierkegaard’s “Works of Love” enough.
Over the past three weeks we have looked at the book . . . and they have been excerpts from a mere 10 pages! It’s 353 pages long! And near every one gold.
He writes, “Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair.”
His point here is to cure you of anxiety or despair.
In his opinion, despair isn’t something that just happens. Despair is a sickness that eats the soul and rots the bones. All men and women are afflicted by it.
He writes, “That which makes a man despair is not misfortune, but it is this: that he lacks the eternal. Despair is to lack the eternal. Despair is not, therefore, the loss of the beloved–that is misfortune, pain, suffering; but despair is the lack of the eternal.”
To lack the eternal is to be thrown everywhere by the seas of change and time. You become a slave to your feelings or the feelings of others. Eventually, you are shipwrecked and drowning; never sure how it came to this, for you only wanted to love and be loved.
But only when love is a duty, when it is a command that you obey, only than does your soul have peace. This is a secure mountain in the middle of the ocean. Why? Because to fulfill the command is to rest in the security of eternity. “Unchangeableness is true independence.” Thus, to give and give, to love and love, with no concern or anxiety for yourself, is to rest. Otherwise, you are constantly hoping something will return to you or you love only with the hope that you will be loved in return. This is extreme dependence and slavery. It results in despair. It is despair.
This despair continues even when you’re “happy.” For your happiness is still utter dependence. Only when love becomes a command that you fulfill are you free.
SK writes, “The love which has undergone the transformation of the eternal by becoming duty is not exempted from misfortune, but it is saved from despair, in fortune and misfortune equally saved from despair.”
There are commands upon commands in Scripture.
They are not chains, but rather the exact opposite!
They are the surest path toward freedom.
Tom+