Faith enables man to die; but it also enables him to live.
My work has indeed been totally in society. But I knew at once, in those far-back days of 1928, that my life would not and could not be totally in society, that it would have to have an existential dimension that transcends society. Still my work has been totally in society—except for this essay on Kierkegaard.
Though Kierkegaard’s faith cannot overcome the awful loneliness, the isolation and dissonance of human existence, it can make it bearable by making it meaningful. The philosophy of the totalitarian creeds enables man to die. It is dangerous to underestimate the strength of such a philosophy; for, in a time of sorrow and suffering, of catastrophe and horror, it is a great thing to be able to die. yet it is not enough. Kierkegaard’s faith, too, enables man to die; but it also enables him to live. Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. Faith is the knowledge that man is creature—not autonomous, not the master, not the end, not the center—and yet responsible and free. It is the acceptance of man’s essential loneliness, to be overcome by the certainty that God is always with man, even “unto the hour of our death.”
ACTION POINT: Salvation by society has always failed in the end. Find a purpose that sustains you both in society and as a human being.
The Ecological Vision
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker