Individual TRANSFORMATION

               ( C o n v e r s i o n )

" Verily  verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God "

INTRODUCTION

This essay is also a tribute to a man that was a true believer, a man whose spirit will live forever. Soren Kierkegaard was born on the 5th of May 1813 in Copenhagen and he died on the 11th of November 1855  at the age of 42.

There is no need for me to linger on the subject, Kierkegaard clearly explains what it means to be transformed; to become a new person.   I have shortened the essay a little, however the text remains as the original. I suggest that the believer reads the essay a number of times so that he can become truly mindful of how graceful God is in having restored his rationality.

A MESSAGE FROM SOREN KIERKEGAARD.

The day of Pentecost. Read: Acts 2:1-12

My devout listener, if you will pay attention, not to the discourse carried on in our churches on holy days but to that which is carried on everyday and, for that matter, also on Sunday outside the church, you will find hardly anyone who does not believe in, for example, " the spirit of the age ". Even the person who, blissful in mediocrity, took leave of higher things, yes, even the person who for the longest time slaves in the interest of paltriness or in the contemptible service of ill gain, he also believes, fully and firmly, in the spirit of the age .

Now it goes without saying that it is not exactly something essentially high that he believes in, because the spirit of the age is certainly no higher that the age, keeps close to the ground , and this as spirit could best be likened to swamp fog; but he nevertheless does believe in spirit.

Or he believes in the spirit of the world, that strong spirit - yes, in enticements ; that powerful spirit - yes, in delusions; that ingenious spirit -yes, in deception ; that spirit that Christianity calls an evil spirit - and so it is not everything very high that he believes in when he believes in this spirit, but he nevertheless believes in spirit .

On the other hand, as soon as the discourse is about a holy spirit, about believing in a holy spirit, how many do you think believe in that ? Or when the discourse is about an evil spirit that should be renounced: how many do you think believe in such a spirit?

Indeed, according to Christianity someone who believes in the spirit of the age, in the spirit of the world, certainly believes in an evil spirit, but this is not his opinion, and so he does not believe that there is any evil spirit. In a deeper sense, this conflict between good and evil probably does not exist for him. Slack as he is, or disintegrated, doubting in his faith, unstable in all his ways, bending to every breeze of the times, the object of his faith is of the same kind: something flimsy the spirit of the age; or secularized as he is in all his thoughts and aspirations, the object of his faith is accordingly: the spirit of the world.

Likewise with this Christian teaching: It is the Spirit who gives life. To what feeling does a person cling more firmly than to the feeling of being alive; what does one crave more strongly and violently than really to feel life in oneself; from what does one shrink more than to die! But here a life-giving Spirit is indeed proclaimed. Then let us be receptive. Who wants to think twice? Bring us life, more life, so that the feeling of being alive might swell in me-as if all life were concentrated in my breast!

But is this supposed to be Christianity, this appalling error? No, no! this life-giving in the Spirit is not a DIRECT heightening of the natural life in a person in immediate continuation from and connection with it-what blasphemy! how horrible to take Christianity in vain this way!-it is a new life, literally a new life. A new life, yes, and this is no platitude as, for example, when we use this phrase about those and that every time something new begins to stir in us - no, it is a new life, literally a new life-because, mark this well, death goes in between, dying to, and a life on the other side of death-yes, that is a new life.

Death goes in between ; this is what Christianity teaches, you must die to. The life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter into death, that you must die to-it is this way in order that you may not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving Spirit -that is the invitation ; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die first-that is the halt!

Therefore, death first; you must first die to every merely earthly hope, to every merely earthly confidence; you must die to your selfishness, or to the world, because it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you; if you are dead to your selfishness, you are also dead to the world. But naturally there is nothing a human being hangs onto so firmly -indeed, with his whole self!-as to his selfishness! Ah, the separation of soul and body in the hour of death is not as painful as being forced to be separated from one's soul when one is alive! And a human being does not hang on to this physical life as firmly as one's selfishness hangs on to its selfishness!

This is what it is to die to. But before the Spirit who gives life can come, you must first die to. Sometimes when I for a day or for a long period feel so indisposed, so weary, so useless, almost as if I were dead-yes, we do indeed say this- then I, too, have sighed to myself: Oh, give me life! Life is what I need! Or when I perhaps have overexerted myself and it seems to me that I cannot carry on any longer, or when for a long time I seemed to have failed in everything and sank into despondency, then I have sighed to myself: Life! Give me life! But it still does not follow that Christianity is of the mind that this is what I need. Suppose it was of another mind and said, " No, first die completely; the trouble with you is that you are still clinging selfishly to life, to the life you call a torment, a burden--die completely! " I have seen a person almost ready to drop in despair. I have also heard him cry out, " Give me life,life! This is worse than the death that puts an end to life, but I am as if dead and yet I am not dead! " I am not a severe man. If I knew any mitigating word, I would have been quite willing to comfort and encourage. But yet, it is quite possible that the sufferer really lacked something else-that he needed harder sufferings.

Harder sufferings! Who is so cruel as to dare say something like that? My friend it is Christianity, the doctrine that is sold under the name of the gentle comfort, whereas it is eternity's comfort, yes truly and for all eternity-but it certainly must deal rather severely. Christianity is not what we human beings, both you and I, are all eager to make it; it is not a quack doctor. A quack doctor is promptly at your service and immediately applies the remedy and bungles everything. Christianity waits before it applies its remedy; it does not cure every brief little indisposition with the help of eternity- indeed, this is surely an impossibility just as it is self-contradictory! Therefore Christianity's severity- lest it becomes nonsense itself (something we human beings are all to willing to make it), lest it confirm you in nonsense.

Then, my listener, then-then comes the life-giving Spirit. When? When this has happened, when you are dead to, for just as it says, " If we have died with Christ, so shall we also live with him, " it can be said: If we are to live with him, then we must die with him. First death-then life.

The Spirit brings FAITH, THE FAITH- that is, faith in the strictest sense of the word, this gift of the Holy Spirit-only after death has come in between. We human beings are not very precise with words; we often talk about faith when in the strictly Christian sense it is not faith. according to the diversity of natural endowments, we are all born with a stronger or weaker immediacy ; the stronger, the more vigorous it is, the longer it can hold out against resistance. And this endurance, this healthy confidence in oneself, in the world, in mankind, and, along with all this, in God, we call faith. But in the stricter Christian understanding it is not faith. Faith is against understanding; faith is on the other side of death. And when you died or died to yourself, to the world, then you also died to all immediacy in yourself, also to your understanding. It is when all confidence in your- self or in human support, and also in God in an immediate way, is extinct, when every probability is extinct, when it is dark as on a dark night-it is indeed death we are describing-then comes the life-giving Spirit and brings faith. This faith is stronger than the whole world; it has the power or eternity; it is the Spirit's gift from God, it is your victory over the world in which you more than conquer.

And the Spirit next brings HOPE--hope in the strictest Christian sense, which is hope against hope. In every human being there is a spontaneous, immediate hope; it can be more robust in one than in another, but in death every such hope dies and changes into hopelessness. Into this night of hopelessness it is indeed death we are describing-comes the life-giving Spirit and brings hope, eternity's hope. It is against hope, because according to that purely natural hope there is no more hope; consequently this hope is against hope. The understanding says, " No, there is no hope"; you are, how- ever, dead to your understanding and it that case it is probably silent, but if it ever takes the floor again it will promptly begin where it stopped- " There is no hope " - and it will probably mock this new hope, the Spirit's gift. Just as the sagacious and sensible people mocked the apostles and said: " They are drunk on sweet wine " .

Finally the Spirit also brings LOVE. Elsewhere I have tried to show what cannot be sufficiently stressed and never made clear enough, that what we extol under the name of love is self-love, and that the whole of Christianity becomes confused for us when we do not pay attention to this. Not until you have died to the selfishness in you and thereby to the world so that you do not love the world or anything in the world, do not selfishly love even one single person- not until your in love of God have learned to hate yourself, not until then can there be talk of the love that is Christian love.

Such are the gifts the life-giving Spirit brought to the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Would that the Spirit might also bring us such gifts- truly they are certainly needed in times like these!