Are You Serious???

My son was home for Easter weekend, and he told me he is taking a course about vocations. Kids today, and indeed folks of all ages -- including me! -- need to think about and listen for our "calling." What gets in the way, it seems to me, is all that background noise! The call is there, like the whisper that Elijah heard, but we just can't seem to hear it.

I happened to come across an interesting article by Hubert Dreyfus that describes the condition of lots of us, a condition that was already well-described by Kierkegaard in the mid 1800's. I highly recommend it. You can find it here. Essentially, Kierkegaard says in his review essay "The Present Age," that the modern world "levels," making all things accessible but ultimately banal. We become part of an anonymous "public" who pass around opinions we pick up, and endlessly "comment," but can't seem to latch on to anything or "do" something unconditionally. Dreyfus applies this insight to our current "public" participation in the internet. (I'll let you decide how a propos his description is of our own "blog experience"!)

Kierkegaard says that such a person "recognizes no power over itself; therefore in the final instance it lacks seriousness. . . ." (Sickness unto Death, 100). It's interesting that he relates seriousness to power. I looked up "serious" and found its etymological root is "wer" meaning "to bind," and to "hang on a scale." We see the root in "swear." I am serious when I am bound to something, when I recognize its power over me, when I am being weighed on a scale, evaluated, responsible. The opposite of seriousness is frivolity (from the Latin frivos "broken, crumbled," from friare "break, rub away, crumble."), which describes an uncommitted, dissipated life, disconnected and ultimately broken. ("Ps. 1: "The wicked are not so, but are like chaff, which the wind drives away.") Until we are bound, i.e., have a master, or in Kierkegaard's words, "unconditionally committed," we live frivolously. And we may not even know it!

Where does the binding come from? From our spiritual relationship of obedience to our "ground" of authority, God. Kierkegaard said that all of his work boils down to preaching obedience. Obedience is the recognition and acceptance of the divine law (of love), as we see it embodied in Jesus Christ. To repent and obey makes us serious. It keeps us from being blown about by the winds of frivolity, and allows us to hear, and follow, God's call, our vocation. For Kierkegaard groups have no existence vis a vis the absolute; each man will be judged by God as an individual. So to hear and follow our call is crucial.