Some people are hard to peg. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is one such person. He is eminently quotable yet challenging to read. He broke off his engagement with Regina while admitting he was still deeply in love with her. He wrote with an acerbic pen yet was also capable of composing deeply moving prayers. He wrote under various pseudonyms so that he could disagree with himself. He enrolled at the University of Copenhagen to study theology and prepare for the ministry yet took ten years to graduate and was never ordained.
Soren condemned casual Christianity in his book Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. Faith in Jesus is not one interest among many. It’s the one thing that matters most. He condemned the established church for merely “playing at Christianity” and called out clergy for their materialistic lifestyles and diluted doctrine. Consider what he wrote about Christians and their Bibles, “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” While Soren could be a harsh social critic, he was also a man of deep, passionate faith. He wrote of prayer, “The function of prayer is not to influence God but to rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” He was as hard on himself as he was of the church. He prayed to be delivered from “stifling reflections” to “breathe deeply in faith.” We join him in praying: