Love is blind , declares an old proverb, and it does not thereby suggest an imperfection in the lover or an original condition in him, since only love had won a place in his soul , only then did he become blind and then became more and more blind as love became victorious within him. To the pure all things are pure , declares an old saying, and does not thereby suggest an imperfection in the one who is pure that should gradually disappear; on the contrary, the purer he becomes, the purer everything becomes for him.
It does not depend ,then, merely upon what one sees, but what one sees depends upon how one sees; all observation is not just a receiving , a discovering, but also a bringing forth, and insofar as it is that, how the observer himself is constituted is indeed decisive. When one person sees one thing and another sees something else in the same thing, then the one discovers what the other conceals.
The difference is not in the external but in the internal and everything that makes a person impure and his obsevation impure comes from within.The external eye does not matter, but an evil eye comes from within. But an evil eye discovers much that love does not see , since an evil eye even sees that the Lord acts unjustly when he is good. When evil lives in the heart , the eye sees offense , but when purity lives in the heart , the eye sees finger of God. The pure always see God, but he who does evil does not see god.
A person's inner being, then, detemines what he discovers and what he hides. When an appetite for sin lives in the heart , the eye discovers the multiplicity of sin and makes it even more multiple, because the eye is the lamp of the body , but if the lamp that is in a person is dark, then how great is the darkness! When love lives in the heart the eye is shut and does not discover the open act of sin, to say nothing of the concealed act. When love lives in the heart. a person understands slowly and does not hear at all words said in haste and does not understand them when repeated because he assigns them a good position and a good meaning; he does not understand long angry or insulting verbal assault , because he is waitng for one more word that will give it meaning. ... When joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness,kindness,meekness,continence live in the heart no wonder then that a person , even if he stood in the multiplicity of sin , would become a stranger , a foreigner, who would understand only very little of the customs of the country; if an explanation were required of him , what a covering of a multitude of sins this would be.
Happy the person who saw the world in all its perfection when everything was still very good; happy the person who with God was witness to the glory of creation. More blessed the soul that was God's co-worker in love; blessed the love that hides a multitude of sins.
Soren Kierkegaard
No comments:
Post a Comment