I am a person not an object. I am a unique person, made in the image of God, of value and significance. I am loved and capable of love. I was created for relationships to others and most importantly to God. I am a particular person with particular likes and dislikes, aptitudes and limitations, hopes and fears, commitments and biases, interests and enthusiasms. I am not a fatalist determined by circumstances without possibilities. I am not a philistine who lives superficially for trivialities and denies my relationship with God. I am spirit as well as matter. The fatalist refuses to believe that for God all things are possible. He is limited by his understanding that nothing is possible. He refuses to take the leap of faith that allows all things to be possible.

Fatalism is spiritual despair, philistinism, because it has tranquilized itself in the trivial, is too spiritless and materialistic to know that it is in despair. Through an attempt to control possibilities by a contemporary fascination with science, rockets and computers, philistinism celebrates its triumph in a spirit exactly opposite to the popular song of a few years ago, sung by Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?” Our contemporary philistines, masters of the banal, servants of technique, of testing, of physical diagnosis, and slaves of the financial markets, joyfully answer, “Yes, that’s all there is.” For self knowledge they substitute computer literacy, for the ability to be secure in the insecurity of conscious freedom, they substitute lockdowns, remote learning, quarantines, isolation, stay at home orders and social distancing. In the contemporary worship of fact, of realism, of moderation, all passions, ideals and dreams are thrown out of the window into the vague realm of the merely utopian, irrational and unverifiable. We strive for perfection at the cost of love and acceptance of the reality of our mortality. We are ruled by scientism: “follow the science”, by cases, by the latest reports, by the constant reporting of digital information. Doctors’ visits are impersonal, the communication of the results of tests on the body without regard for the emotional and spiritual health of the patient. Perspectives of faith and eternity are regarded as irrelevant and mere gibberish.

Even churches who preach faith and celebrate the Christian God of possibilities and relationships act contrary to their beliefs by sending signals that fellowship is secondary to physical health, that facilities are to be kept closed, that people should not gather, that Holy Communion through personal reception should be avoided, and that personal contact should be feared. People are treated as objects not as persons whose whole life should be valued and affirmed. Instead of rejoicing in the blessings of life we live in fear and focus on our losses. We need to repent of this sin.

Where is courage and faith in our present culture? Where is the message of hope and eternal life? Why are our headlines so depressing? Because we are treated as objects not as persons who are made by God and for God and for one another. Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever should believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

(Some of this material is taken from James L. Marsh, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Despair and Sin, IKC: The Sickness unto Death, p.82)