If I were not a penitent in my own eyes I should at times have been scandalized by Christianity, but I dare not breathe a word, and so looking back I am reconciled to that which would otherwise have scandalized me. This is how I understand the words of St. Peter: to whom shall we go? As they are normally declaimed by parsons they are merely sentimental. I understand them to mean that the consciousness of sin binds a man to Christianity. And consequently that is how I understand myself. . . . Now since it is God who binds every individual man to Christianity through the consciousness of sin it must certainly be assumed that he determines the conflict for each one in particular. Thus it is nevertheless the consciousness of sin which binds a man to Christianity. Anyone who is not thus bound is not bound by Christianity; all the sentimental talk about it being profound, noble, a friend in need and what not, is simply nonsense. . . .
The relationship must be as profound as that. Christianity repels in order to attract. But people water down Christianity, and what it really means to shake up a man as Christianity does, so that the impetus of the consciousness of sin is no longer necessary in order to force one into it: then the whole thing becomes sentimentality.
Søren Kierkegaard: Journals.

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