Re: Existence and the Existential

Bruderhof wrote:

> Bruderhof Communities wrote:
> 
>> Life can be explained only after it has been lived.
> 
> The essential sermon is one’s own existence. A person preaches with
> this every hour of the day and with power quite different from that of
> the most eloquent speaker in his most eloquent moment. To let your
> mouth run with eloquent babbling when such talk is the opposite of
> your life is in the deepest sense nonsense. You become liable to
> eternal judgment. 
> 


What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I
am 
to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every 
action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me

to do. The thing is to find a truth that is true for me, to find the idea 
for which I can live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-
called objective truth, of working through all the systems of philosophy 
and of being able, if required, to review them all and show up the 
inconsistencies within each system; what good would it do me to be able to

develop a theory of the state and combine all the details into a single 
whole, and so construct a world in which I did not live, but only held up 
to the view of others; what good would it do me to be able to explain the 
meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and for my

life; what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and ****d, 
not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder 
of fear rather than trusting devotion?