Soren Kierkegaard
Kernels and Shells: To what may The relation of God and the world be compared? This is the question which led Soren Kierkegaard toward the following parabolic expression:
“If two men were to eat nuts together, and the one liked only the shell, the other only the kernel, one may say that they match one another well. What the world rejects, casts away, despises, namely, the sacrificed man, the kernel – precisely upon that God sets the greatest store, and treasures it with greater zeal than does the world that which it loves with the greatest passion.”
Kierkegaard strikes a universally ressonate theological note with the above thought, which leads me to believe that G.O.D not only envelopes, but also superceeds popular ideas and concepts of “value.” I do not mean to say that popular expressions of G.O.D/value are inept and/or useless, but only that they are far from being exhaustive. What is truly valuable, and the quest to celebrate it, should be the priority of any religious or spiritual expression, even if this value contradicts or even clashes with popular ideas concerning value.
Sometimes there is value in the shell; sometimes there is value in the kernel.
(Soren Kierkegaard: Attack Upon “Christendom,” p.198 (SV XIX 212))
Related posts:
you read it wrong. There is no value in the shell, only the kernel; according to Kierkegaard that is.