"Beware of them that like to walk in long robes"
(Mark 12:38; Luke 20:46)
June 15, 1855.
Since "witnesses to the truth," as "genuine witnesses," instead of uttering a warning against me openly, prefer to be, as they think, all the more effective by secrecy, then I shall undertake their business and witness aloud, aloud before the whole nation: Beware of the priests!
Above all beware of the priests! It is a mark of being a Christian (if one is to be a Christian in such a sense that it will hold good in the Judgment) that one has suffered for the doctrine. But believe me, as sure as my name is Søren Kierkegaard, you can get no official priest to say that. Of course not, for that would be suicide. The very instant it is said that to suffer for the doctrine is required for being even an ordinary Christian, that same instant the whole machinery with the 1000 livings and functionaries is thrown into confusion, all these wassailers [Levebrødre — whereas a "living" is Levebrød] are left destitute. Hence you get no official priest to say it. On the other hand, you may be fully assured that with all his might he will preach the opposite, prevent you from entertaining that thought, so that you may be kept in the state which he understands as that of a Christian, a sheep good for shearing, an inoffensive mediocrity, to whom eternity is closed.
Pray believe me. I tender you with my life the security you can demand; for I am not dealing with you in a finite interest, I am not seeking to draw you to me in order to found a party, etc. No, I am merely doing religiously my duty, and in a certain sense, if only I do it, it is indifferent to me, entirely indifferent, whether you comply with what I say or not.
"Beware of them that walk in long robes." It is not necessary to say that with these words Christ has no intention of criticizing their dress; no, it certainly is not an observation about clothes. Christ had no objection to their clothes being long. If the professional attire for priests had been short, Christ would have said, "Beware of them that walk in short clothes." And if you insist that I go to the extreme to show that this is not a criticism of clothes — if the professional attire for priests had been to walk without clothes, Christ would have said: "Beware of them that walk without clothes." It is the professional dress He would swat, indicating it as a distinctive costume — for he understands something altogether different by being a teacher.
Beware of them that like to walk in long robes. A Bible interpretation over the teacups will at once seize upon the word "like" and explain that Christ had in view only individuals in the professional class, those who take vain pride in long robes, etc. No, my good long-robed man, that perhaps by great solemnity in the pulpit you can make women and children believe, it also corresponds perfectly with the picture of Christ which is presented in the Sunday services. But you cannot make me believe it; and the Christ of the New Testament does speak in this way. He always speaks about the whole order and does not resort to the meaningless gabble that there are some members of the order who are depraved, which is true at all times of all classes, so that obviously nothing whatever is said. No, He conceives the order as a whole and says that the order as a whole is depraved, so that the order as a whole has a depraved liking for walking in long robes, because to be a priest in the official sense is exactly the opposite of what Christ understood by being a teacher, the latter meaning to suffer for the teaching, the former meaning to enjoy the earthly as it is refined by the glory of being God's representative. So it is no wonder they like to walk in long robes; for all other official positions in life are rewarded only by the earthly, but the official clergy take along with them a little of the heavenly as a refinement.
So then in itself it is entirely indifferent whether the professional dress is long or short. The decisive point is that when the teacher acquires "canonicals," a peculiar dress, professional attire, you have official worship — and that is what Christ will not have. Long robes, splendid churches, etc., all this hangs together, and it is the human falsification of the Christianity of the New Testament, a falsification which shamelessly takes advantage of the fact that unfortunately the human mass only too easily lets itself be deluded by sense-impressions, and therefore (exactly in opposition to the New Testament) is prone to judge true Christianity by sense-impressions. It is the human falsification of the Christianity of the New Testament, and it is not true of the clerical order as it is of other orders, that there is nothing evil about the order; no, the clerical order is, Christian!)' considered, in and for itself of the Evil, is a demoralization, a human egoism, which inverts Christianity to exactly the opposite of that which Christ had made it.
But now that long robes have in fact become the official dress for priests, one can be sure that there is something in it, and I believe that by observing what it implies one can form a very significant conception of the nature of official Christianity.
By long robes one's thought is involuntarily led to the suspicion that there is something to be concealed; when one has something to conceal, long robes are very convenient — and official Christianity has a prodigious lot to conceal, for from first to last it is an untruth, which therefore had best be hidden...in long robes.
And long robes — in fact that is feminine attire. Thereby thought is led on to something which also is characteristic of official Christianity, the unmanliness of using cunning, untruth and lies as its power. That again is very characteristic of official Christianity, which, being itself an untruth, uses a prodigious amount of untruth, both to hide what truth is, and to hide the fact that it is untruth.
And this womanish quality is also in another way characteristic of official Christianity. The feminine trait of willing and yet resisting, this coquetry which in woman is unconscious, has its unpardonable parallel in official, Christianity, which so keenly wills the earthly and the temporal, but because of a sense of shame must make out that it does not will it, is on the alert to get it, yet secretly, for one must make out — God save us! — one must faint, fall into a swoon, when one has to accept a high and fat post, which one is so reluctant to assume that only from a sense of duty, solely and simply from a sense of duty, one has been able to resolve to assume such a post, and that only when one has — alas, in vain — sighed upon one's knees before God and begged Him to take this cross, this bitter cup, from one and one would find oneself perhaps in desperate embarrassment if the government were ironical enough to excuse one.
Finally, there is something equivocal about men in women's clothes. One might be tempted to say that it conflicts with the police ordinance which forbids men to appear in women's clothes and vice versa. But in any case, there is something equivocal — and equivocal is the more descriptive term for what official Christianity is, descriptive of the change Christianity has undergone in the course of time, that from being what it was in the New Testament, namely, simplicity, it has (presumably by the aid of its perfectibility) become something more, namely, duplicity, an equivocation.
Beware therefore of them that like to walk in long robes! According to Christ (who surely must know best about the way, since He is the Way) the gate is strait, the way is narrow — and few there be that find it. And what perhaps most of all has brought it about that the number of these few is so small, smaller proportionately with every century, is the monstrous illusion which official Christianity has conjured up. Persecution, maltreatment, bloodshedding, has by no means done such injury, no, it has been inestimably beneficial in comparison with the radical damage done by official Christianity, which is designed to serve human indolence, mediocrity, by making men believe that indolence, mediocrity and enjoyment of life is Christianity. Do away with official Christianity, let persecution come — that very instant Christianity again exists.