It is a question of discovering a truth which is truth for me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die. - Søren Kierkegaard

There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms.

If you listen carefully, in what most definitely must be called Gospel you yourself will hear also rigorousness. For example, what Jesus says to the centurion from Capernaum, “If we will apply these words to ourselves, we are obliged to say, “Be it done for you as you believe; if you have faith unto salvation, then you will be saved.” (Matthew 8:13) How lenient, how merciful! But is it also certain, then, that I have faith-I surely cannot summarily transfer to myself the fact that the centurion believed, as if I had faith because the centurion had it. Let us suppose that someone asked Christianity, “Is it also certain, then, that I have faith?” Christianity would answer, “Be it done for you as you believe.”

Every earthly or worldly good is in itself selfish, begrudging; its possession is begrudging or is envy and in one way or another must make others poorer – what I have someone else cannot have; the more I have, the less someone else must have. The unrighteous mammon (with this term we perhaps may indeed designate every earthly good, also worldly honor, power, etc.) is in itself unjust and makes for injustice (quite apart here from the question of acquiring it or possessing it in an unlawful manner) and in itself cannot be acquired or possessed equally. If one person is to have much of it, there must be someone else who necessarily gets only a little, and what the one has the other cannot possibly have. Furthermore, all the time and energy, all the mental solicitude and concern that is applied to acquiring or possessing earthly good is selfish, begrudging, or the person who is occupied in this way is selfish, at every such moment has no thought for others; at every such moment he is selfishly working for himself or selfishly for a few others, but not equally for himself and for everyone else. Even if a person is willing to share his earthly goods, at every moment in which he is occupied with acquiring them or is engrossed in possessing them, he is selfish, just as that is which he possesses or acquires.