weekly kierkegaard excerpt

I'm slowly making my way through Kierkegaard's "Works of Love" and I am repeatedly blown away. In the excerpt below he is emphasizing the collision of Christian love and human love by way of listing the "madness" with which Jesus's life and love played out on earth.

"One assumes that it was only ungodliness which had to collide with Christ. What a misunderstanding!.....

He founded no kingdom on earth; neither did he sacrifice himself so the apostles could inherit the gains. No, it was--humanly speaking--madness: he sacrificed himself--in order to make the beloved as unhappy as himself. Was it really love--to gather a number of simple, poor men about himself, win their devotion and love as no one's love has ever been won, to let it seem to them for a time as if now the prospects of fulfilling their proudest dream were opening--only to reconsider suddenly and change the plan, only to plunge himself from these seductive heights into the abyss of all dangers without being stirred by their prayers, without taking the least regard for them, only to give himself without resistance into the power of his enemies, to be nailed to a cross like a criminal, amid mocker and scorn, while the world rejoiced! Was it really love to be separated from his decsiples in this way, to leave them abandoned in a world which for his sake might hate them, to toss them like lost sheep among ravenous wolves whose blood-thirst he himself had incited against them--was it really love? What then, did this man want, what did he want of these unwary, upright, even though provincial men whom he so horribly deceived? Why did he die without confessing that he deceived them? As it was, he died with the claim that it nevertheless was for love--alas, while the disciples with crushed hearts, yet with moving faith, did not presume to have any opinion about his conduct"

"Unfortunately, one is tempted in so-called Christendom to imagine that one has faith, without having an impression of what this means, at least not enough to be noticeable."