Byrnesys Blabberings

I am currently reading Karl Barths Church Dogmatic III.4 which is a colossal work spanning his whole life. I have always enjoyed the quote from him which he gave upon being questioned by a journalised who I believe at the time was interviewing him as theologian of the year or something along those lines. The Interviewer asked "If you could sum up all your works in one sentence that you have tried to communicate, what would that be?" Barth looks away for a moment to think, turning back to the journalist with a slight smile says "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so", a line from a sunday school song.

Today I was reading Barth and got some fresh insight, I was reading his words on the command "Thou shalt not Kill" and he said while arguing the sanctity of temporal life given as a gft from God is built into us as a fear of death, it is an in-built acknowledgement that we have purpose and are meant to live, and then Barth communicates amazingly regarding how this is exemplified in Jesus in gethsemane who is nervous to give up his life for anything less than something important:

"It is worth mentioning that when we are told of Jesus  that he began to be "troubled and faint-hearted" (cf. Lk 22:44) to which the passages refer, is not to be understood as an inclination to disobedience but as an elemnt in the obedience of Jesus. He did not throw away his life as if it were worthless. He sacrificed it as something precious from which it was not easy for him to part. He would not otherwise have offered it to God and therefore for the salvation of the World."

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 - The doctrine of Creation, pg401