Here are two excerpts from Kierkegaard’s 1847 journal, written when he was 34 years old.
Kierkegaard is sometimes criticized for placing too much emphasis upon 
“the individual,” promoting a brand of individualism that places little if any value in social connections or community relationships.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Sadly, Kierkegaard’s philosopher MIS-interpreters have encouraged this common misunderstanding of the melancholy Dane by ignoring, or willfully remaining ignorant of, the centrality of Jesus Christ in Kierkegaard’s thinking.
Here is an example:
“Everyone would like to have lived at the same time as great men and great events. God knows how many really live at the same time as themselves. To do that (and so neither in hope nor fear of the future, nor in the past) is to understand oneself and be at peace, and that is only possible through one’s relation to God, or it is one’s relation to God.
“Christianity is certainly not melancholy, it is, on the contrary, good news – for the melancholy; to the frivolous it is certainly not good news, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.”
In other words, no one becomes the person, the unique individual, they were created to become until he/she stands submissively, and lives obediently, before the savior, Jesus Christ. Only that authentic individual existing before God, who is who she is, who does what she does, who behaves as she behaves and decides as she decides because she lives to serve Jesus faithfully with all that she has to offer Him, will experience the joy of being her genuine, God-intended self.
That is authentic individualism, and it is only attained through the Good News of Jesus Christ. Only these kinds of authentic individuals can compose a genuine Christian community where brothers and sisters in Christ serve each other freely and sacrificially.
In the American pursuit of secular individualism, constantly affirming the innate wisdom buried somewhere inside our inner rebel, that solitary soul fleeing God’s influence, we foolishly refuse to take ourselves seriously as sinners.
This is the Gospel’s first task: to make us serious; serious about ourselves; serious about God.
It is the only route out of banal frivolity into eternal joy.
In this light, I suspect that the United States may be the least serious “Christian” nation on earth, nurturing a populous sucking at the teats of the most frivolous media culture – including the supposedly Christian media – ever devised.
Don’t live like the typical American consumer. Set your sights on becoming an authentic Individual, please, before it is too late.
I am not sure you are reading him for what he means. I think you are reading into him from what you already think of Christianity.
I think you are correct that many many people (philosophers particularly) read K as ‘over individualistic’ but. Similarly I think you have read him out of context.
Thank you for your comment. On what basis do you draw this conclusion? The context of S.K.’s journals is his life. By 1847 he has written _Three Upbuilding Discourses_, _Four Upbuilding Discourses_, _Three Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits_, and _Works of Love_, all explicitly Christian writings which to various extents deal with the issues I mention. In 1847-48 S.K. writes _Christian Discourses_, much of which deals specifically with the dynamic of the individual living before God/Christ. _The Sickness Unto Death_ is an exposition of the same spiritual dynamic that I deal with in this post. Thoughts?
I am afraid that we must agree to disagree, but thank you for your responses. Perhaps you already know of these works, but if you are interested, C. Stephen Evans, _Kierkegaard: An Introduction_ and Sylvia Walsh, _Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode_ are two (among many) examples of other scholars who argue (and demonstrate, in my view) that S.K. is only understood accurately as an explicitly Christian thinker. I hope this finds you well.