Of course, if one's reading Kierkegaard for personal interest that's fine - but it's sloppy scholarship just to cherry pick what suits one from a particular author, whether it's Kierkegaard, Heidegger, or whoever. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that even the more religious parts of the authorship can offer significant insights into the meaning of the human condition to those who can't then say that, e.g., they believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and their personal Saviour.
George PattisonHowever, in brief, I think the connecting of 'God' and 'Being' is one of these things for which there seems to be a natural impulse in human thinking but it can also lead to confusions. Religious believers mostly want to see God as the epitome of what is most really real and in some non-theistic contexts, people talk simply of 'Isness'.
George PattisonFor others the mourning is over. Others would say that whilst one God has died - the God of ontotheology perhaps? - this allows for the good news of a God who is to come, a God who will be better able to gather up and give justice to all the manifold aspirations of human life towards goodness and meaning (and not just to those who are able to fit into a narrow 'religious' framework).
George PattisonInterpretation is a task that we repeatedly have to take up and start again from the beginning, Sisyphus-like. But, as Camus said, we must always imagine Sisyphus happy, and this is not so difficult when it's a matter of texts that reveal important truths about being human.
George PattisonAnd one thing the void certainly can teach us is how to wait, how to become truly patient, and how to let go of superfluous intellectual baggage - all of which is a good lesson for hyper-agitated multi-tasking goal-focussed contemporary human beings.
George Pattison