Nietzsche’s Critique of the Church

“Once the Church had taken away the whole of Christian practice, and had expressly sanctioned life in the state, the kind of life which Jesus had opposed and condemned, it had to find the meaning of Christianity elsewhere: in the faith in incredible things, in ceremonial prayer, worship, feasts, etc. The notions ‘sin’, ‘forgiveness’, ‘punishment’, ‘reward’, which are all quite insignificant for, and almost precluded by, early Christianity, now came to the fore.”

“…The Church is the barbarisation of Christianity.”

- ‘Will to Power’, Friedrich Nietzsche

MODERN CONTEXT

It is no surprise to say that most Christians are quite defensive and hostile to opposing views. To their eyes, showing any sympathy or understanding for the non-Christians or more specifically, non-Orthodox, is absurd and signifies a weakness of faith. “For what is the benefit”, they say in dulcet tones, indicating an obvious point, “of risking one’s faith to learn about another? If the Orthodox faith is the only true path, what do we have to learn from other religious, even other Christian denominations? They are all insignificant in comparison with Orthodox Christianity. Look how beautiful and rich our Church is and consider the sheer number of the righteous that died to carry the faith, died so you could also live in the faith!”

And so implies the priests and other religious members of the Church, as such expediently producing submissive sheep, with heads bowed in defeat and ropes tied to their necks to prevent escape. “Let the world do what they want, they have no correlation to us since we are not of the world. Love them and show them affection, but no more, lest you fall into everlasting darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

We Christians then have come to seclude ourselves from the world, watching it with a wry smile as does a child when he knows his contemporary is going to lose. We toy with it, we reveal ourselves to it, rejoicing because there is no obligation between us and it. And also whilst in all this, modern Christian wisdom assures us, comforts us that: “There is no need to act. Be a Christian, and perhaps they will understand and potentially convert. Acting is unwise, there is no need to act, always go about in passive love, loving everyone! Assuredly, they will see Christ in you one day and realise they were wrong! Most important above all, is to come to church, get enveloped by the church, and don’t go anywhere else, for heaven forbid you might get lost! You can’t live without the Church! You don’t know enough! Don’t risk your salvation!”

And the prattling and rambling goes on and on and on…And we are lulled into sleep and laziness.

THE GLARING PROBLEM

As we start to hear these problems in a new light, the light of mockery and cruel satire, we are shocked awake. I hope my audience is offended, but more than that, I hope I have triggered the active thinking in him, the sentience he is gracefully vested with (by God’s grace!).

The fact that within the Church, there has been no meaningful opposing narratives in the last 20 years or so does not mean we have settled and finally found the right solution! It’s the complete opposite, it’s a refusal to admit change, and an excuse to descend into laziness and sleep. What we need more than ever is rebellion.

For when we have people intellectually questioning the foundations of the Church, it instigates a change of attitude and an instinct to move against it and resolve the conflict. And this is precisely the way for the Church to move forward: by overcoming adversary, the Church will evolve and attain new significance, its meaning and purpose again made clear. The victory of Christ over death and the meaning of suffering would have no significance if Christ did not go through any of these experiences. So too will the Church become meaningless if it is not tested, that is, by fire.

Let us dispel the idea that we know everything, and that there is no purpose to looking outside for the truth! Because it is quite possible that by trapping ourselves with the purpose of keeping safe within the traditions, we even forget what we are seeing, like the men in Plato’s Cave: if we enclose ourselves from the outside world, our descendants (that is, us) will eventually believe that our entire reality is confined by this cave; we develop the arrogance to believe so ardently that there is no reality outside this cave, that nothing is more real than this. Can’t you see how deadly this is to do?

In the context of the Church, whilst although its Mystagog is held sacred and sanctified by Christ – they are not the end-all. They are merely - and I stress so emphatically merely - a means. For too long I see everyone placing their value as a Christian in believing in its Mysteries – the Eucharist, Baptism, Marriage – but completely and utterly neglecting the glaring problem, that is, being and doing as a Christian. For what value is it if I believe in all this, and am lazy? Faith without works is dead.

NIETZSCHE’S ENTRANCE

At the mere mention of his name, fear rumbles among the holy fools…they even leave, petrified that their faith will shake, and they can’t bear that.

And this is precisely the problem, that we reject opposition because we have been conditioned to think, having been sheltered and brainwashed from childhood, that Christianity cannot be defended and is too fragile for debate.

This is why Nietzsche speaks thus to us:

“When and where did any considerable man bear the least resemblance to the Christian ideal?...And anyway, what is God or faith in God to us now! ‘God’ today is merely a faded word, we no longer have the slightest notion what it means!”

NIETZSCHE ON THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL

Without a doubt, foundations upon cultures and beliefs are built with ideals, and if possible, a single ideal.

And we forget this and think that the ideal built by the Church is somehow correct and true and the only possible truth. Clearly, with a second thought, this is the mark of an unthinking, uncritical, weak, and vulnerable generation. If our ideals are not criticised and refined, our foundational purpose and vision for the Christian is vague.

Nietzsche derided the Christians’ ignorance of what the reality of suffering encompasses, which is war, fighting and violence, who purposefully have turned a blind eye to the fact that this needs to be met by an equal force, but opposite will:

“Now, were a man to say, ‘I will not serve as a soldier’, ‘I will not seek redress in the courts’, ‘I will not call upon the service of the police’, he would be a Christian . . . ‘I will do nothing that disturbs my peace of mind, and if I have to suffer on that account, well, nothing preserves that peace more than suffering.’”

In other words, the Christian is reluctant to oppose evil, and instead merits a life which seeks to scorn it and condemn those that create it – but clearly this is a meretricious attempt to avoid dealing with it and acknowledging any personal role in warring with it. We ‘leave it to God’, or ‘just pray’, but we are deluding ourselves. I am not in any way demeaning the absolute power of prayer (for what could be more beneficial than to communicate and relate personally with God?), but rather to remind the ordinary Christian such as myself, that it is we who are the ones we are praying for to change things! We ask God to fill everyone with love for each other, to end the strife between countries, to shelter the homeless, to feed the hungry, to help people: we ask him, we ask him, we always ask him – but why does nothing happen? Instead of actually doing something though, he goes to attend more church rituals!

Oh! And they expect miracles!

“What is missing in Christianity is that it does not comply at all with what Christ has commanded. It is a [petty] life, but seen through the eye of contempt.”

But what exactly is this ‘petty’(mesquine) life Nietzsche refers to? It is this arrogance in putting Orthodox Christianity as “the” path to salvation, as the sole authentic path to Christ! And precisely it was this hateful pride that repulsed Nietzsche:

“The Last Judgement…is an expression of resentment, the fundamental thought of all revolutionaries. The judgement of deep unworthiness which Christians render against every life other than their own: it is not enough for them to think ill of their actual opponents – they require nothing less than a wholesale slander of all that they lack . . .”

We as Christians repress a loathing towards those who possess the power of change: the strong, the wealthy, the determined and the ambitious. We cower against pain, delighting in our “humility” for being the lowest of the low, convinced that we are in the greater position being weakened. We passively take suffering, thinking that all of it has some kind of divine message, trying to make sense of it all, but really, really we are just refusing to accept that we are weak and slaves to tiredness.

We are not seeking to change anything, we don’t want to do anything – but look how we love to lie in idleness and inaction! Listen to Nietzsche:

“The Christian ideal remains a consequence of the desire for pleasure – and nothing else! The value of ‘beatitude’ is considered self-evident, standing in need of no further justification – the rest (the way one is supposed to live and let live) is only a means to an end . . . But it is low-minded to regard fear, fear of pain, fear of defilement, fear of corruption, as itself a sufficient motive to let go of everything . . . This is a poor man’s way of thinking . . . The sign of an exhausted race . . .”

But the Christian will now say: “Christ is our example. He weakened himself taking the form of man, and at any point could have established His divinity, but He chose not to. He went up to the cross for us, submitting to the authorities and refusing to rebel by force, passively taking the suffering. He was ridiculed, betrayed by His own disciples, spat upon, humiliated, scorned and mocked at, but He took all of it, and He did not retaliate. Christ teaches us also not to be violent: remember when Simon Peter cut the ear from the high priest’s servant? He said that those who take by the sword will die by the sword! Surely war and any violence is scorned and disdained here! And finally, look who God took for companions – mere fishermen! He even scorned the great men of His age: the tax collectors, pharisees and lawyers!”

To this my answer is brief: Jesus Christ has shown us clearly, that He despises the Church, that is, the Church as the encampment of holy fools (ones which derive pleasure and holy experiences from rituals). But amongst the people almost always, he has shown us a new way of living, and this is the active living: of serving always. God taught us the exemplary life which pursued and willingly took up suffering to combat the presence of evil in the world: by healing sicknesses, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, divinising the human form itself, Christ has shown us that it is fit that we follow him, and do with him. He never encouraged us to go to rituals, but neither did he dis-courage us. As Nietzsche writes:

“The exemplary life is one of love and humility, a life whose large-heartedness does not exclude even the lowliest; a life which formally renounces entitlement, self-defence and victory (in the sense of personal triumph); a life which has faith in a beatitude here on earth, in spite of hardship, opposition and death; a life full of forgiveness and devoid of wrath or scorn; a life which seeks no reward and is bound to no one; a life of the most spiritual and intellectual emancipation; a life in which pride is subordinated to voluntary poverty and service.”

In brief, I do not see Church ritual practice as spurning us to action: it only gives us an excuse to be idle! This does not make it a hindrance, for we still need them in our lives! We still need ritual practice, never forget: for us, it is our proclamation of faith and exactly the physical embodiment of it(during Eucharist, Baptism, Confession, etc). Notwithstanding, there is much to be done before and after these services! And so each is to their own individual agenda, all of it being matter of individual action!

Last, to address the matter of violence. It only takes a truly earnest human to clearly differentiate between violence out of necessity and violence out of anger or jealousy. Remember that we are not waiting anymore for the Second Coming, for Jesus tells us even that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

“The ‘kingdom of heaven’ is within the hearts of men (about children it is said, ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’): heaven has nothing to do with being ‘above the earth’. The kingdom of God does not ‘come’, in a chronological or historical sense, by the calendar, something that would be here one day, and not the day before; it is a ‘change of heart in individuals’, and thus something about which, at any given moment, one could say that its time has come, and that its time has not yet come.”

Do not wait for some revelation! Do not wait at all! Act now, and be firm and resolute in will! It is not fruitless to fight against evil, but rather our sacred duty being called "Sons of God"! We reign with God, and so should perservere to the very end, unafraid and even excited to see what comes after!