Nietzsche on Churchianity

'At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?' 

Matthew 12:1-5

'Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.'

- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Keep those quote in mind.

Let’s think of the smarmy boy in your elementary school class. You know, the one that would tattle on you for breaking a small rule. He would do this to be spiteful. Or because he felt slavish towards the rules. Maybe get back at you for something. Your mom might have told you that he was acting that way because he was jealous. Nevertheless, the kid’s not wrong. You broke a rule and you will get punished for it. And the kid will certainly feel smug. Even if your mom is right, that he acts out of insecurity, the kid will feel smug.

And what did you really want to do? You wanted, I’m sure, to call him out on all his bullshit. But probably, you were a bit timid, were a bit confused, and didn’t yell at the kid in front of the class and show him for what he was. You defaulted to the easy path: a good boy; and let him get away with his antics. And you were left feeling dissatisfied.

Well, Nietzsche took another path: a cleverer one. For him, the tattle tell is christians as a collective. And he does call them out.

Let’s look again at the the spiteful boy. He uses the “rules” and “goodness” in a funny way. He might put on airs of goodness, like give the teacher a big, innocent simile as he devilishly prepares your destruction. He doesn’t really believe it, it seems. There’s something weak about his attitude. Destructive, yes ... but afraid too ... uncommitted to life or something … In any case -- there you are, you are called “wrong,” or “evil” and you do not do what you really feel you ought to do because you want to have the protection of being “good.” But now … you are being just as cowardly as your enemy … It’s unsatisfactory.

Using masks of righteousness, purity, and knowing the right things … hmmm …

What Pharisees does this remind you of?

Let us stay away from this attitude. Be bold. Love.

Let us follow King David. Let us follow Christ. And go beyond “good” and “evil.”

New Blog

Now I'm co-authoring at Gene Callahan's blog. So please be diverted over there for more divertissement.

Rendering Unto Caesar: Christianity and the State?

When Christ said "Render unto Caesar what is Caesars and to God's what is God's," he gave a non-answer. For the question for us is "what is Caesar's and what is God's?" But the answer for the religious person is simple: all is God's. So then, what is Caesar's?

In this post, I make an attempt to adumbrate my already hazy vision of Christianity's current relation to the state in the West. So the content of this post is a shadow of a shadow. But this sketch shall serve as a benchmark for my grappling with this enormous issue, a benchmark that should reveal how little I know at the moment.

By state I will restrict myself to what we normally mean by government and the functions it provides. So I speak of laws, the execution of those laws, and the people who execute them.

Christianity in the recent West has largely distanced itself, I believe, from an active role in the shaping of this institution. This is very curious: for religion is bound to law in the strictest sense. Religion and law are about what ought to be proper behavior. The appearance of this curiosity seems to be due to the belief that what is God's is the spiritual; and what is Caesar's is the worldly. These realms are thought to be separate.

To define things as they are thought, it seems to me, further: What is spiritual is soteriological knowledge. What is worldly: everything irrelevant to the salvation of man. Again, the vision of Christ, the correct understanding and rehearsal of Christian doctrine, the fact that our actions demonstrate correct knowledge of these doctrines: all this belongs to the realm of Christianity. And to the world, the realm of government, is delegated the responsibilities that get in the way of this sacred path.

In short, as things seem to be for the majority, Christianity is the rough-beaten path to the sun; Government is the task force that cleans the path, not moving along it.

There have been many thinkers who have challenged this conception; T.S. Eliot and Dostoevsky are the foremost in my mind. And it is with these I currently stand, and it is for the reason I gave in the beginning of this essay; but the answer of where we go is hazy.