Nietzsche or Christ? Who Will We Follow amid Our Political Angst?
The Days of Rage
The streets of Chicago were a simmering cauldron as night fell on October 8, 1969. A bullhorn sounded a prearranged signal at 10:25, sending hundreds of young radicals, faces tight with anger, running through the Gold Coast neighborhood toward the Drake Hotel. They flooded the streets carrying pipes, chains, and bats. They smashed storefronts and automobile windows as they ran, glass shattering into the cold air. The wailing of police sirens drew closer before officers in riot gear appeared, over a hundred strong, swinging batons at legs and necks. Chaos reigned and bodies fell in the heart of the city as the street became a battlefield. It was the first of the so-called “Days of Rage.”
The days of rage are back. In the face of current social and political events, resentment may not be flooding the street (at least not yet), but it is raging at the level of the heart. It comes from a sense of powerlessness as we look into the future, even among those who are culturally and financially privileged. The feeling is piqued by the nonstop consumption of news media, which stokes our anxiety and alarm. Such media amplify worst-case scenarios and fuel a persistent current of dread. The media bullhorn blares, and, as though on cue, our troubled hearts respond with righteous indignation.
History offers no shortage of devastating examples of unchecked rage. Consider the Crusades. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a campaign to reclaim Jerusalem by slaughtering Muslims who occupied the area, a call that provoked an enraged response from the assembled crowd who shouted, “God wills it!”
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) also comes to mind, a gruesome episode when Catholics and Protestants met each other on the field of battle, resulting in upwards of eight million casualties—much of the carnage, again, committed in the name of Christ. As C. S. Lewis said in Reflections on the Psalms, “Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” So true!
The Upside Down Kingdom
Chris Castaldo
The Upside Down Kingdom examines how living according to Jesus’s Beatitudes can cultivate God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, bringing peace and blessing to our broken world.
So, here we are, Christians, responding to modern events for God’s glory, except that we often fall terribly short of God’s glory. Given this fact, and the inner sense that perhaps there’s a better way, we are bound to ask the question, How do we subdue our incendiary hearts when the fire of political rage is kindled? The answer, in a word, is meekness.
What is meekness? It is, simply put, gentleness. It manages to look through the smoke of one’s anger and resentment to the other person’s need of salvation. Calvin describes the meek as “the calm and quiet ones, who are not easily provoked by wrongs, who do not sulk over offenses, but are more ready to endure everything than pay the wicked the same back.”1 This disposition, says Thomas Watson, is showcased in our calling to emulate the patient and sensitive example of Jesus expressed in 1 Peter 2:23: “When he was reviled, he reviled not again.”2
Observe Jesus speaking with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1–42). He first notices her sorrow and thirstiness of soul and then addresses her need with the promise of “living water.” Watch Jesus climbing a mountain by himself, to be alone with his Father in prayer (Matt. 14:23). Look at him approaching the Holy City with a tear in his eye, crying out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . . How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37). Or see him with Thomas after the resurrection (John 20:24–29). Jesus doesn’t chastise Thomas for his doubt; instead, he invites this wavering disciple to encounter the gospel and believe.
But meekness is not synonymous with weakness. With fire in his eyes, Jesus also overturned money-changing tables (John 2:13–16) and confronted the hypocritical Pharisees. With inexpressible courage, he endured the cross. Following Christ’s example, we see that true meekness is a form of gentle strength, under the guidance and control of the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps no one confused the qualities of weakness and meekness more than Nietzsche. He incorrectly viewed the Christian faith as promoting the former, what he called a “sheeple” ethic, a doctrine that protects the weak to the demise of the strong. Against this pathetic mode of life, says Nietzsche, a decisive will to dominate is vital for humanity’s advancement. “Freedom,” he asserted, “means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts. . . . the free man is a warrior.”3
But let’s be clear. The weakness that Nietzsche critiques is not Christian meekness. His bruising evaluation is no more than a pathetic parody of the gentleness prescribed by the New Testament.
Following Christ’s example, we see that true meekness is a form of gentle strength, under the guidance and control of the Holy Spirit.
Two Responses
So, we find ourselves left with the two dominant responses to social chaos: Nietzsche’s warrior and Jesus Christ, the suffering servant who went to the cross. In Jesus, we have the meek, through whom God’s gentle love extends. In Nietzsche’s Übermensch (superman), we have the warrior who exercises a will to power.
We should, however, pause to consider which power is in fact stronger. Which response prevails when we feel anger rising in our hearts? When we’re stung by envy or jealousy, or seized by some passion? When we’re assaulted by temptation and feel the flames of lust beginning to burn? When we’re confronted by the menagerie of selfishness and vice within, what prevails? As Servais Pinckaers explains, using the metaphor of animal instincts:
[We look within and] find the proud, domineering lion, the bragging rooster and the vain peacock, the flattering cat and the sly fox, the envious serpent and the possessive bear, the conceited magpie and the mocking monkey. We discover the brutal rhinoceros and the sluggish elephant, the scared rabbit and the sensual pig, the fierce dog and the gnawing worm, the stubborn mule and the porcupine. These are the shapes assumed by our self-love. . . . What power and firmness is needed, what clear-sightedness and skill, if we are going to control all these instincts, bring them to heel, and compel them to obey reason and charity! Complete self-mastery is a long and exacting work, only achieved by—meekness.4
This, I would suggest, is why we admire lion tamers so much. Their power lies not in violence—in raising their voice or making dramatic displays—but in a confident calmness, a meekness that somehow controls the ferocious animal. In words attributed to Dostoyevsky: “Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.”
So, as we walk through this election year, even as the inner bullhorn blares, let’s ask ourselves: Whom will we follow, Nietzsche or Christ? The man of aggression or the Prince of Peace? May God help us, whatever our political persuasion, to demonstrate a better, gentler way and so point our neighbors to Christ—whose kingdom, after all, will never fail.
Notes:
- John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol 1, by William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 261-262.
- Thomas Watson, The Beatitudes: An Exposition of Matthew 5:1-10 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1971), 114.
- C. Ivan Spencer, Tweetable Nietzsche: His Essential Ideas Revealed and Explained, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 91.
- Servais Pinckaers, The Pursuit of Happiness—God’s Way: Living the Beatitudes, trans. Mary Thomas Noble (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 62.
Chris Castaldo is the author of The Upside Down Kingdom: Wisdom for Life from the Beatitudes.
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