Superman and Super Freshmen...

Ever since Caleb Dalton informed me, sometime back in February, that Plato was a "brilliant moron," I have been waiting for the freshmen to encounter Nietzsche. This morning in Chapel, as I sat listening to Sam explain the Nietzschian symbolism inherent in his dark suit and red tie, I knew that the period of anticipation has finally come to an end. Sam isn't even in philosophy, but the majority of his class is, and these things spread around.

Responses are every bit as diverse as I had hoped.

"He's an idiot! He's a crazy idiot!"

"I like Nietzsche. He's wrong, but he's so poetic!"

Caleb's comment: "He's not even consistent!"

I am not shocked by their vehemence. I am sympathetic to it. When I was in the throes of Nietzsche, it so happened that I had a double dose--Nietzsche in Freedoms and Nietzsche in Philosophy. My cumulative disgust finally found vent in a comment to Dr. Stacey...

"Sir, they're all so close and so far away and so wrong and I'm sick of it!"

I slammed my book down on the desk as I said it. Dr. Stacey merely smiled through his beard, trying to smirk, but only succeeding in appearing sympathetic (after an amused fashion). "Tell us how you really feel, Christy."

How did I really feel? Angry. Deeply angry, even savage. You see, I have been to the Holocaust Museum. I have read my history and literature. I know what diseased thoughts, what twisted hopes and warped actions have resulted from this man's philosophy. One feels helpless before it, as though looking up at a dark spectre vast as the sky, all malice, all opposition, all desire to hurt you. It is like watching the sun set very quickly, and knowing while you watch that the night will be full of Creatures who wail and moan and whistle and seek your blood. And you are willing to grasp at any straw, even Kierkegaard, to keep the sun from setting. You do not believe that it will rise again.

Things that are obviously evil evoke in me a certain type of hatred which I can only describe as "pure, intense, and tending towards action." I see evil, whether in myself or in a philosophy or in a practice or in another's eyes, and I want to kill it. I do not necessarily want to torture it or give it a slow and painful death. I simply want to destroy, to remove even the memory of it. Perhaps this is strongest with me concerning my own worst enemy: pride. Pride comes in so many forms in my soul--I see it in the way I walk, speak, think, act, give, yearn, and fail to trust, in the way I seek control, in my self-righteousness, in my longing for glory or esteem or even love. As I grow up into Christ, the glimpse of it--thank God for a conscience, and an increasingly sensitive one, by his grace!--is enough to put me in a mind to do anything, risk anything, give anything, which will free me from its hold.

And what will free me from it? Pride cannot stand in the face of love, nor in the face of humility, its direct antithesis. I choose to trust God, and thereby put not trust in my own judgment. That is a massive blow to pride. I choose to love, which is of all things the least self-centered, and that is a mortal blow to pride. I choose to humble myself before my God, and pride cannot stand. There is a wonderful quote: "if you kneel to God, you can stand up to anything."

And so I faced Nietzsche, and progressed through all the stages of pain, fear, anger, hatred, and came at last to recognize my own pride. How am I any better than Nietzsche, if I cannot trust God to overcome him? As a wit once put it...

"God is dead." - Nietzsche

"Nietzsche is dead." - God.

And now I can even feel compassion for this man, who desired all that was great and good, but looked for it in himself. Do I not do the same every day? Domine, serva me ab iniquatate, ab superba, et doce me amare in humilitate.

Behold Nietzsche, and let the sight drive you to savor the cross. Nietzsche is the cave, but we have been brought out, and stand awestruck in the light of our God. This is not of our doing, and it should be marvelous in our eyes.