The problem with religion, Friedrich Nietzsche thought—especially Christianity—was that it weaponized pity.
Nietzsche (who, by the way, was quite a religious boy; some even called him the “little pastor” because he quoted the Bible so much) as grown man didn’t believe in morality at all. Every moral claim, every moral argument or appeal, he considered merely a rhetorical move designed to gain some sort of power; which is what pity was, he thought, an emotional appeal for power, an effective one. And that’s what Christians did, he thought, with all their talk about the poor, the widow and orphan, the vulnerable, and human dignity. It was all merely talk designed to arouse pity among the noble and powerful, a strategic play for power all by itself. And it was all born of ressentiment, he thought, every bit of it, the whole of Christianity; praying that some kingdom would come, belief in resurrection and redemption, the idea that suffering had any sort of meaning: all of it was nonsense to Nietzsche. It was a “slave morality,” just a bunch of base people playing the victim in order to arouse pity in as many noble people as possible in order to gain as much cultural power as possible. It had nothing to do with good or evil, he thought; because, of course, there wasn’t any such thing as good or evil, he thought. Just power.[1]
Now, I’m sorry to bring up such atheism, but, you see, I’m afraid Nietzsche has a point; he really is the brightest of the bunch when it comes to atheists, really the only bright one in my opinion. Of course, he’s all wrong about pity. Christians pity others, especially the poor, the sinner, and the weak, because God pities us. However, one can only really believe that only if one’s been touched by God, only if one has really seen him, fallen in love with him, encountered him. Which, I guess, Nietzsche—despite all his youthful Bible quoting—hadn’t. But he was right that sometimes pity is indeed weaponized; indeed, sometimes out of ressentiment we play the victim because we know how powerful it is to do so. Now we don’t need to talk about all this too much; we’ve talked too much about it already. My point is simply this: I think you know what I’m talking about; you recognize the game. It belongs to the strategies of almost all our present cultural battles. Who can be the victim first? Who can be offended, claim oppression, first? Everyone does it.
And it’s precisely this way of thinking—this modern meme, this modern, almost instinctive way of thinking ourselves the victim, the underdog hero, the protagonist—that makes hearing today’s readings from the Scripture so dangerous. Because if we’re not careful, chances are we’ll seriously misunderstand what God through the Scripture is trying to tell us. We’ll become exactly the Christians Nietzsche thought we were.
What I mean is this. When we hear Jeremiah talk about “the whisperings of many;” when we hear him talk about his “persecutors;” or, when we hear Jesus talk about those who “kill the body,” or as he does elsewhere of the world’s hatred for believers, my concern is that we hear these words and immediately think of all our present conflicts, our culture wars, those we just don’t like or don’t understand, or even those we rightly understand to be the enemies of Christians.[2] My concern is that when we hear these words, we’re too quickly comforted, feeling vindicated that God is on our side in all these battles, not theirs. My concern is that we hear these words as victims, as the offended. Which is to mishear the word of God.
The thing is, Jeremiah was not persecuted for his opinions or his politics, not for being a liberal or conservative, but because he was a prophet. He was denounced because he spoke God’s truth. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops;” then he says, “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body.”[3] You see the point here? It’s subtle but very important: God does indeed warn us that the world will hate us, fight us, even kill us—but hopefully for our witness to Christ and not just our opinions or politics; for what we preach about Jesus and not just what we think about this or that issue. Now, of course, the world is mean and will hate us and fight us and kills us for all sorts of reasons, no doubt. And, in purely human terms, it is good to stand up and suffer when principles are at stake. However, the point I’m trying to make is different from that, it’s evangelical. And that is, Jesus does indeed want you to experience the hatred of the world; in fact, he expects it. He strangely wants us to rejoice in the world’s hatred.[4] But the thing is, he wants you to be hated on account of him, for speaking his truths and for loving the way he loves and not really for anything else.
And so the thing is this: Do you talk about Jesus at all? Do you bear witness to him in word and not just deed? If you don’t, then don’t automatically assume the world’s hatred has anything to do with you being a Christian. Do you love like Jesus loves? Or, like me, are you always making excuses for not loving others in that radical, strange love-your-enemies way that Jesus does? If not, let’s not pat ourselves on the back for being hated by anybody. Because we can’t be hated as Christians until we’re really Christians. And that means, before anything else, standing up in front everyone you know and telling them you are one—a follower of Jesus. No matter what, no matter where, no matter when. Amen.
[1] Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, 352, 186, 296, 301-303
[2] Jeremiah 20:10-13; Matthew 10:28; John 15:18-16:4
[3] Matthew 10:27-28
[4] Matthew 5:10
© 2023 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
