Will to Power and the Cross: A Remedy for Slave Morality

Today, I felt in the zone. I held on tightly from sections 45-55 of Beyond Good and Evil. I refused to become distracted. Neurons were firing. Thoughts all interwoven in the precise order; I knew it'd only last for a short time.

Friedrich Nietzsche. An extremely ill, lonely, often-misunderstood man. A man who "philosophized with a hammer" each time he put pen to page. A man who warns of the deadly, far-reaching consequences of sacrificing to the wrong entity.

Christianity, in Nietzsche's view, sacrifices all-- "freedom, pride, self-confidence of the spirit." "How is the saint possible," he asks emphatically. 

This is how I understood it: Ah, the saint is your God. You bow down to the saint, the one who gives up sex, food, housing and, general comfort. After all, you are called by Christ to do the same as this saint. To stay in lowly circumstances. Ah, you're miserable, aren't you?

Nietzsche proposes the following scenario: What is one day, after revering the saints of the church for decades, you suddenly feel a certain odd sensation? What if you feel a Will to Power--a manifestation of the strength of the free spirit? The Free. Spirit?

Nietzsche states he is not anti-religious, merely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a dark force bringing slave morality to its people-- a mindset of using the virtues of meagerness, humility, among many, in religious practice to justify the miserable existence you find yourself in. Nietzsche, for his part believes the Old Testament morality was different--it was a master morality. It was a "sin of the spirit" to pair it with the New Testament. God was a Judge, a Rewarder, a Father. But now, Nietzsche observes, God, and His Will, is as vague and confusing as the cluttered mind of someone on the brink of amnesia. 

The question is: why you should humble yourself before the more humble? What is the motivation? If its to bury your will to power, bury responsibility, and bury your creative power to use for Good, then what use is it? Where is the sacrifice going?

Sacrifices go to the diety, to God, in the Old Testament. What should be sacrificed was clearly prescribed. Offer a portion of the crop or cattle, the people flourished. When the Israelites did not, trouble befell them.

I believe Nietzsche looks in the wrong place. The teachings themselves are not of slave morality. It's of Will to Power! Christ is the sacrifice in Christianity; Christ is the Lamb. So what are we to do? If Christians are called to sacrifice, they are called to be Christ-like, including the Christ that's nailed to the cross:

"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23)

The woman's involuntary, slavish actions in Nietzsche's scenario probably were not her fault. The Roman Catholic Church, throughout the history of medieval Europe, made little room for taking personal responsibility. Dogma, politics, and corruption ruled the church for many centuries. Nietzsche separates Luther from other Christian thinkers for this reason. Once again, Nietzsche was not anti-religious, but a severe Christian critic. To my Catholic friends, I apologize for my lack of nuance, and encourage you to check out my previous post.

When the woman finally questioned bowing to the saint, and felt the awakening of the Will to Power within, the slave mentality within her began to break. Instead of bowing down involuntarily and out of shear dogmatic habit, she decided to take up a cross of her own, and actively make a choice. 

The cross is responsibility. Jesus took responsibility for the sins of all humanity. He asked his followers to also take responsibility, going beyond their own miserable situations. It's a call toward the Good, toward God (their both the same in my view). What is Will to Power? It's, in one some sense, a form of the cross: taking responsibility for your own life. Not playing the victim. Acknowledging the creative power that can produce good in the world. That's the sacrifice. That's the Good. 

Responsibility requires free spirit. Responsibility is voluntary; otherwise, you're just bowing and sacrificing because you have to, leaving you a slave for all eternity, reaping zero benefit for yourself or for the world. 

The alternative? 

"Sacrifice God for nothingness--this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate act of cruelty was reserved for the generation which is even now arising: we know something already." The death of God. The death of sacrifice to something higher. Sacrifice for the lowly state, or worse: another human being. Someone's own, self-centered, diabolical will.  

I think not.