If there is a saying of the desert tradition that summarizes our time, I nominate the following:
Abba Anthony said, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.‘”
Each week there is some news that comes up through the United Methodist Church news cycle that just baffles me. It is clearly much more complex and complicated than I could possibly understand and I feel like I am going mad (crazy).
Nietzsche is alive and well in the Church. Almost as an “unholy” spirit.
Where is the specter or Nietzsche you ask? Maybe you can piece it together when you read what Nietzsche says about power in his writing called “Antichrist”:
What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency.
The acquisition and retention of power shows up in all sorts of obvious ways in the Church. When the pastor is the gatekeeper of all that is “godly” or when the church marries herself with government (such as Christian Nationalism). We see the elevation of power in the church in less subtle ways as well when the church leads by “empowering” others. To be clear it is not that empowering others goes to far, it is that empowering others does not go far enough. The Church of Jesus Christ is not to settle for empowering people but working to liberate people. Christ’s power liberates in service of the weak, Nietzsche’s power binds the weak to be in service.
When power becomes the chief value we seek we have to ask if we are following Christ or Nietzsche? Are we following the one who divested all power and became obedient to death (Philippians 2) or the one who said that happiness can be found through war and efficiency?
In case you wanted to know the last part of the Nietzsche quote here those lines ends:
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity....
To that end, anyone in the church that is calling for the dismantling of the church. Anyone who is leading people to harden their stance and shun weakness. Anyone who is arguing for a church that is without any flaws or inconsistencies. Anyone who is lacking charity of spirit or presuming the worst intensions of another. These may be followers of Nietzsche.