Nietzsche Saves...How?

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

 Welcome back.  

Christianity today owes a lot to Frederick Nietzsche.  Ironically, he despised Christianity.

Yet he gave us a way to think about the world that frees us from past condemnations and makes it more logical to follow our God of love.

Nietzsche wrote about being followers of the earth.  By that he meant that this life we live, that we examine scientifically, that we experience with our senses...this life... is the only reality.

I agree.  To be good Christians we must be monists. 

We can speculate about some perfect Platonic world out there, or buried within matter, but it is all philosophical make believe until we have evidence otherwise.

This world is all there is.  This universe is all there is.  There may be other universes, but they would be natural, following natural laws.  

There are no ghosts, vampires, zombies, angels, demons, flying prophets, and aliens who can breach those laws governing space and time, which include the speed of light.  The latter may be possible technologically, but the former just do not happen.

We live in a world of energy.  It is vast and mysterious.  There are no angels or demons out to get us or save us.  Everything supernatural exits in our imaginations.  This, we live, is it.  

So what do we do?  How shall we then live a life of faith?

One thing we can do is acknowledge that we are one among countless other evolutionary outcomes.  We may be the end of where simian life forms are evolving unless we become hard pressed by nature and require mutations that change our bodies. 

Maybe we will change our bodies with the technology that is evolving with us.  Maybe our technology will keep us "being-fruitful-and-multiplying" a million years past our overdue extinction date.

We must be monists because we cannot afford as a species to be superstitious anymore.  Any philosophical system that does not give us the intellectual wherewithal to preserve our planet is not worth a plugged nickel.

Any theological system that gives us the foolhardy wherewithal to discard our planet for a new sky and a new earth that exists only in the imagination is not worth a plugged penny.

We must acknowledge that most ancient thought is superstitious. 

There is freedom in finally acknowledging the way things are.

What connects us is our tradition.  It is the focal point of the conversations we share with one another as we live out the commandment to love one another.

What connects us is our tradition.  What we need is to learn how to interpret it as earth people, not sky people.

Indeed, there would be no sky, if there were no earth. 

Nietzsche, by persuading us that at the core of our reality, we are earth people is all too liberating to me.  Knowing that beyond earth and the natural universe within which it orbits our sun there is nothing that compels our veneration is all too liberating to me too. 

In that sense, Nietzsche saves. 

Next time, I will write about different ways people think about God and how we can think and pray ourselves out of what appears to be a monist prison.

Blessings…