Christ and the Will to Power

 

Christianity, like everything else in human culture, in human societies, has been used by the powerful to maintain and augment their power. It is the most comprehensive expression of Christianity in history to be the tool of power to control and exploit the less powerful.

Christianity is also what exposes this sham. It is the lens, it is the tool; it is the means by which we can call this exploitation evil.

Two things: Christ himself never set humanity the task of fixing this problem. He never called his followers to fight against it, at least not actively. His method of resistance is passive. One needs to find Christianity today not in any church or congregation, but in this passive resistance, in those whose passive resistance is the stone in the river to trouble the hoofs of the passing army.

Nietzsche put himself, knowingly or otherwise, on the side of power, on the expression of power. His analysis of the Will to Power vindicates that will. His confusion of the church with the faith wrongly condemns Christianity for what the Will to Power has made of it, not for what it is when it is itself.

Nietzsche considered the Will to Power to be the fundamental force determining human action. It's active, not reactive, strong in the masters of morality, weak in the slaves. (Slave morality is in fact fueled by a reactive will to power. Will to Power is ubiquitous.) 

This will may be universal, but it is not a positive force, and its victory is never a victory of real strength. It's not far if it is any distance at all from the Christian notion of sin, the original sin as recorded the myth of Adam and Eve. It is that which must be overcome through endless struggle to escape indulgence in ignorance and the glomming onto whatever whatever makes my life easy at the expense of others. It is not a will to power; it is an impulse to power. Will is precisely what it does not have or involve. Will is what is required to keep it in check.