Is there a proper rapprochement between the Nazarene and Nietzsche?

 Nietzsche was generally positive on Jesus himself. He didn't accept the claim made of him that he was the son of the living God, as he did not believe there is a living God. C.S. Lewis famously said that if you take Jesus seriously as a moral teacher but deny his claim to divinity, you're not thinking clearly. No one could have said what he said and be a good moral teacher. He'd have to be a liar or a lunatic. Lewis doesn't tell us what Jesus said to elicit this response, but it's not hard to figure out. He said "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He said he was the messiah foretold by Elijah and the prophets. Lewis is obviously right if Jesus indeed said these things. But there is some reasonable question as to whether he did. They are in the gospels. But so is his strong reluctance to say such things, his desire to hide his identity, even at times his miracles. His silence on the question before Pilate. These sayings may have been misremembered or added later to the gospel accounts to promote and authorize the fledgling church. Each must be investigated individually with an eye to its authenticity. But no final agreement among scholars is likely. It's conceivable these things were said of Jesus and not by him. Myself, I doubt that. I think it's most likely he presented himself to his disciples as he is reported to have done. But the opinion of one man who is not even a biblical scholar is not worth much. 

The point is that if assert that he did not invite his followers to believe he was the son of God, then we are left with his teachings and his example, his way of being in the world. And we are in a position to entertain the idea that by institutionalizing the man and aligning the church with state authority, something essential in the founding message was distorted, even perverted. Whenever the church is about itself, its expansion, its preservation, its authority, in short, its power--in the ordinary and Nietzschean sense of that word--it is putting a warped lens between itself and its origin. An inevitable process that, if it wasn't already part of the story by the date of Pentecost, started no later than Paul. 

Still enough of the origin remained to Nietzsche for him to believe he had a true sense of who Jesus was and could admire him. Still, Nietzsche considered himself an advance on Jesus. So the study that must be made is there: what did Jesus get wrong, and how, and how did Nietzsche get it right? 

Without going over the whole field of this question, which I'm not prepared to do at present (though there are studies like Pious Nietzsche that will help one do that), there is one obvious area of difference that is easy to pull out and that will lead to a richer understanding of Jesus, if I am right about it. It concerns the notion of Life. 

Nietzsche's perhaps broadest criticism of Christianity and much that follows in Western thought is that it against what he calls Life. Everything, religion, philosophy, even history, needs to be in the service of Life. Whatever resists or blocks Life is to be overcome. Jesus on the other hand said "he who loves his life will lose it." But also, "I come that you might have life and have it abundantly." Jesus comes with the promise of life. Both value life. But the church, at least, tells us that that life is later. Not now. In Heaven, in the Kingdom of God. That is emphatically, however, not the message of Jesus. For Jesus the Kingdom of God is now. It is in you. It is what you are making, here, on earth. It will survive earth because it is not of earth. But it is not a future thing. It is a present thing. 

But does what Jesus mean by life square with what Nietzsche means by life? Not entirely. But they are not entirely different either. Jesus didn't care about "overmen." And he was clear that having life would require sacrifice. But that's not because sacrifice is good. It's because it's inevitable. It does get in the way of life, the overriding good. Nietzsche wants the genuinely great person to become all they can be. Jesus wants all people to become great and everyone to pull for everyone as much as they can, even if it means achieving less, in some ways, that you might otherwise have achieved. It will mean achieving on other ways more than you could have otherwise achieved. An act of sacrifice is an act of love. And it enriches the person who makes it. If the artist who sacrifices time doesn't great the work of art they might otherwise have created, if the writer doesn't write the great text they might otherwise have written because they donated some of their time to someone in need, something is lost but something is gained. Art is lost. Love is gained. Self obsession is curbed. The balloon of the self is a little less lumpy, a little more symmetrical