Page 88 - Liberating Liberals V2

The God-shaped Hole in the Soul
Gandhi. It gave immense, concrete meaning to
their lives. And millions did die in small part due to Gandhi’s insistence that Hindus and Muslims could live peacefully together after India attained freedom from England, rather than lending his authority to a more orderly partition. And of course, both Gandhi and King themselves were killed for their meanings.
This Nietzsche-Gandhi-King nexus is also one of the areas in which Nietzsche achieves a synthesis with Jesus. Both Nietzsche and Jesus wanted passionate action. Jesus wanted it to lessen human suffering
and glorify the Kingdom of God. Nietzsche wanted passionate dedication to self-expression, be it the self- sacrifice of flagellating monks, or the imperialistic self- expression of Alexander the Great.
Though attacking it mercilessly, Nietzsche was impressed with the philosophy of Jesus and the level of passion Jesus attained. One of his beautiful, admiring summaries of the teachings of Jesus is:
The exemplary life consists of love and humility. It is a fullness of heart that does not exclude even the lowliest. It is a formal repudiation of one’s rights of self-defense and of victory
in the sense of personal triumph... It is faith in blessedness here on earth ... in reconciliation, in the absence of anger, in not wanting to be rewarded ... It is a very proud life beneath the will to a life of poverty and service.68
Despite this respect, Nietzsche often outrageously contended that Christianity is the religion of losers
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