The Antichrist

Despite the fact of not feeling any particular pleasure in reading, what makes me one of those Europeans enlarging the statistics referring to citizens with inadequate reading habits in the old continent, once in a while I give place to some actions of self-fustigation by reading a book. That was what happened with “The Antichrist”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, published for the first time in 1895.

I have had since years a tremendous curiosity about what the expression “the antichrist” could really mean and since then I am looking for answers to questions I have been asking to myself within an existentialist context, what I, sometimes, paint my life with. Since early times, I have delimited very clearly the basic areas of my positioning related to something:

1. be for – “christian” in this case
2. be against – “antichrist” in this case
3. be indifferent – “christian or not, who cares?” in this case

This is comparable to the reduced range of states in Digital Electronics (0, 1 or tri-state⁽¹⁾) which is, in a social context, very much criticized by the consensus-maker style people who always believe, or seem to believe, that there are many more possible positions to stand for in any subject analysis than only two or three. Anyhow, I am very much for a “223 options” only and, regarding Christ, definitely I do publically declare my tri-state position. However, if we talk about Christianity, then the case changes its figure because I am sometimes a zero, sometimes a one⁽²⁾ and anything between that it is a pure waste of time and energy.

Coming back to the book, I believe it is better if I place here a transcription from it in order to give an idea of what I am dissertating about:

“With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let anyone dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal. . . .

For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!–The “equality of souls before God”–this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded–this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order–this is Christian dynamite. . . .

The “humanitarian” blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the “humanitarianism” of Christianity!–Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its anaemic and “holy” ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,–against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul–against life itself. . . .

This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found–I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . .

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,–I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race. . . .”

Is not this a pain in the ass? Is not this harder to read than my posts in this blog? Yes, it is, indeed! Reading “The antichrist” was painful for three sort of reasons:

1. reading is not a pleasure for me, it is work!⁽³⁾
2. for every page I was reading I was slowly increasing my frustration and slowly attempting to my own self-esteem cause, in fact, I reached the end without really understanding what was Nietzsche telling the world; I refused to accept that he was simply mad with Christ!
3. Nietzsche’s style is heavy in all senses: his apparent hate to Christ/Christianity, the vocabulary, the literary style, the ideas, etc, etc

First of all, I see no need to be anti-Christ! Apparently, Jesus Christ was a pacifist with his own ideas about human relationships, in general, and about the relation between the political power in force (Romans) and the dominated people he was part of (Jewish), in particular. Christianity is an invention of mankind with its origin in a very good intrigue created and grown around the character of Jesus Christ whose good intentions, as a common Jewish citizen who was doing nothing more than claiming for better life conditions, were machiavellianistically engineered by smart guys with second, or maybe third, intentions. Yet, none of them were good…

Secondly, I see no need to be for-Christ! I believe that being for-Marx makes you being for Marxism but in this case the philosophy (political, in case of Marx) is a creation of its creator. With Christ, not many people know what the guy was, if it was, but all people know the philosophy (religious, in case of Christ) which still is. I might accept that people in USA is pro-Obama, even without “obamanism”, but the real Jesus Christ, as far I know, was leader of nothing and has invented nothing. Therefore, why should people be pro-Christ? It makes sense, however, to be for or against (anti-)Christianity as long you realize you are not being for or against a real man and his work, as no man is able to die on Friday and resuscitate on Sunday. At least not as of writing this post…

The idea of existing an antichrist would probably serve the interests of Christianity. We could then assist to another set of episodes running around a super-fight between super-heros, the Christ and the Antichrist, each one representing the good and the evil, respectively. In case of Christ victory, faith and beliefs of Christians would get even more reinforced and Christianity would gain some more zealous followers. The danger would yet reside on how much power would the Antichrist have and how much that could contribute to have a defeated Christ. This, a defeated Christ, would be a disaster and could contribute for the beginning of the Christianity’s end. A feasible possibility to avoid such disaster would be to handle this antagonism in the same manner they do it in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment ), where all fights are previously conveniently planned.

Better than deciding for the risky idea of creating, in fact, an antichrist is the decision of keeping in the air, eternally, the idea that the power of Christ is so immense that many have been and will be the ones who will try to destroy him. Being so, a pertinent question may be then rised: what would be the profile of a good antichrist? Someone like Josef Stalin? Mao Tse Tung? Adolf Hitler? Saddam Hussein? Valentim Loureiro? Has this being kept in secret like the three Fatima´s secrets (… or were they four)? Let us wait and see cause mankind’s imagination is quite fertile and never stops surprising us. Nevertheless, who ever will be, it has to be someone necessarily anti-Christianity and necessarily very muck skilled to challenge such a huge religious community lead by a powerful structure like Vatican.

Until then, before the existence of a real one, the antichrist can be anyone of us still daring to be here and there, now and then, an anti-system or a consciousness arouser, thinking globally, acting locally. I, from my side, refuse to be dominated by faith and refuse to be apart from a reasonable understanding of what is surrounding me. I see no skills on me to be an antichrist but above all, I see no wish at all to be it. I have practiced today, with this post, a sin against the pragmatic side of my existence: I spent quite a lot time writing about something which I pratically know not much about and, even worse, brings no value added to my already boring enough life! Just like the time I spent reading “The Antichrist” from Nietzcshe, this anti-everything prussian who still is a honorable representative of Nihilism.

May the gods be with the conscious ignorance…