Christ or Chaos: The Right & Permanent Things
Nietzsche, Power, and the Problem of the Political
There’s an awful lot of talk nowadays about what it means to be “right wing,” and the question always seems to swing back around to criticism of modernity- modernity is technocratic; it is oppressive, full of white noise, utterly lacking in any meaning. The Overton Window of acceptable opinions is farther left than at perhaps any point in history.
To put it simply, modernity is fake and gay.
So how to criticize modernity? It is hard to criticize anything one is in the midst of without having a reference point. The Houston Texans are a terrible football team, but only for an NFL team. The greatest college team of all time has no chance at beating last year’s Texans. To criticize the system one participates in without having a tangible reference point leaves one bloviating about Che Guevara whilst drinking a $7 coffee. Such criticism is meritless on its face.
In order to criticize modernity, you have to turn back to where “modernity” roughly starts: the 18th & 19th centuries. Many warned us about the fruits of modernity and asked us to turn back or soften the landing in some way: GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, Thomas Carlyle, Alexis De Tocqueville, and the like. But none have held on to such permanence in the modern mind as Friedrich Nietzsche. He remains central to many debates about modernity, politics, and meaning in the modern (and postmodern) age.
For all of the valid reasons one may like Nietzsche, it cannot be forgotten that at the heart of his criticism of modernity is criticism of Christianity. Nietzsche claims that it is Christianity’s fault that modernity is the way that it is. In his book, The Antichrist (aptly named), Nietzsche acts as an accuser of Christianity in the court of human history. After pages and pages of furious writing, he opens part 62 with this desperate, venomous salvo:
“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.”
One cannot reconcile Christianity with this utter scum from the pit of hell. Nietzsche’s entire worldview is totally opposed to Christianity, end of story. Anyone who tries to reconcile the two is not to be trusted.
But surely some will find Nietzsche to be valuable in the fight against the terrible dragon of modernity? Surely one knight cannot take the dragon down all by his lonesome; could the hired hand from afar not help? After all, he hates the dragon too. It is this sort of thinking that drove me to write this article in the first place. Where is the line between political friend and enemy for Christians? How large or big-tent should our coalition be? Ultimately, where are the lines of no return?
I don’t suppose that I am able to answer all of those questions. In fact, I doubt I can bring any real brevity to the discourse. But I’m going to try anyway, because the subject is not often fleshed out as much as I would hope. In my mind, the subject is oft avoided because Christians generally have three default stances when it comes to the political realm:
Christianity is inherently apolitical, so Christians should stay out of politics or risk becoming “worldly.”
Christians are predisposed towards one political worldview (because of upbringing, environment, personal experience, education, etc; or all of the above) and seek to use the Bible as a justification for their existing beliefs; knowingly or unknowingly.
Christians must always seek the “third way” of the gospel, as opposed to the other existing worldly ways.
The second and third ways of approaching the political realm are wrong. Everyone (at some level) recognizes the second approach as wrong, but often notice the people in the third camp- the “Third-Wayists”- consistently fall in with whatever the dominant cultural force is and hardly ever actually take a third way. Many Christians are therefore convinced that the pious decision is to be “above” politics. I am here to tell you that this view also is wrong.
I say this because I am utterly convinced that all political conflict is spiritual. I suppose this assertion is hard for some to accept; and others will simply not allow me to get away with the statement, so I will expand upon my assertion. Every Christian is aware that the Enemy prowls about on the Earth, and that he specifically seeks to subvert the Church. We can all grasp the concept that the Devil is doing this in many ways. He uses other religions to bash Christianity in specific ways (Islam says Christianity is weak, Atheists say Christianity is backwards or stupid, etc.), and he attempts to use wolves within the Church to weaken our witness. His opposition to the Church is based upon the goal of separating the relationship between God and Man.
If Religion, then, is focused on the relationship between God and Man (and additionally, facts about the nature of Man and the nature of God), then what should we call the relation between Man and Man in everyday life? I would submit to you that whatever one may call this relationship, the political is most certainly within its boundaries. And do you suppose that the Devil would simply leave this arena untouched? Do you suppose he only wishes to sever God and Man, but leaves Men to go about their business in their daily lives? Well, I suppose one might think that unconsciously. But how does it sound out loud? I’ll leave that for you to decide. In any event, the political is one of the very best tools in the Enemy’s arsenal. In what other way can he use hard power out in the open, without demonic apparitions?
And one of the key aspects of the political (as you have probably guessed by now) is the ability of some men to wield power over other men. And the trouble with this is that as much as some may not like this wielding of power, it is an inevitability. Total equality in every way is fundamentally unachievable in a fallen world. Some men will always rise to the top. Not only this, but the institution of Government is God-ordained- the best place to see this summarized is Romans 13:1-7:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
There is no way out of this predicament. Men must rule over other men, and yet it seems that the Devil will prowl about and seek to infiltrate, and sometimes rule with, power. All political conflict is spiritual. Drill it into your head.
The turn of phrase that I am asking you to remember brings up other interesting observations. For instance, we are constantly told by a certain kind of right wing influencer that Christianity, particularly the American Protestant flavor, is unable to withstand the tidal forces of the LGBTQ+ sexual liberation movement; and that the Mohammedans are BASED enough to defeat this modern monster for us. Effectively, it is the sort of deal where the devil is in the details: give those guys space in the right wing movement, and then we can beat the dragon.
This is nothing but a siren song. As with religion, there are only two sides politically: those who serve the One True God, and those who serve themselves- either directly or by proxy. Logic may dictate that because of Islam’s extreme traditionalism, it would be a useful tool against the fully postmodern dragon, but the data reveals the underlying theme of Christ vs Chaos:
(Source: Majority of American Muslims Now Support Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People)
Do you get it now? This is not about being based, or trad, or even about saving the West. It’s about whether we wish to turn to our Creator, to do his will in our private lives, to glorify him through our families, to model the Gospel to our community, and to bring every thought in chains before our Master and Savior: the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ- or instead to go on eating and drinking as in the days of Noah, entertaining every thought and fancy that crosses our mind, by our own sin or by the whispers of demons.
There are two ways of thinking about everything that happens in our world: Christ, or Chaos. There are but two roads: the wide and winding, or the straight and narrow. There are but two kingdoms: the Heavenly, Eternal, and Good; or the Worldly, Temporary, and Broken. There are but two destinations: Heaven and Hell. And there are but two decisions in the end: The man who says to God, “Thy will be done;” and the man to whom God says, “Thy will be done.”
Many reading this will surely be struck by my direct tone, thinking this means that I am effectively advocating for Christians to never take advice on any subject from nonbelievers. Lucky for you, I’m not saying that. This would mean going back to what the American Church did not so long ago, in the 80’s and 90’s: The Church is being negatively affected by the world. Us Christians need our own separate culture. We need Christian hip-hop, rap, concerts, television stations, TV shows, and movies.
Well guess what? That’s how you get Kenneth Copeland, the 700 club, and TBN (at least we had Bibleman memes). One of the fundamental realities of the Christian walk is that we are “in the world, but not of it.” Much ink has been spilled on this subject by Christians far smarter and further along in their walk with the Lord than I, so I will not attempt to replicate their efforts. All I will say is that TBN is certainly not the way for Christians to interact with the world.
One certainty is that Christians will have to interact with worldly folk, especially for the sake of spreading the Gospel and welcoming lost sheep home. And since I have already told you that because all political conflict is spiritual, you hopefully understand that we Christians must engage with political unbelievers. The degree to which this happens, or what rules of engagement Christians use, are the only questions left to discuss.
The primary rule of political engagement for Christians is to always evaluate what an unbelieving person’s end goal is for the political. This shows up in a myriad of ways. There is the totally committed progressive who treats left-wing politics as if it were a religion. There is the aimless drifter who has never had an original thought. Then there is the atheist, who is a special case. As I’ve said before, Atheism is the single most preposterous metaphysical proposition to ever exist in human history, so there is no need to pay them any heed on any serious issue:
https://twitter.com/TunaRJS/status/1643342889731395584?s=20
There are other people whose beliefs muddy the waters for our rule of political engagement. Some pay lip service to, or even genuinely love, Western culture. If you are online or online-adjacent, you have some idea of the sort of things that these people say. “Why can’t we build what the Romans built? They had no modern technology, but even their roads lasted for a thousand years! We can’t even fix the yearly pothole!” Other such statements are often said in this vein. Every one of these people idolizes something about the tradition of the West: the music, the philosophy, the monarchs, the architecture, the poetry, the literature. These traditionalists will often loudly proclaim that we must return to the past; to what made us great in the first place.
But a large swath of these traditionalists who tell society that it must return to the old ways mostly carry on with their normal lives just like everyone else. They are capture to the same modern, technocratic, materialistic consumerism that plagues us all- worse still, many drift about in their apathetic religiosity, capture to the spirit of the age. But this is just the trouble: Christianity built the West. The reason the West rose to heights unrivaled by other forms of civilization was almost entirely due to Christianity.
These people love the fruit, not the planting. They want the aesthetic of the West without its foundation- and the West’s foundation is truth. This is the very reason why I am a Christian; because, above all, Christianity is true. I do not believe it because I find it powerful, beautiful, inspiring, or for any other tangential reason; and the trouble with most nonbelievers is that Truth is not the primary way they view claims. CS Lewis details this phenomenon through his demonic characters Screwtape and Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters. The former is an experienced tempter who is advising the latter, his nephew, on how to best tempt Wormwood’s “patient-” who is an unbeliever at this point in the book. Screwtape’s letter to Wormwood on this subject is in the following excerpts (emphasis mine):
As you can see, even those who would wish to escape modernity cannot escape, because they start with the same premises as modernity while wishing a different end.
There is another problem. Without being able to orient oneself towards the truth, one is unable to orient oneself toward the good. Another Christian thinker, GK Chesterton, says that this plague affects all of our modern language:
The only answer to the predicament of modernity- the only way to slay the dragon- is with Christianity, because Christianity is true. And because it is true, it can show us what is good. And since it is true and good, it can create the beautiful.
This is not a call to abandon all the non-Christian thinkers and political philosophers who have written important work on concepts like the limits of the market, where government power comes from, the elite class, and why we are governed. But these cannot ever be seen as anything more than tools. These factoids are only useful insofar as they are true.
Remember the man from afar who also wishes to slay the dragon? You must forbid him from wielding the sword. He may act as squire, the warning bell, the town bard, but he may not be the knight. He must give his factoids, his political theorems, his historiography- his sword- to you, because only you can properly wield the truth, because your entire life has been training for the use of truth. He may later become a knight, but at this moment, you are the knight in shining armor. You must slay the dragon, for the love of your neighbor who would otherwise be scorched by its flames or beguiled by its serpentine eyes.
It should be remembered that this dragon is only one of many. There are many little dragons, and always will be little dragons, who bother the townsfolk because the dragons know the one who made the townsfolk, and they hate Him. One day, these little dragons, having been tired of being slain and abused by the knights, will finally wise up and unify under the one dragon who has been prowling about since the beginning. He will tell the little dragons that the killing of the townsfolk makes their goal to spite the Creator King much more difficult. They mustn’t use fire out in the open, but sit on the edges of town, using their enchanting stare to lure out the townsfolk, until only the knights are left. Then, the enraged townsfolk, having heard from the dragons about how unfair and cruel their king is, will realize that the Knights are merely instruments of the King’s cruel will, and dragon and peasant alike will attack the Knights out in the open.
But that day is not yet here. For now, you must perform your basic three duties as a Christian: to become more like Christ, to help other Christians to become more like Christ, and to spread the Word to those who do not already have it. This is the full extent of your job while on Earth. If you are performing this base duty well, then congratulations: you are a mature enough Christian to enter into the political space, armed with the knowledge that nothing down here will ever be perfect, but you are called to spread God’s kingdom while you are here. Use prayerful discernment when dealing with the political, remember the nature of the fight you are in, and don’t be afraid to join in the tussle once in a while. If God is for you, who can be against you?