Like Cold Water To A Weary Soul

On a day when I had been debating about whether this blog is a waste of everyone’s time, I received two emails from readers, emails that occupied my mind through much of the last few hours.

The first email was from a gentleman who wishes to remain anonymous. His words were generous and uplifting and so very, very timely. What he expressed about this blog made me feel that perhaps it serves a purpose after all, at least for the time being. So my friend — and you know who you are — thank you. The phrase “You made my day” is overused, but in this case, it is quite true.

The other email was from a reader with whom I have corresponded a few times. One of my recent posts in which I touched on church life struck a nerve, and he sent me an impassioned description of his own experiences in the Protestant world. I was so affected by his words that I asked the writer if he would allow me to publish it here. He agreed, on condition of anonymity.

So here is his honest collection of observations, a collection that rings completely true to me. It rings true because it echoes so many thoughts and reactions that have been clattering around inside me for some years now. If nothing else, I hope it provokes deep thought on the part of anyone who encounters it here.

~ S.K. Orr

I was raised a Christian. When I came of age, I morally rebelled for a bit but then doubled down and owned my faith. I got serious about Bible study, public worship, evangelism, and even went to seminary. I raised my own kids in the faith. Until about 5 years ago.

As far back as 15 years ago, I noticed a lack of virility in Christian men. I was dominion oriented. I wanted to apply the Christian worldview to every area of life. Others wanted to play church and not rock the boat. Elders refused to take any stand on anything of importance.

For example, why do 90% of Xians send their kids to public schools where Xian morality and teaching is opposed or at best treated indifferently? In my denomination, some brave elders brought a resolution to the general assembly to encourage parents to pull their kids from public schools.

It was handily defeated and these elders were treated like pariahs. The arguments against the resolution ranged from childish to vitriolic, akin to shitlib SJW tactics. I was starting to learn how fake this institution was. I also was learning how power is more important than truth.

I learned that Christians are driven by a desire to be right. They want you to agree with them. They want to win debates. But they don’t want real power or action. The elders like to don their black robes and adjudicate doctrinal matters that are irrelevant to thriving.

They run the church like a corporation where they are CEOs and VPs. They serve the tithe which serves the state. They preach “return business” sermons which teach that you can’t learn truth apart from their shepherding. You must fear leaving their doctrinal reservation.

In my most fervent Christian years I also became a racial realist, seeing the natural hierarchy in the world, seeing reality as it plainly appears. I quickly learned that such talk was off limits. No serious pastor would tolerate the racial views of their own parents and ancestors.

In denouncing racists they sounded like anti-Christian sodomites but with Galatians 3:28 as their egalitarian hammer. I encountered a hand full of other Christians who seemed to be realistic about the matter of race, but I was not able to thread the needle with this group, either.  When it came to choosing between blood and faith, faith prevailed. While they criticized the idea of a proposition nation in preference to a blood nation, what really mattered for their circle is Xian orthodoxy, and that means submission to a pastor, sacraments, sound theology.

When I saw that I didn’t need the church, and even had biblical arguments against it, I was dismissed by these people as a heretic. Even the best and most racially realistic forms of Xianity want a proposition community. We’re saved by faith not race, I was told.

Dealing with suffering was also a major factor in leaving the faith. In Matt 7:9-12 Jesus uses an a fortiori argument to prove that if our earthly fathers answer our cries and needs, how much more will our heavenly father answer them. This wasn’t true for me.

In my darkest hours I remained alone despite my earnest prayers. I knew exactly where I stood with my dad, who would give me the shirt off his back. But when I cried out to God for an answer, just a simple something, I was confronted with the Great Silent One. Nothing.

I read Kierkegaard who wrote about the dizziness of discovering one’s uncertain but essential subjective values, and thus one’s existence. About recovering oneself from social roles, materialism, and linguistic abstractions to be a Knight of Faith and to hold your world together.

He asked whether we have looked profoundly into the world and seen that at the deepest level we are alone in “absolute isolation” with our God. This made more sense. Of course, the racial Christians opposed Soren because he said some heterodox things once.

Then I realized that I was silly and cowardly for trying to play it safe by only reading Christian authors. I didn’t need my curious views authorized by a believer. Why is it wrong to learn from the riches of my great ancestors, regardless of their faith?

In my blood is a history that predates Xianity – is there no gold there? Why do Christians seek the approval of spiritual authority figures, fetishize leaders, follow gurus, hide in a holy book? Yet they hand wave away the contributions of their pagan ancestors? That’s a problem.

I then read Nietzsche who changed my life. He said that there is no original text but only human decisions to let an interpretation represent an end product. What do we know that someone didn’t tell us, I asked my Xian friends? They did not like that.

I realized that Xians aren’t following universal Truth but laws and values established by men in power. I learned that Xian morality is slave morality and that my real allegiance is to Rome (NOT Roman Catholicism, but the Roman culture of old), not Judea, that I am Aryan, not Xian. Xianity is at core universal, liberal, egalitarian.

Xianity worships weakness, denies strength, negates life, and ultimately hates this world “with its war on the senses, its envervation, it’s hair-splitting.” It pushes any victory into an unknowable afterworld where the passions of life are gone.

It is tame, civilized, domesticated, attenuated, inoffensive, comfortable, reactive. It is “weakness turned to merit.” It redirects natural, healthy instincts inward against their possessors which produces “bad conscience.”

I realized a better way. Greatness. Becoming who I am. Authoring my own authentic identity. Embracing life, flowering, power, sensuality, danger, the chase, the dance, healthiness, domination, exploitation, pain.

I can “rebaptize my badness as my best” and embrace an “unembarrassed friendship with the beautiful.” I can practice self-overcoming through “the triumphant affirmation of my own demands.” I saw that I didn’t need Xianity for my life to be rooted in grand purpose.

I realized that ditching slave morality is not a prescription for degeneracy. Self improvement now comes from the inside and the knowable – myself. I can step over unhealthy vices with an act of life-affirming will.

Through acts of creativity I can sublimate the wild torrents and base instincts in me. My first moral unction is now YES – yes to life, to myself, and my fate . It is no longer NO to some external boogeyman, heretic, or devil.

Our Christian moral monitor and bad conscience  was largely shaped by a hostile, socio-political power structure, a resentful Judaic slave morality, to keep us from affirming and achieving power again. But it can be carefully reconditioned to fit OUR goals and OUR real identity.

But Christians, racialist or otherwise, in their weakness affirm slave morality, refuse to take up power, and consider all humans equals and potential co-religionists. They don’t understand that he who takes up power conditions the consciences and sets the values for generations.

How can a worldview with a misguided friend/enemy distinction prevail? How can our God be for us when he can exist without us? How can we take the “other” into the sacred place to meet our ancestors and gods? These are things that turn serious people and healthy spirits away.

Preferring faith over blood, Christians also disavow their pre-Christian ancestors who have shown the way of strength and master morality. They would rather lose with their noble principles in hand than make the amoral sacrifices necessary for clear victory.

Suffering is a feature, not a bug. Life is tragic, and beyond our illusions is chaos and horror. Xians will NOT face this. “All sick and diseased people strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive discomfort and weakness.”

Embracing this, we force our meaning on the world, take joy in heroically facing eternal conflict, and “regard our worst calamity as but the extra strain on the bow of our life.” Why would one long for heaven where the seas are eternally calm, where there is no war or conquest?

One last reason I left Xianity is entirely subjective, but meaningful. Scripture doesn’t speak to me; it doesn’t move me. It used to affect my mind and maybe my heart. But reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche hits me in the gut and deeper. It speaks to my blood and soul.

Signed, “U”