Nietzsche from a Catholic’s POV
Before I could even speak, I had already been baptized. Before I reached puberty, I had already done my first communion. As a Mexican boy, I have always been expected to be a staunch Catholic, go to church every Sunday, and celebrate all religious holidays. And, for the most part, I have complied: I was an altar boy for a lot of my childhood, participated in all of the church’s Christmas shows and philanthropic endeavors, and went to confession every six months. However, as soon as I learned that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were all fantasies, I began to question whether God was just another myth. I saw my grandparents relentlessly criticize my cousin after he announced he was an atheist: he had stepped out of line; in a society as conservative as mine, coming out in any way is forbidden. As I grew older, I began to truly and deeply question the existence of God. I often found myself asking God for a “sign” that he was real: a distant footstep would suffice. I now realize that that was as superstitious as knocking on wood to unjinx something.
For most of my adolescence, my faith encountered periods of weakness and strength: sometimes I felt like going to church, and other times I found myself disagreeing with people who still denied evolution. Then I read Friedrich Nietzsche for a philosophy class, and it spurred in me a period of doubt and questioning that hasn’t really been resolved yet. My teacher introduced Nietzsche as an atheist who was against Christian institutions — immediately, I felt heretical for even reading him. However, I had to do it or else I’d fail, so I embraced my open-mindedness and gave him a try. One of the speeches in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, titled “On the Three Metamorphoses,” talks about the three transformations a human’s soul must go through to reach its full potential. The first transformation is represented by a camel, who is often described as a successful integrant of the Matrix and who burdens himself and deals with problems. The second transformation, which happens when the camel is overburdened and when he realizes his limitations, is represented by a lion. The lion wants to become his own master and be free. To accomplish this, he has to fight a dragon, the creature standing between him and his goals. Once the lion is free, the third metamorphosis, represented by a child, occurs. The child’s spirit, characterized by innocence and free will, can create its own values.
At first, Nietzsche’s complex and archaic language kept me from fully comprehending his meaning. After reading it over a few times, I understood that his main point was that humans are being limited by religion: we are suppressed by it, and are unable to be ourselves and reach our full potential because of it. As soon as I came to this realization, I felt like I was betraying my faith. I now see the irony in this: my faith was hindering me from reaching these philosophical realizations.
In many ways, much like the camel, I am still not ready to face my “dragon”, whatever it represents in my life: God, family, society, or anything else. Karl Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher of science, seems to think that scientists should always strive to falsify theories and hypotheses, for, if they are unfalsifiable, they can also never be proven true. Religion, one of the only things one cannot test, is likewise founded on doubt. Without doubt, my faith would be reduced to cold and heartless conviction. I don’t know how my faith will evolve, but what I do know is that it won’t exist because of societal pressure.
