Reading Dorthy Day into Nietzsche
mankind is nailed?["]
-Friedrich Nietzsche (1883) Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. by Graham
Parkes (2005) Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 13.
I’ve only just started reading this book, and I’m not familiar enough with Nietzsche nor 19th century German liberal theology to really make a judgement, but I’ve been operating under the assumption that Nietzsche is making a critique of the latter.
But that’s not where my mind went when I read this. I was thinking about my time at the Philadelphia Catholic Worker. My experience with American white, mainline, middle-class Christians and the congregations that are filled with them is that our response to poverty and the poor is one of pity. Look at pictures of poor children in the Dominican Republic, feel bad, send them money, feel better about ourselves. Vote Democratic, or at least for a “compassionate” Republican, and feel better about ourselves. Even, dare I say it, volunteer at the food pantry every couple of months, feel like we’ve done our part, and feel better about ourselves. We feel bad for the poor and try to help them, but certainly don’t question our middleclassness or heaven forbid try to abandon it.
I’m not sure this is a Gospel response. The message I get from the Jesus of the Gospels is not to pity the poor. It is to join them. And I don’t know the implications.
