Crushing on Nietzsche

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies” -- Nietzsche.

TK and I were driving back from the mall today and she wondered aloud why “Satanists” would choose to be Satanists. “After all,” she mused, “Satan only exists if you believe in God, and if you believe in the existence of God, why would you choose the loser?”

Then she rambled on that maybe you would choose Satan if you believed that stupid Italian poet who wrote about the seven circles of Hell where people get to pig out and have sex all the time.

I opened the window, poked my head out, and yelled up into the air, “Did you hear that, Dante? She called you stupid!”

“Well don’t you think he was?” She asked.

“I think you need to read The Inferno,” I replied.

Then I expounded on Dante’s brilliance all the rest of the way home. I promised to fish out The Inferno for her which is how I found myself in the garage digging through boxes of my books, stumbling upon Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human...

I abandoned my search for Dante (there are a lot of boxes out there, let me tell ya) and offered her the Nietzsche book as an entertaining substitute for now. She opened it up and read me the quote above. “What does he mean?” she asked me.

As I explained my take on his words, yesterday’s post came to mind. Oh yes, our convictions certainly are more deadly to the Truth than any simple lie could ever be. Lies are easy for the Christian to see through, but our convictions can twist the path to the Truth, our convictions can lead us to hurt each other, and our convictions can turn people away from God.

(Note: There are actually nine circles in Dante’s poetic vision of Hell... perhaps she had it confused with the seven deadly sins...)