The God that I don't believe in!

In the History of Contemporary Western Philosophy, I teach my students the thoughts of the German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.  For ages Nietzsche has been thought to be an atheistic philosopher, the one who had the boldness to pronounce the devastating judgment on God: “GOD IS DEAD”.  I remember way back in 2001 as a student of philosophy, when one of my senior companions wanted to do his final thesis on Nietzsche, he was strictly reprimanded by the superiors. 

The reason given was very simple: “Nietzsche was an atheistic thinker and what did he have in particular to teach my companion a candidate to priesthood?”  Unfortunately, that was the end of my companion’s philosophical quest and also his seminary career. In those days I did feel a certain amount of apathy and even certain unholy hatred for my companion for having taken such a bold step in his life of having chosen to leave the seminary because he was denied the possibility to make a study on Nietzsche. 

But today as a teacher of Philosophy, I would like to see Nietzsche in a different manner.  Was he really an atheist? Or was he refusing to believe in a GOD that our traditional religions have made him to be?  I say this because, it is this same Nietzsche that said about Christ and Christianity: "The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding — in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross."

Thus it becomes very clear that his rebellion was not so much against the Transcendent, Immanent Principle in the universe, but the kind of domesticated God that the traditional religions have formed for themselves.  Thanks to the book of Juan Arias, Il Dio in cui non credo, that gave me a beautiful insight in this regard and I think I wouldn’t mind in affirming my position along with the author in saying that “the God that many atheists don’t believe in is a God that I don’t believe in either”. 

So, who is this God that I don’t believe in?

No, I shall never believe in:

The God who catches man by surprise in a sin of weakness,

The God who condemns material things,

The God incapable of giving an answer to the grave problems of a sincere and honest man who cries out in tears: “I can’t!”

The God who flashes a red light against human joys,

The God who sterilizes man’s reason,

The God who is a magician and a sorcerer,

The God who makes himself feared,

The God who does not allow people to talk familiarly to him,

The God who makes Himself the monopoly of church, a race, a culture or a caste,

The God who doesn’t need man,

The God incapable of smiling at many of man’s awkward mistakes,

The God who ‘sends’ people to hell,

The God who always demands 100 percent in examinations,

The God adored by those who are capable of condemning a man to death,

The God incapable of understanding that children will always get themselves dirty and be forgetful,

The God whom only the mature, the wise, or the comfortably situated can understand,

The God who is adored by those who go to Mass and yet go on stealing and calumniating,

The God for whom it is as sinful to enjoy the sight of a pair of pretty legs as to calumniate and rob one’s neighbor and abuse one’s power to get rich or to take revenge,

The God who condemns all sex,

The God who says “You will pay for that!”,

The God who sometimes regrets having given man free will,

The God who pleases those who are always saying: “Everything is fine”,

The God who is preached by those priests who believe that hell is crowded and heaven is almost empty,

The God of the “middle-class priests”,

The God who would deny man the freedom to sin,

The God who has no forgiveness for some sins,

The God whom one can pray only on one’s knees, whom one can find only in a church,

The God who has never wept for men,

The God who prefers purity to love,

The God insensitive to the beauty of a rose,

The God for whom man is of value, not for what he is, but for what he has or what he represents,

The God who would not have become a man, with all that it implies,

The God in whom in cannot hope against all hope.

YES, MY GOD IS THE OTHER GOD!