Survival of the Fittest

            In Friedrich Nietzsche’s, Anti-Christ, one of the complications of his with Christianity is that we are not keeping our preservation instincts. To anyone that does not believe in Christianity, it looks that way from the outside, but it is actually just the opposite. As Christians, we try not to focus on our needs as much as trying to help others and put others needs before our own. Nietzsche believed in the survival of the fittest; He thought that we should only worry about our own needs and do whatever we need to do to be successful no matter what the circumstances for other people. We are actually trying to preserve our lives for our life after this in Heaven. Nietzsche wanted us to get to our most potential that we could on Earth and in order to do so we were to try and achieve individual greatness so he did not like the idea of trying to do things on Earth to have a life in Heaven. Not believing in survival of the fittest makes us forfeit our preservation instincts, seem powerless, and seem weak.

            He is a big believer in the survival of the fittest and you can see this throughout this book. He believes that we as Christians are ruining our life by not believing in this. The theory of survival of the fittest is that people are to do what is best for them and what helps them succeed and to not worry about anyone other than themselves. Nietzsche says, “To say it again, this depressive and contagious instinct thwarts those instincts bent on preserving and enhancing the value of life” (Nietzsche, 130). Our instinct as Christians, is to try and get as many people to believe in Christianity and be able to have a life after this in Heaven; He believes that these instincts are inhibiting our instincts for preservation. What Nietzsche sees as instincts that thwart our preservation instincts are actually instincts that help preserve our lives and other peoples lives as well. We as Christians are supposed to spread God’s words and to increase the Kingdom of Heaven by helping more people learn about God.

            Nietzsche also believes that to be happy is to have a lot of power. He believed that power produced happiness and that Christianity allowed people to be weak. He says, “What is good? ¾ All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? ¾ All that proceeds from weakness.  What is happiness? ¾ The feeling that power increases ¾ that a resistance is overcome” (Nietzsche, 127).  In this passage, he explains that he believes that the root of all good is in the feeling of power and in power itself and that all bad things come from weakness and lack of power. He thinks this because as Christians we look at morals and being nice and helping others as good and taking advantage of someone for personal advantage is evil but Nietzsche sees the opposite. Since he believes in survival of the fittest then he believes that everyone should do what is best for themselves. I think that we actually have more power than non believers because we have God on our side and we can do all things through him. I believe that we should not focus on what we have done in our own lives for this world but to look forward to our next life in Heaven.

            Nietzsche thinks that Christians hide behind Christianity because they are weak. Nietzsche says, “Christianity has taken side of everything weak, base, ill-constituted, it has made an ideal out of the opposition to the preservation instincts of strong life; it has depraved the reason even of the intellectually strongest natures by teaching men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful, as misleading, as temptations” (Nietzsche, 129).  Nietzsche did not like what Jesus taught because he did not agree that we should sympathize the weak and that we should not even worry about the weak. Instead of sympathizing the weak, Nietzsche thought that we should grow our strength through will power. Christianity is all about Jesus coming and dying for our sins and doing something that we could not do like living a sinless life. Jesus died for those people who are weak so that we could gain our strength in the Lord.

            One of Nietzsche’s core beliefs that he wrote about in his book, The Anti-Christ, is the theory of survival of the fittest. It was one of his main reasoning that he thought that Christianity was not a good religion. He thought that not believing in survival of the fittest made people unsuccessful, weak, powerless, and many more things. He thought these things because he did not believe in the world after this so he did not have anything to look forward to other than life on Earth. By believing in this, he did not have to think about consequences that would come from not helping anyone else while he was trying to gain power. When we do not believe in survival of the fittest it seems like we have lost our preservation instincts, powerless, and weak. But we actually are preserving our lives in Heaven and trying to preserve other people’s lives in Heaven. We actually have more power but not in the traditional sense and we are also very strong because we gain strength in Jesus. This is how Nietzsche got it wrong when he thought that we were thwarting our preservation rights.