As part of the requirements for a class I just completed, I've been reading Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols and C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory (the sermon within the book by the same title), and was struck by how much they both resonate with me, though for very different reasons. Nietzsche, of course, provokes a lot of well-deserved criticism from Christians, but some also not-so-well-deserved criticism from the same lot. He did, after all, seek to live life as consistently as possible as though God were really dead - this is no credit to him (not least because it's self-destructive). However, what many Christians have not appreciated is the value he assigned to the glories of aesthetic experience. In his usually ellusive manner, he describes it as having the "precondition of intoxication" that leads to the greatest of aesthetic experiences. Words like euphoric, enthralling, ravishing, intoxicating, exhilarating, passionate, and glorious all get at what he, and all people, find gratifying in life. Granted, he says that anything from bravery in conflict to cruelty to narcotics to sexual experience is a legitimate means by which one may pursue such intoxication that then leads to euphoria. What we miss, however, is how insightfully he has described our own experiences of pleasure and virtue: in a word, they are intoxicating, even at times addictive.
It is certainly true that my most gratifying experiences actually do follow from a kind of being "taken up into" or "intoxicated by" the moment. For instance, there's a kind of giddy thrill that can and often does come in meeting the need of another person, particularly when you both know that it's beyond repayment: and often such deeds of mercy carry more affection and emotion (for both parties) than any verbal statement could. And this is what Nietzsche is after in life: to get as much of these experiences as possible. What Christians disagree with in Nietzsche is not the pursuit of experiences of wonder and exhilaration per se, but in pursuing them at all costs and without regard for others. In fact, the Christian virtue Love is, in itself, the pursuit of such joys in such a way as to bring others into one's own experience of joy, not being indifferent toward or exclusive of the joy of others.
Enter Lewis. "If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. We are far too easily pleased." With Nietzsche, the pleasures of this life are all that there are and we do well to maximize our experience of them. With Lewis, the pleasures of this life are not ends in themselves, though good; they are pointers to the Greatest Pleasure, God. Elsewhere Lewis says (almost as if he was thinking of Nietzsche), "Aim at heaven, and you'll get the earth 'thrown in'; aim at earth and you'll lose them both."
Nietzsche might have been wrong in big ways, and he may have been crazy, but he was not stupid, nor was he completely out of touch with reality. He knew what it was, on some level, to be human. After all, he (like every other human being) carried the image of God in his being, and we should therefore not be surprised when thate image finds expression, even though marred and distorted (as it is in all of us). As those who bear the image of God, we were made for God and for each other, and this expereince of fellowship will (and ought to be) intoxicatingly delightful. Nietzsche's problem was not that he sought experiences of passion and exhilaration, but that he sought them as ends in themselves. He was, as Lewis says, "like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." He was far too easliy pleased.
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