The Antichrist · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
38.
Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity _must_ know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually _lies_--and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through "innocence" or "ignorance." The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any "God," or any "sinner," or any "Saviour"--that "free will" and the "moral order of the world" are lies--: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, _allow_ no man to pretend that he does _not_ know it.... _All_ the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are--as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is--as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation.... We know, our _conscience_ now knows--just _what_ the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and _what ends they have served_, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,--the concepts "the other world," "the last judgment," "the immortality of the soul," the "soul" itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master....
Every one knows this, _but nevertheless things remain as before_. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?... A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people--and yet acknowledging, _without_ any shame, that he is a Christian!... Whom, then, does Christianity deny? _what_ does it call "the world"? To be a _soldier_, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one's self; to be careful of one's honour; to desire one's own advantage; to be _proud_ ... every act of everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a _deed_, is now anti-Christian: what a _monster of falsehood_ the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and _without_ shame, a Christian!--
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