Does Nietzsche provide any good reasons for being sceptical about Essay

Does Nietzsche provide any good reasons for being sceptical about Christian love - Essay Example Despite being the son of a Lutheran minister, Nietzsche was a man who did not subscribe to the ideas of Christianity, especially those that dealt with love, believing that the concept of love had been completely corrupted by the church. However, he was also a great admirer of Jesus because of the manner in which he had lived his life and attempted to reform the religion of Judaism so that it could become more progressive. While this was the case, Nietzsche criticized the teaching of love in the Gospels stating that they did not hold any truth in the reality of many individuals. It was his belief that those individuals who practiced Christianity did not live their lives to the fullest because they subscribed to teachings of Gospels, which were aimed at ensuring that life was composed of absolutes. According to Nietzsche, life was not full of absolutes and the concept of love could therefore not be practiced as preached in Christianity because to do so would mean that individuals could no longer make decisions for themselves; hence remain in the fossilized hierarchy to which the church had relegated them. According to Nietzsche, because Jesus died on the cross, the concept of love died with him and this is the reason why there no longer needs to be any form of absolutes in the manner in which individuals profess love towards each other. According to him, the Christian manner of love as practiced was highly hypocritical because instead of making people happy, it made them slaves of their own actions (Hollingdale, 1999, p.21). This declaration by Nietzsche does not hold any truth because Christian teachings relating to love enabled the church to grow in strength and have continued to sustain it in the modern world despite the rapid secularization currently taking place. There have been points of view though criticized by Nietzsche that Christian teachings on love are among the elements that have ensured a continued growth in provision of charity and aid for