The Nietzschean Nice Guy
Amongst many of my fellow pastors, Carl Trueman has developed a reputation as an even headed sense maker. The work he put into The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self was indeed laudable and proved helpful to many men attempting to get a handle on the transgender phenomenon. His disagnosis (we are living in a culture where radical individualism has gone to seed) was easy medicine for the average pastor to swallow.
Therein lies the appeal of Trueman. He is an intellectual with formidable capacities who tends to prescribe rather pedantic solutions — the very kinds of solutions that many pastors find easy to digest.
I tend to put him in the same category as Jordan Peterson. Both men make a display of their exceptional intellectual prowess on the front end, bringing cacophony of historic voices and insights onto the stage, only to tame and harmonize them into one simple insight:
“Make your bed” or, in Trueman’s Rise & Triumph, “individualism is bad.”
The Trueman Show & the Intellectual Enthusiast
Such intellectual lion taming is highly attractive to the “intellectual enthusiast” types. You know the kind. The ones who while not being very well read still enjoy dabbling in the Great Conversation. For the intellectual enthusiast, men like Trueman serve the same function as the chefs on those cooking show competitions. You know the kind. The ones in which a group of chefs are given a strange box of ingredients and then compete against each other to see which of them can fashion the best meal.
Just as amateur foodies love to watch the expert assemble order out of chaos, the intellectual enthusiast adores the opportunity to watch an academic like Trueman stand before the discordant ingredients of modernity (some of which are quite unpalatable) and churn out a tasty meal.
The problem I have with Trueman’s analysis is that he seems to always make Mac & Cheese. No matter what ingredients are set before him, the man churns out the most banal of dishes. His most recent essay in First Things is no different. In that brief article he stood before the dizzying ingredients of cultural decline and after a few paragraphs worth of slicing and dicing presented his readers with a PB&J. Namely, “Don’t be like Nietzsche.”
Yes and amen. Nietzscheanism is indeed bad. Thanks Carl (I think I can taste the heat lamps).
Here I would humbly want to propose the addition of at least another dish. One far less palatable to his audience. Namely the problem of the Nietzschean nice guy.
Trueman invokes Nietzsche as a kind of stand in for all activities related to the pragamatic accumulation of power.
I agree with Trueman that the merely pragmatic and carnal accumulation of power is for the Christian, strictly forbidden. We play a different game in which the battle belongs to the Lord.
Jesus is very clear that it is the meek who will inherit the earth. And in the book of James we see quite clearly that meekness is best defined as the manifestation of wisdom from above that is: “…first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.” (James 3:17) I agree with Trueman that “owning the libs” is an aim unbefitting the saint.
What then is my issue with Trueman’s article? Mainly that he overlooks the vast amount of biblical data that tells us that the most commonly employed tool used for Nietzschean power grabs is niceness and flattery. Perhaps you can see why that dish is far less palatable to the average pastor than the one Trueman presented. The problem, according to Trueman, is “out there” amongst the rancorous gospel neglecting Christians. They are the ones making the power play.
Meanwhile the average pastor is sorely tempted day in and day out to use winsomeness, niceness, and flattery as pragmatic means to power accumulation. So if Trueman really wanted to guard against pragmatic power accumulation, he ought to have discussed the primary temptation facing the majority of spiritual leaders.
You know, the one the Bible constantly addresses.
“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” — Romans 16:17–18
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” — 2 Timothy 4:3–4
“They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” — Jeremiah 6:14
See also Psalm 5:9, 12:2, Proverbs 26:28, 29:5 , Micah 3:5, Ezekiel 13:10, Jeremiah 23:17
When we examine the writings of the Apostle Paul, we see that flattery and niceness seem to have been to him obvious temptations. He knew that the easiest way to accumulate power would’ve involved smooth speech and flattery. Thus he routinely exonerates his apostleship by reminding his readers that he refused to take up the weapon of winsomeness to win friends and influence people. See 1 Thessalonians 2:5, 1 Corinthians 2:1–5, Acts 20:26–27.
For Paul, the distinction between true servants of Christ and wolves would be revealed primarily in this way. Faithful men would exhort and admonish the saints (with complete patience) while the wolves would tell them what they want to hear.
In the stunning farewell address to the Ephesians elders, Paul predicted that fierce wolves would enter the church seeking to devour the flock. These wolves were not the “own the libs” roughians of Trueman’s immagination. Rather they wore a smile and crept into households and captured weak willed women. (Acts 20:26–30, 2 Timothy 3:5–6)
My point is that if Trueman is concerned with Nietzschean power grabs in the local church, he ought to speak plainly to the average pastor who faces the regular temptation to play nice and not upset the boat. Trueman had all the necessary ingredients at his disposal to prepare that dish. But instead we got mere Mac & Cheese. And who doesn’t like Mac & Cheese?
I hope that I have demonstrated that Nietzschean motivated niceness is thoroughly biblical category. I suspect we seldom see it presented as a real and present danger because it is not very palatable. Asking the average pastor to consider whether his winsomeness is motivated by a desire for power amounts to giving him a tough piece of meat to chew on.
Fundamentally, I think we see Paul and Trueman standing before the same ingregients but preparing very different dishes. Both dishes are appropriate but which is the most nourishing?