Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I just read this passage where Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes Friedrich Nietsche and thought it worth passing on.
Nietzche, without knowing it, was speaking in the spirit of the New Testament when he attacked the legalistic and philistine misinterpretation of [the] commandment which bids us love our neighbor. He wrote: "You are assiduous in your attention to your neighbor and you find beautiful words to describe your assiduity. But I tell you that your love for your neighbor is a worthless love for yourself. You go to your neighbor to seek refuge from yourself and then you try to make a virtue of it; but I see through your [unselfishness]....Do I advise you to love your neighbor? I advise you rather to shun your neighbor and love whoever is furthest from you! If beyond his neighbor a man does not know this one who is furthest from him as his neighbor, then he does not serve his neighbor but himself; he takes refuge from free open spaces of responsibility in the comforting confinement of the fulfillment of duty.

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