On not getting Nietzsche

.....or, Why I'm Glad I Almost Failed Calculus.

I have a confession to make.

This year has been a little traumatic for me in the intellectual department. It all started when I came down with senioritis, and was forced to discover that I am not immune to boredom with learning. Around that time, I tried reading Nietzsche. Whoa. Up until then, my cavalier, what-have-I-got-to-lose-nothing's-that-hard-anyways approach to education had pretty steadily worked out for me. Sarah the Bluestocking was going to defeat Nietzsche the Philosopher. In fact, she would make him cry, and it would be awesome. But a page into Beyond Good and Evil, I realized the hard way that existentialist philosophy is rather difficult to understand. As it turns out, Nietzsche had gotten the best of me.

Then, to add insult to injury, nearly a year later, there I was again, sitting in a lab in the science building of my college, calculus final in front of me, praying my heart out that I would pass this time. My plan going into this semester had gone all wrong. I knew Calculus and I wouldn't be best friends, but we could at least be civil to each other. But now, even that looked like it wasn't going to happen.

When you're in the middle of a staring contest with an exam that appears to be written in cuneiform, and your gpa, scholarships, and academic standing all depend on how well  you score, you begin to rethink all your previously-held notions about the world you live in. Compound this phenomenon with all the other failures of the year, and I realized that I wasn't the prodigy I fantasized being.

But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

God has used 2012 to teach me several things, and making the top three is the loveliness of humility.

To appreciate that, though, it helps to first contemplate how ugly the opposite is. To start off, when Satan told Eve, "For God knows that in the day you eat from [the fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil," it's her ego he was appealing to. We have pride to thank for getting us into this mess in the first place. But it's also what keeps us in it. Just like that initial sin of our first parents, every wrong thought, word, or deed we commit now is motivated by pride. We want to do things our way. We know best. Our pride is responsible for all the ongoing ugliness surrounding us in the world.

Despite the first few blows to my ego, before school began I was in a rather self-satisfied vantage point in my outlook on life. I'd managed to snag a respectable SAT score and get accepted into the honors program at my college. And this was all due to my, ahem, self-taught high school education. (Don't let yourself get too intimidated. I'm only human, after all.) But during the first few weeks of school, I started getting to know my fellow students. One of my friends is the author of two (soon to be three) novels. Another honors student is finishing translating the Inferno into English. Yet another dear friend's graduation photo shows a girl in cap and gown, literally covered in honors cords and tassels and all sorts of academic bling. Among the others are computer programmers, playwrights, would-be physicists. 

And then there's Sarah with her blog full of earth-shattering insights, her biggest contribution to humanity. Hardcore stuff.

When you don't keep an eye on the pride that we are all naturals at cultivating, you end up having revelations like these.

But right when you're in the middle of all that, desperately scanning that calc exam and finally seeing yourself for the silly wretch that you really are, namely, one who could give Fraiser Crane a run for his money in pomposity, God steps in. (Well, actually, He was there all the time - He was the one responsible for graciously holding up a mirror.) He shows you the example of Christ.

Of all people to have bragging rights, it's Him. He knows everything, can do everything. He created calculus. And Nietzsche. So is that what He was focused on? Nope. When He came here, he was happy being made "a little lower than the angels." He came to bring a people to Himself by saving them from their sins. Not to show off.

The lovely thing about humility is that it makes us forget ourselves. It makes us so busy being focused on Him that we don't have time to obsess over us. It opens our eyes, displays before us the beauty of Christ, shows us that our accomplishments, whether real or imagined, are nothing compared with Him. It enables you to say, "Not my will, but Yours be done." You don't want to become a better you; you want to become like Christ.

So that's why I'm glad I almost failed calc. God was reminding me that there's more to life than getting Nietzsche. He used that failure to bring me "to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see [Him] in the heights."