Blog on the Lillypad
Sunday, December 28, 2003
 | Jack Hyles and Friedrich Nietzsche, Part Three
5. As far as I know, Nietzsche never taught that people were to be abandoned to the forces of nature. However, the Nietzschien view of the Superman and his morality being self-defined lead to such a reading of Nietzschien ethics. Victims are victims because they lack the superman qualities to survive.Ie, victims are victims because Nature did not give them the qualities to adapt and progress. |
5a.The Nietzschien order, whether this is what Nietzsche specifically intended or not, is an order in which the strong survive and the weak perish. The strong retain the moral prerogatives that stem from their self-made morality. So if the weak perish in the system of the strong, it is not demanded that the strong save them; nor is it expected that the strong will even pause to help them.
5b.In the Hyles-Nietzschien system, the pastor Superman has the right as leader to humiliate, subjugate, and dominate members of the herd. The supermen within the herd will rise above this and throw it off. The herd members will become even more servile and compliant. The very weakest will be pared away. The picture of Hyles with a dog collar, or a glass of water that he said may as well be poison, and his claims that he had people so loyal to him that they would wear the dog collar or drink the poison are a chilling pointer to us that in the church that Jack Hyles pastored, the rule of Church Law as laid down in the Bible was not taught or enforced. The Hyles system was what I describe as Hyles-Nietzschien: a system based on the pastor being a Superman.
 | 5b.In the Hyles-Nietzschien system, the pastor is the Nietzschien Superman who looks within himself for enlightenment and the means to interpret Scripture. The Bible is the adjunct, not the authority: the common language by which he speaks to the herd. But he re-interprets the Bible according to his own intuitive morality and leanings. This Pastor-centered church is the reason that Hyles' teachings on the Bible (when he got to the Bible at all) were often contradictory or outright heresy. As the Superman, Hyles did not consider himself under the authority of the consensus of Christian scholarship. As he told his own people, they were expected to do what he said because he was their pastor. |
5c.Under the Hyles-Nietzscheien system, victims were discarded. That which cannot survive in the Superman environment has no claim on the ethics of the Superman. So the treatment of Brent Stevens, his broken bones, his suspicious death, were never addressed in the Superman society of the Hyles-type churches. Children who were alleged to be victims of sodomy and molestations were not cared for, nor were the instances of child abuse treated with the care and concern commanded by Scripture. Instead, AV Balinger was hailed as a hero, and several "suits" from HAC went to testify on behalf of the character of the notorious and sadistic Joe Combs.
5d.To this day, the victims of these people (and the victims of the Hyles-Nietzschien system) are not accorded the respect and concern they deserve by alleged leaders in the movement. The urge is to move on, forget the past, focus on "positive" things. But the attitude of God has not changed at all. The One who heard the blood of Abel calling out from the earth still hears the cries of those who suffered in secret places. And He still demands an investigation and the exercise of justice by those who claim to hold church office in His name.
