If the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which we celebrate in a few days, reminds us that not everything ends here, then perhaps it helps us understand something even more: why a Christian can refuse violence without being a slave.
Nietzsche saw in Christianity a "slave morality." He believed that the weak person, because they cannot defeat the strong, baptizes their weakness as virtue. They cannot take revenge, so they call revenge evil. They cannot dominate, so they hymn humility. They cannot impose themselves, so they declare meekness superior to strength.
A categorization that deeply injustices the Christian.
Because Christ never said to man: "Become a slave to the strong." He did not tell him to surrender his conscience, to worship the tyrant, or to accept his lies. He told him something much more difficult:
Do not be like him.
The tyrant may say to you: "Obey, otherwise you will die." The Christian can answer: "I will not obey." But they can simultaneously refuse to kill in order to be saved.
Who, then, is the slave?
The one who fears, and uses fear, death—or the one who prefers to lose his life rather than surrender his conscience?
The Christian martyr is perhaps the most difficult person to exert power over. You can take his property, his freedom, even his life. However, you cannot force him to say that evil is good.
Your power over him ends there.
This is not slavery. It is a form of freedom so extreme that the world struggles to understand it.
The world knows two paths: to rule or to be ruled. To kill or to be killed. To win or to lose.
Christ opens a third path.
To resist without hating.
To refuse without seeking revenge.
To not worship the strong, but also not to become like him.
"Love your enemies."
Perhaps no command is so contrary to the logic of power. Because every power that wants to lead people into war must first convince them that the opponent is no longer a human being. They are an enemy, a traitor, an infidel, a barbarian, a class opponent, a blot.
Christ destroys this transformation with one phrase.
He calls them human again.
And that is why loving the enemy is not weakness. Weakness is not taking revenge because you cannot. Christian love is being able to hate and refusing to do so. To be able to strike and to hold your hand. To be able to win and not consider the destruction of the other as a victory.
But why would anyone do it?
Here lies the point that Nietzsche could not accept, because it presupposes the entire Christian faith.
Because not everything ends here.
If earthly life is everything, then the logic of the world has immense power: survive at all costs. Win before you are defeated. Acquire power before someone acquires it over you.
But if death is not the end, then the question changes.
It is no longer: "How will I save my life?"
It becomes:
"What kind of person will I become in order to save it?"
What will I gain if I preserve my body but lose myself?
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?"
Without the Resurrection, this stance might seem like madness. With the Resurrection, however, defeat changes meaning.
Christ on the Cross appears utterly defeated. The strong have won. The state has executed the disobedient. The case is closed.
And yet, Christianity is born from the conviction that right there, the executioner did not have the last word.
The Resurrection is the denial that the power to kill is the supreme power.
And somewhere here we return to the Virgin Mary.
Her Dormition is a silent confession of this very faith. The Church looks at a person leaving the world and does not say "the end."
It says "Dormition" (Falling Asleep).
As if to say that death is a passage and not an erasure.
Perhaps that is why the Virgin Mary does not need to hold onto anything from this world. She does not need a throne, an army, property, victory, or power. She does not need to prove that she was strong.
Her life seems almost silent.
And yet Christianity considers her the highest human.
Perhaps this is the ultimate answer to Nietzsche.
The Christian is not a slave because he does not kill.
A slave is the one who cannot imagine any power other than the power to impose oneself.
The Christian believes in another power:
In the power to not fear death so much that one needs to kill to avoid it.
And the Dormition of the Virgin Mary whispers exactly why:
Not everything ends here.