Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Timothy D. Padgett
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was most famous for proclaiming, “God is dead.” He did so in two places. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche promised humans could be the thriving successor, if they would move beyond religion and morality. In contrast, “The Parable of the Madman” was more of a warning, written not to those who believed in God but to those who didn’t:
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated?—Thus they yelled and laughed.
In the late nineteenth century, many believed that without a God weighing humanity down, progress was inevitable. Nietzsche, however, believed these children of the Enlightenment had underestimated how significant the loss of God would be. And so, his madman answered:
Whither is God? … I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither it is moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Nietzsche was not claiming that God had once existed and no longer did. Rather, he recognized that God was the central reference point for western life, politics, education, art, architecture, and most other aspects of culture. Thus, the death of God had, as he put it, “unchained the earth from its sun.”
Life now had to be reimagined. Specifically, there were incredible implications for morality and meaning. Without God, what is up and down, forward or back? What will warm us? What can light our way?
Throughout the twentieth century, as the Western world became more secularized and religion increasingly marginalized, God seemed less relevant to much of life and culture. Secular humanists, like the mockers in Nietzsche’s parable, promised a better world without the moral constraints of God, Christianity, or the Bible. Salvation could be found in medicine. Prosperity, comfort, and convenience would be delivered through technology. The existentialists promised meaning could be made, even if life itself was meaningless. Sexual liberation promised pleasure and fulfillment, if sex were only untethered from the religious hang-ups of morality, marriage, and children.
A new book by Dr. Carl Trueman, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity, provides the best analysis of what Nietzsche predicted and what has come to pass. As he said in a recent conversation for Breakpoint podcast:
Nietzsche understands something that many Enlightenment philosophers did not understand, and that is you can't get rid of God or marginalize him without fundamentally changing what you understand it is to be human.
With the Desecration of Man, Dr. Trueman has provided “an essential analysis of current culture, another definitive account of the fruit born of secularism.” As I wrote in an endorsement for the book, “Nietzsche... predicted all (this), but Carl Trueman just explained it.”
This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we’ll send you a copy of The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. Go to colsoncenter.org/april to learn more and to give.