The parable goes like this\u2026.\u201cHave you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: \u201cI seek God! I seek God!\u201d\u2014-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? Has he emigrated?\u2014-Thus they yelled and laughed him to scorn. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. \u201cWhither is God?\u201d he cried; \u201cI will tell you. We have killed him\u2014-you and I. We are all his murderers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The parable written by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Gay Science<\/em>\u00a01882, ends with the Madman questioning, \u201cWhat after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God? God is dead, we have killed him!\u201d Following the evitable out workings of such Nietzschestic philosophy has proven over time that man\u2019s desire to agree with the thought that God is dead has led to such destructive barbarianism of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. All of who read the writings of Nietzsche. Nietzsche came from an existential experience or leap and not by logic. For if you follow the logical path of Nietzschetic thought you find yourself in the halls of nihilism.<\/p>\n I have to agree though, with what Terry Eagleton said in his book Culture and the Death of God<\/em>, \u201cIt took the barefaced audacity of Friedrich Nietzsche to point out that the problem was less the death of God than the bad faith of Man, who in an astonishing act of cognitive dissonance had murdered his Maker but continued to protest that he was still alive.\u201d[1]<\/a> God being dead is not something we \u201cdiscover,\u201d but rather carry out in our poor attempt to understand the infinite within the same rules of our finite existence. But God is not dead! Attested to by the fact that whether it was enlightenment, idealists, romantics, the crisis of culture \u2013 modernism or post modernism, or whatever else may come our way, God continues to, well, live and not die. If anything we learn that God is not a fanciful thought that can be philosophized away by the diminutive and meager attempts of men. \u201cNo symbolic form in history\u201d writes Eagleton, \u201chas matched religion\u2019s ability to link the most exalted of truths to the daily existence of countless men and women.\u201d[2]<\/a> But even religion is man\u2019s feeble attempt at answering the questions of the soul and the depths of our existence. As Steve Turner writes with tongue in cheek, \u201cWe believe that all religions are basically the same they all believe in love and goodness they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement \u201cGod made man in His own image, and man returned the favor,\u201d holds more truth than we care to believe. It is not that God has died but rather that man\u2019s attempt to make God into his own image has only succeeded in alienating man from the real God and the true characteristics of this loving God. It is true, and we do good to remember, that God should never be presented too ineffably transcendent nor so immanent that he is confirmative to the image of His own creation. There must exist a divine tension between the transcendence of the creator and the immanent presence of a Savior. For man needs both. As Eagleton notes, even consumer capitalism is \u201cstill mortgaged to some extent to its own metaphysical heritage\u2026subscribe[ing] to certain imperishable moral and political truths which cannot simply be derived from the size of the deficit or the unemployment statistics.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n One of my favorite Apologist is Ravi Zechariahs who makes a brilliant statement, \u201cThe pursuit of the Hebrews have been light. The pursuit of the Greeks was knowledge. The pursuit of Rome was Glory. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians understands each of these pursuits and writes, For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give<\/em> the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> It is this God who has reveled Himself, not as dead and distant, but very much alive and attainable in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is this God, both transcendent and immanent, that I will always share and attest to in the same intensity of Nietzsche\u2019s Madman, that God is not Dead, He is very much alive!<\/p>\n