is God Dead?

God is Dead. Really?

I was in the car, driving between appointments listening to Origin by Dan Brown. I really like Dan Brown's work, even if he tends to lean on the scientific notion that there is no God. He focuses on the tension between religion and science, and gives me things to ponder. His works are suspenseful and keep the reader (or in this case, listener) engaged. At this point in the story, Robert Langdon, the protagonist, is trying to unleash his friend's profound scientific discovery aborted by his untimely assassination at the release party. He is at his friend's home with the heroine of the story, discussing Nietzsche, and this quote comes up: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

God is dead.
God remains dead.
​​And we have killed him.   
​ ​-Frederich Nietzsche, 1882

I thought, "Right. In the eyes of those who don't believe in God, He is dead. They have killed the concept of Him by denying His existence. That doesn't mean He doesn't exist." I wondered what the context of Nietzsche's statement was, so I looked it up. 

​The statement comes from a parable in his book The Gay Science, ​published in 1882, and reads like this:

The Madman

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!"....

God is dead.
God remains dead. ​
​And we have killed him.
​-Frederich Nietzsche, 1882

The Madman

(continued from previous page)
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.
​
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "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 is it 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? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

​"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Must we ourselves not become gods....?

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

[Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]

Nietzsche was an atheist, and one of many out to disprove the existence of God. It's interesting that he sets this parable in a market, so we have ordinary people listening to someone who appears to be insane. The madman carries a lit lantern when there is no need for light. He starts out looking for God, crying, "I seek  God!" and those in the market tease him, asking if God is lost, or has lost his way, has emigrated, or gone on a voyage. 

It's interesting that he is carrying a light. In the Bible, light is an oft used image for the illumination of God.

• Jesus says He is the light of the world: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) 
• At the end of the Bible in Revelation, He is also the light: And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. (Revelation 21:23)
• In the Psalms, the Bible is compared to a light: Your word is a lamp to my feet  and a light to my path. (Psalm 105:11)

​He then says we have killed God, and asks questions similar to the ones that God chastises Job with:

 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
    Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
    or who laid its cornerstone--
    while the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels shouted for joy?

“Who shut up the sea behind doors
    when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
    and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
    and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
    here is where your proud waves halt’?

 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
    to shown the dawn its place,
 that it might take the earth by the edges
    and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
    its features stand out like those of a garment.

The wicked are denied their light,
    and their upraised arm is broken.
“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
    or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
    Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
    Tell me, if you know all this.

-Job 38:4-18

The madman goes on to ask, "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?" 

To answer the madman, yes, it was people who crucified Jesus. His blood is on us. It was our sins - the wrong things that we have done - that Jesus came to die for. He allowed himself to be crucified. But he did not stay dead. The resurrection was evidenced by many, and He provided atonement for our sin through His death. We find God when we believe that. When God feels non-existent, it's not God who has moved. His evidence exists in creation, and in the changed lives of people who believe in him. I am one of them, and like the crowd in the story, many of my friends deny his existence and think like the madman, I am the fool. 

I am the madman too

We think of ourselves as gods when we try to live without Him. "I don't need God, I can do it on my own," they say. For me, not having God would create a huge void. God has been with me in the good times and the bad. He has provided my needs, and taken me into unexpected situations, but I've never been alone, because he is ever-present with me. Does that make me mad, or reliant? I choose to rely on the One who created the world.

Many people have killed God in their own minds. Nietzsche tried to kill him and disprove His existence. Many in the scientific community deny He exists. But that doesn't mean God is dead. Was Nietzsche calling those who believe crazy? I suppose.  The bible is full of stories of those who believe among those who don't. That is the world we live in today. God gives each of us opportunity to choose to believe for ourselves, rather than forcing His will on people. ​

Me? Despite Dan Brown's philosophy, I choose to believe unwaveringly. I still think he's a great storyteller, and I enjoy the challenge and adventure that reading his books bring me.