Has religion disappointed you? Has God let you down?
How do we make sense of God and the world when we feel so hurt by them? Doesn’t the world make more sense without a God who would allow the evil that we see and experience?
Friedrich Nietzsche, a prophet ahead of his time, saw the allure of the modern rejection of God. But he also recognized the serious consequences of such a conclusion. If Soren Kierkegaard demanded the Christian to take a “leap of faith” toward God, Nietzsche demanded that the atheist take a leap of faith into the abyss.
Faith is required of both the Christian and the atheist. The resulting consequences of these faiths are not insignificant. For the Christian, to believe that there is one God who sent his Son Jesus to take on flesh and to die for the sins of the world requires faith in this God. “There is salvation in none other,” we are told. The Christian must trust in a God who would create this world and allow the brokenness in it that we experience.
But the atheist must also have faith. Nietzsche wrestled with the realities of what it meant to reject God. The atheist must dispense with a universal ethic “when we unchained the earth from its sun.” If we have eliminated God, “must we ourselves not become gods”? In other words, if there is a God, then that God naturally bears the responsibility of determining right and wrong. To reject God is to dispense with morality and carry the psychological and spiritual weight of determining for oneself right and wrong.
Have you dispensed with God in your life? Perhaps your atheism isn’t full-throated, but functional. You haven’t eliminated the possibility of God, but you live life in a way that is shielded from God. Have you considered the implications of your choice? You aren’t merely protecting yourself from God, you are exposing yourself to a reality without God. On what basis will you determine right and wrong? What are the cosmic consequences for your soul? For humanity? Do you have the faith to provide these answers confidently?
Heed the warning of Nietzsche’s madman:
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace, 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."
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.[i]
Faith in God is difficult. I empathize with your hurts. To be a Christian is to wrestle with God. There are no pat answers for your suffering, no trite bumper stickers to slap on your hurt.
And worshiping God comes with a high cost. Christians must lose our lives to find life. We are to crucify our flesh. Faith in God is costly.
But there is also a cost in believing that the universe is godless or that if God exists, he is comfortable with our agnosticism. Are you willing to bear the consequences of such a belief? Are you willing to live with the ethical repercussions? The reduction of the universe to mere matter? The dissolution of the intangible: soul, beauty, and goodness?
“You’re not the boss of me!” a defiant kid yells to his friend on the playground. And he’s right; his friend isn’t his authority. But when the teacher shows up, his cry rings hollow. She is the boss of him. I’m not the boss of you. Religion isn’t the boss of you. But if God exists, there is a reality that he has authority over us. What will we do with this reality?
Friedrich and I invite you, struggling friend, to consider the cost of your atheism.
[i] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.
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