Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the whole idea of man--a created being--killing off God--his Creator. The idea apparently originated with Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882 and is stated as follows:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. 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?
~~Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125
I find this whole concept to be incredibly odd and arrogant. The idea that God, who exists independently of any other beings or causes, and is completely self-sufficient and needing no one, could be killed by some one of His creatures is absolutely ludicrous. To me it's on the same level as Lucifer's rebellion and fall from Heaven. I think the only reason man is allowed to get away with it, even for awhile is because of God's grace and mercy. Angels, including Lucifer, have a free will, but they can't repent and get forgiven if they blow it as man can. There is no redemption for an angel who screws up. So when Lucifer rebelled and tried to exalt himself above the throne of God there was no second chance for him, no forgiveness, no redemption. There was only Hell and eternal damnation and a name change (from Lucifer to Satan), plus all the angels who participated in the attempted coup following along down to the abyss. Man, on the other hand, gets a second chance. He can ask for forgiveness, and redemption is possible if he believes in Jesus Christ.
I wonder if what the God-is-dead-ers are killing is not God-Maker-of-Heaven-and-Earth-Ancient-of-Days-First-Person-of-the-Trinity-God, because it's not possible to do that. I wonder if instead they're killing their faith that God exists, or maybe their ideal of who God is, the concept of God in their minds, so that to them He is dead, but He's not REALLY dead.
What I find especially interesting about this is that Nietzsche came up with this idea in 1882, and in 1889 he went insane and remained that way until his death in 1900. The cause of his mental illness is unknown, though there is some speculation: at first it was thought that he had syphilis, and later it was decided that his symptoms were a better match with the symptoms of brain cancer. When I was a child I had a great-uncle who started out as a missionary, and after he came back from the mission field he wrote a book called Other Christs. After he wrote that book he got brain cancer and died. I've often wondered if there was a connection between that book and his cancer in terms of God's judgment, and I wonder the same thing about Nietzsche's insanity/brain cancer and his declaration that God was dead. He was a very well known philosopher who influenced millions of people for generations with that one idea, and that concept is STILL influencing generations of people.
I don't think I'm done writing this post, but I'm done for now, I guess, so I'm going to publish it. I'll come back later and revise it. That's the cool thing about keeping a blog. You can come back and edit a posting and completely change it around if you decide you don't like it. I doubt I'll change this very much. There's just a few thoughts I'd like to flesh out, but I don't have time to do it now, considering it's about 2 a.m. Sunday morning, and I have to get up and go to church because we're having a really cool guest preacher.
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