“For the time that is past suffices…”

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” -Revelation 22:13

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” -Hebrews 13:8

“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?” -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

When analyzing Christian societies, attempting to see why they have gotten off track, I believe that one important aspect to look at is how they view God. If we are to understand what the problem is then it only seems appropriate to start at the top, and there is certainly nothing higher than God. In looking at this, interacting with the culture of America and reading about the cultures of other nations we are considering, I feel that there are two views of God which have become prevalent, and as a result have led to the lukewarm nature of Christianity in these places. In our Christian societies we are increasingly viewing God in two detrimental ways: either God is subjective and open to our human interpretation as to what his character is or he is dead. In this post I shall look at the God is dead side and in the next post we will deal with the subjective God.

Friedrich Nietzsche declared for the first time in his work The Gay Science that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” His meaning of this was that the human reason had become so well-developed that it was no longer possible for a rational man to have belief in God. He then went on to argue that because of this we could also no longer accept the Christian moralities as being objective, absolute truths for human behavior. Eighty years later, Nietzsche’s brash statement entered into the pop culture of the 1960’s, culminating in it making the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue of Time magazine. Of course, this was highly controversial and has since become a piece of pop culture lore, but the question still remains, “Is God dead?” I believe in America the answer is “No,” but to the people of a once thriving Christian Europe the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

In the wake of the two world wars, conflicts which ravaged much of the European continent, Christianity began to increase among the peoples who had made it through. However, in the early 1960’s a cultural revolution took place. To people who had seen the atrocities of war, the senseless bombing of cities night after night in England, the unthinkable purging of whole people groups attempted by Nazi Germany, and now the rise of terror and oppression under the reign of communism, the staid comforts of religious traditions were no longer enough to comfort them. Though they claimed faith and celebrated the rites of the Christian church, the depth of many peoples belief was betrayed as all of a sudden the culture underwent radical change. Sexual liberation, recreational drug use, and destruction of traditional family values provided them with the worldly happiness which they expected God should bring, and as a result God was killed. Belief was no longer important because armed with the new found joys of drugs, sex and rock’n'roll, men and women were able to provide for themselves all the satisfaction they sought.

This thought continues today. I think this is why, as we explored earlier, there is such a large percentage of the population in these countries which claim Atheism as their religion. The people of Europe struggled for the better part of 50 years with war and death throughout their continent, asking all the while “Where is God?”, and when in the end they had relief they decided that they were no longer going to rely on God to take care of them.

Now, after 40 years of liberalization in Europe, a new threat is arising. Muslim immigrants, fully devoted in faith to Allah, are moving in and taking over a lot of these countries in which God has been pronounced dead, and the people, made apathetic through their lack of faith, are unsure how to react. It is clear that the “absence of God” is now threatening any possibility of God ever being resurrected among these people. Not to mention the fact that those who are either actively or passively declaring God to be dead are dying themselves, and being dying in unbelief are being condemned to Hell.

God is not dead! This is the message that we must proclaim in Europe and in those parts of all the Christian societies where people have decided that they are too intelligent or too self-sufficient to believe that Jesus is alive and seated at the right-hand of the Father in Heaven forever. We must proclaim an eternal God, a God who is there even in the troubles, and that though there is a way that seems right to man, it only results in pain and suffering in Hell (Proverbs 14:12). Jesus is alive, for it is not possible for death to hold him (Acts 2:24), and as he declares in Revelation, he is the beginning AND the end. We must go and preach this to the people (Romans 10:14-15) so that though they once thought he was dead they may be made to believe that Jesus has been raised from the grave (Romans 10:9) and that one day he will return to take away all our tears (Acts 1:11, Revelation 21:4).