“God is Missing”

(Nietzsche Had it Right)

An Endearing Story

Two little boys, ages 8 and 10, are excessively mischievous. They are always getting into trouble and their parents know if any mischief occurs in their town, the two boys are probably involved.

The boys' mother heard that a preacher in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys.  The preacher agreed, but he asked to see them individually.

The mother sent the 8 year old in the morning, with the older boy to see the preacher in the afternoon. 

The preacher, a huge man with a deep booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Do you know where God is, son?"  The boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there wide-eyed with his mouth hanging open.

So the preacher repeated the question in an even sterner tone, "Where is God?! Again, the boy made no attempt to answer.

The preacher raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "WHERE IS GOD?!"

The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him.  When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?"

The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in BIG trouble this time!"  "GOD is missing, and they think WE did it!"

A Serious Truth

The reality of the matter is that God is missing and WE did do it!

The simple truth is this.  Religious ideas have lost their social significance in western culture.  Thus secularization has become the norm but not just any secularization.  It is a rather proactive even aggressive secularization!

Within Western Culture, when the individual chooses to hold some belief or another that is not agreeable to the culture, then something very interesting but very tragic happens.  More and more that culture seeks to stamp its standards upon that individual in an attempt to mold him into the cultural norm of naturalism and thus secularism. 

At one time religion had a seat at the table and a place in public discourse.  Now it is relegated to eating in the kitchen.  At one time ethical truth was that which was foundational to one’s life and the functions within the group.  It served stabilized however with secularization such is no longer so.  Even the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, though he sought to decimate Christian belief and compromise ethical thinking recognized that the outcomes of such thinking would be dire.

 “The greatest recent event – that ‘God is dead,’ that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable – is already beginning to cast its first shadows. . . . But in the main one may say: The event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension. . . . Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means – and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it; for example, the whole of our . . . morality. . . .”

Nietzsche, in Gay Science at http://philossophy.wordpress.com/

category/philosophy/nietzsche/

Friedrich Nietzsche was right, and even during his lifetime he could see that without there being the influence of the Christian God, the shadows of moral degradation and missing civility were beginning to be cast over Western Culture.  It is interesting to note that Nietzsche spent the last of his years insane and silent.  The only time he broke that silence was to quote the Scriptures he had learned as a young boy.