Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was most famous for saying God is dead. He did this in two places. And thus spake Zarathustra.
Nietzsche promised humans would be the thriving successor of God if they would only move beyond religion and morality. In contrast, the parable of the madman was more of a warning, written not to those who believed in God, but to those who actually didn't. Quote: 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. Is he hiding? Is he afraid of us?
Has he gone on a voyage? Has he immigrated? Thus they yelled and they laughed. Back in the late 19th century, many of the elites believed that without a God weighing humanity down, progress would be inevitable. Nietzsche, however, believed that these children of the Enlightenment had underestimated just how significant the loss of God would be.
And so his madman answered Where is God? I'll tell you. We've 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 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 an up and a 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 the night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? You see, Nietzsche was not claiming that God had once existed and no longer did. Rather, he was recognizing that God was the central reference point for Western life, politics, education, art, architecture, and most other aspects of culture. And thus, the death of God had, as he put it, unchained the earth from its sun.
So life and culture had to be essentially reimagined. Specifically, there would be incredible implications for morality and for meaning. Without God, what is up and down, forward or back? What will warm us? What is there to light our way?
Throughout the twentieth century, as the Western world became more and more secularized and religion became increasingly marginalized, God seemed less relevant to much of life and culture. Secular humanists, like the mockers in Nietzsche's parable, promised a better world without the moral constraints of God, Christianity, and the Bible. Salvation could be found in medicine. Prosperity, comfort, convenience could all be delivered through technology. The existentialist promised us meaning could be made, even if life itself were meaningless.
and of course sexual liberation promise pleasure and fulfillment. if sex were only untethered from the religious hang ups of morality and marriage and children. A new book by doctor Carl Truman, entitled The Desecration of Man, How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity, provides what I think is the best analysis of what Nietzsche predicted and what has come to pass. As he said in a recent conversation we had on the Breakpoint podcast, and I quote, Nietzsche understood something that many Enlightenment philosophers did not, and that is you can't get rid of God or marginalize him without fundamentally changing what you understand it is to be human. With his new book, The Desecration of Man, Dr.
Truman has provided an essential analysis of culture, another definitive account of the fruit that was born of secularism. As I wrote for my endorsement of the book, Nietzsche predicted all this and Carl Truman just explained it in this new work. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we want to send you a copy of The Desecration of Man, How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity by Dr. Carl Truman. Go to ColsonCenter.org slash April.
That's colsoncenter.org slash April to learn more about the book and to give. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources to live like a Christian today, go to breakpoint.org. Hey, breakpoint listeners, the Colson Center is coming to Knoxville, Tennessee.
Join John Stone Street and Oz Guinness at the Knoxville Convention Center on May 27th for a Truth Rising Watch Party. Truth Rising is a groundbreaking documentary about courageous faith in this civilizational moment. It tells the stories of Christians like Chloe Cole, Seth Dillon, and Jack Phillips choosing courage over fear, making a difference where God has called them. We'll have free popcorn and soda at the watch party, and we'll enjoy a live QA with John Stone Street and Oz Guinness after the film. Register today at colsoncenter.org slash Knoxville.
That's colsoncenter.org slash Knoxville.
