“God
is Dead…Fred”
1 Kings 19:14-15a Then he
said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the sons of
Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your
prophets with the sword. And I alone am
left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
The Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness…”
Many years ago, when I was just a church rat, my mother would stay working late or waiting for the last committee meeting to end before she could lock up. Meanwhile, I would wander up the steeple, sit quietly in the still emptiness of the sanctuary or sometimes with enough courage work my way up to the darkness of the attic where the youth would congregate on Wednesday nights. One of the rooms in the attic was reserved for the youth to inscribe their thoughts on the walls with marker, chalk or whatever else they had in hand. I would systematically start from left to right, top to bottom and read them all once or twice a week to search for new insights and maybe laugh a little. On the northern facing wall, to the upper right of the doorway, one etching always gave me pause… such that I remember it still to this day. It scared me a little even though I found it a humorous each time. It stated, “God is Dead… Fred” and then just below it in another handwriting it continued, “Fred is Dead… God.”
Now perhaps that was an anonymous zinger written by a darkly humorous student or perhaps it was a jab at the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famous for pondering the death of God/religion due to the enlightenment. Regardless of who wrote it and why, it stuck with me and has me here some 30+ years later wondering, “have we really progressed or have we been killing God all along?” I know each night you read social media posts and maybe even do some navigational reading from time to time to strengthen your knowledge. And during each of those endeavors you have no doubt run across more than a few so-called advancements that fill you with wonder about how much we have moved forward over the years. But have we really? What has all of this “advancement” really achieved? As a child of the ‘80s when I think about our progress since I stood there reading in that attic it feels like we have plateaued despite the wide publicity of medical marvels, scientific achievement, progressive worship and forward thinking philosophies. Follow with me for a moment.
Where exactly is all the progress we hear so much about? Is it in our diets? I don’t think so. Nobody can decide from week to week if eggs are good for us, the brussel sprouts upon which I was begrudgingly raised now supposedly kill my testosterone, bananas cause you to bloat… no wait, eat bananas with every meal, with bacon… no wait, no bacon… with avocado, no those are fattening. But wait, it is good fat!! Count your calories, no your fat content, no your transfat content, no your carbs, no your carb to protein ratio. Not to mention we are being told that we are magically all of the sudden allergic to that dastardly gluten which I must only imagine looks like Satan’s pitchfork under the microscope. And despite how sickly it might make you feel, vegan is the best way to go… God forbid we kill and eat the way God instructed Peter. Yet heart disease is at an all-time high and life expectancy reached it’s crescendo in the early 2000’s and has been going down ever since. Meanwhile I ate buffet pizza with no sneeze guard, drank raw eggs like Rocky Balboa did, ate bloody steaks, had bread with every meal, and took salt pills while never getting dehydrated in the 80’s and life expectancy was only a few years lower while testosterone levels were higher than they are today. No. Diet and nutrition have not advanced. We have just become more confused and are equally as susceptible to fads today as we were in the 1800’s to the local snake oil salesman.
So perhaps we have had this substantial leap in medical advancement? No doubt, new medicine is coming out every day and many of these medicines are a great help to some. But where is that real chasmic leap? We are supposed to be in a time of such great development, but when did we cure the last disease? AIDS became epidemic in the 80’s, it is still epidemic now. The dangers of cancers have been identified in cigarettes, household poisons and asbestos- but which cancers have we cured? Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s continue to wreak havoc with no end in sight. Yes, we have had some great strives in certain areas, don’t get me wrong, but where is that one thing that has caused us to move into a new age of medicine or have we just making small incremental improvements since the 80’s in reality? Some will point out nanotechnologies at this point but right now this is just experimental and the concepts of nanotechnologies have been around since the Magic School Bus and Honey I Shrunk the Kids part whatever.
Is the advancement in world relations? Nope. Still wars all over the world and people dying needlessly because cruel leaders want what is best for themselves, not mankind as a whole. The only advancements in this area are the increase in the number of civilians who die in wars and the increase in martyrdom worldwide.
Have we advanced in the
reduction of bullying in schools?
Doubtful. With increased
awareness comes increased self-victimization.
What I mean by that is, with increased awareness that I can blame a
bully for my problems, and an increase in adults who will swoop in and punish
the bully for me, comes the increased probability that I will blame a bully for
my problems. Hence, I will never face
the bully, never get stronger and therefore remain a victim throughout my life
at an increasing rate because I have become overly sensitive to every pointed
finger, sideways remark or smug look.
How about in space
travel? Surely space travel? Wrong again.
We haven’t put a man on the moon since 1972. That is almost 50 years ago. Most of what we are currently learning about
space comes from the Voyager probe which was launched in 1977. The Hubble space telescope was nice (1990),
but it just amounts to a big telescope that we put into low orbit and doesn’t
really have any astoundingly new technology to shake a stick at. I guess the latest achievement is the Mars
rovers that were sent out in 2003 to explore the plant remotely. While I don’t want to sound like we have
accomplished nothing, if Kennedy was imagining in 1969 from the perspective of
the first moon landing what we would be accomplishing in 2020, don’t you think
he would be devastated at our supposed progress?
Perhaps this progress
comes in the form of racial relations?
Not really. Racial tensions are
higher now than ever. With the increase
in social media comes an anonymity that has emboldened people to speak in such
a divisive way, and without consequence, that those who contain any morsel of
bitterness or ignorance are given a platform to spread their disease
worldwide. Although I would admit that
there is increased awareness of social justice issues, have we seen any real
reform or acceptance? I say no, but hate
has been given new kindling and pushes us further and further apart. Even with the election of a minority
President of the United States, which should have represented a leap forward in
this arena, there has only been created a worsening of that division.
Certainly the
normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of homosexual marriage
represents a leap forward in thought and/or freedoms, whether you agree with it
or not? Perhaps this cultural revolution
is the “progress” our generation refers to when they swoon over our
advancements? I would again have to say
nope. Attempted suicide rates among
those with homosexual orientations continue to be upwards of 40% while the life
expectancy for a homosexual male in the United States is only around 45 years
old despite their more widely accepted lifestyles. Suicide rates in same-sex
marriages continue to be twice as prevalent than those in opposite-sex
marriages; it would appear that this “progress” does not seem to equate to the
happiness that it professes to achieve.
So if it isn’t diet or social injustice or space travel or medicine, where is it? The internet? Nope. That was an 80’s idea becoming mainstream available in 1990. The computer? Nope. Theories propagate widely on the first computer with some going all the way back to the abacus or slide-rule in the 1600’s while the first computer with a modern operating system was used in 1968. So where is this modern advancement? Where is this radical growth in the wisdom and technology of mankind since my childhood? I would counter that it is much easier to argue that we have been going backwards.
Advancing in our belief that we are wiser while growing more ignorant in the process, we have been killing God all over again. It is evident in simple things that we often ignore. We used to live in the universe (uni- one, verse- spoken word) because God created the universe with His word, but now we live in the cosmos instead. We used to discuss the construction of the great pyramid of Giza around 2500 B.C. (Before Christ), but now it is around 2500 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). We used to talk about “time, space and matter” because Genesis 1:1 uses that order saying that in the beginning (time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter) but have subtly changed this phrasing to “space, time and matter” to coincide with the belief that the “space” existed before “time” and then “matter” exploded the world into existence.
With such amazing advancements which once flurried in this country such as the abolition of slavery, women’s rights to vote, the first flight, the industrial revolution, the civil rights movement, space travel and yes, the invention of the internet… what do we have to show for all of our most recent forward thinking and what has been improved since? Nothing. Just a whole lot of arguing and trillions of dollars in research which will ultimately arrive at nothing less than the conclusion that God determines the days of a man, love is the only thing that improves relationships, God’s ways provide the only true justice and joy, humility is the only assurance of prosperity, and sin and its father are the only enemies not each other. But as our society pushes God further away, effectively killing Him out of our worldview, these advancements are stunted and the plateau in which we live becomes our reality.
But don’t get your dauber down Christian. God is not dead, no matter what Fred said. He is alive in you. He is alive in this world. And while I would encourage you to only cautiously wonder at the “achievements” of man, I would hope to persuade you to never cease to wonder at the achievements of our Savior in this world full of sin. Yes martyrdom is at record levels, but so are the stories of faith, hope and love. Yes transgender adolescents are fighting for their rights for sexual reassignment but so are men and women fighting for their marriages. Yes minorities continue to be discriminated against but the with the year to year increase of interracial marriages comes the dissolution of any races at all. Yes wars persist but friends of ours are daily winning their battles against drugs and alcohol. Yes loved ones are withering away with atrocities such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s but God is still in the healing business and there are amazing stories of His hand either offering a cure or blessing us with comfort. Be careful to whom you listen, be cautious of what you soak in, but be always assured that Jesus Christ is alive. He is risen and is seated at the right hand of the Father. We are risen with Him and have an eternal place in His presence. The achievements of man matter as much as the heights to which the Tower of Babel reached, but the achievements of God have been accomplished once and for all. The world is suffering, but don’t let it choke that truth out of you.
What have we achieved and in what ways have we advanced? Very little and very few, but God is still on the throne and He still welcomes us in. When Jesus Christ said upon the cross, “It is finished” mankind had advanced in all the ways that were eternally necessary. The rest is just butter… don’t eat it, it will only raise your cholesterol… I think.
