In his book, The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner tells the story of a boy who, in a rage, took a gun and killed his father. Of course, he was apprehended and put in prison. When asked why he killed his father, he said, “He was telling me too many things to do; I didn’t like his authority; I rejected him, and I killed him.” Interestingly, later on that evening, the guards in the prison heard the boy wail in pain and anguish! “Give me back, my father; I want my daddy back.” He couldn’t get back his daddy, and so his rage had given way to an inconsolable ache. Our world as it is right now is experiencing an inconsolable ache as we have increasingly pushed God out of our consciousness. We have killed God, and we are beginning to cry out to Him as a child who has murdered his father.
Over time, we’ve had great thinkers; not least among them, we’ve had Friedrich Nietzsche, who commented that
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was the 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 and 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
Of course, we can’t kill God out of existence, but we can kill Him out of all the equations of our lives. What Nietzsche is implying is that God has not faded from human consciousness accidentally; we have deliberately engaged in a process or trajectory where God has become more and more dispensable and therefore unnecessary. Through our culture, scientific discoveries, progress, and being “woke1,” we as individuals have killed God. We can fit ourselves in a deep, dark hole of unbelief until we don’t see our need for Him. Sad and hopeless as it may be this is the current state of most people in the world today. Many people have commented on this issue, and more particularly, one author, James Emery White, has written a Book called “The Rise of the Nones – understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated” James notes that the single fastest-growing religious group of our time is those who check the box next to the word none when asked about their religious affiliation.
There is a growing illusion that God is an illusion, a myth, and therefore not needed. This has given rise to atheism, especially among young people who no longer consider God to be cool. Paul paints the wrath of God towards these people in the Book of Romans 1:18–32. Take some time and go through that passage. He notes in verses 21–25 that,
"Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools... for they exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
Paul is making it clear that the knowledge of God is in all of us. And no matter how dead we think that we have killed Him, we still know Him and still long for Him.
God has put in us a void that only He can fill.. You see, we human beings are a space that must be filled on the emotional, physical, spiritual, and even biological levels. Every day we wake up with a longing or a yearning for something more than this world has to offer. We are defined by desire. This causes an ache. And if we have negated God from our lives, we will experience an inconsolable ache. I believe that the reason we long so much for God is because He longs for us. His love is a gravitational force that pulls us to Him. You and I are possessed by a nagging suspicion that we were made for a perfect love that finds no satisfying match in this world. However much we try to fill this void with all forms of pleasure, money, power, and sex, we will be filled with a high level of emptiness and meaninglessness.
Friends, why do you continue to endure in silence this high level of emptiness that probably no one sees? Admit that what the world has to offer is not satisfying. In fact, the best that this world has to offer can only serve to increase the inconsolable ache that stays deep inside of us. In light of this, why don’t you decide to return to your creator? We can’t kill God. Jesus already died and resurrected, and by believing in Him, we will have everlasting life. Jesus wondered in Luke 18:8: “When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” Will He find you believing in Him or lost in a hopeless quest for meaning in what the world has to offer? Accept Him today.
