“… at that time … I will search Jerusalem with lamps…”
(Zeph. 1:12, NKJV)
Every time I read the Scripture in Zeph. 1:12 – to which we referred in the previous teaching – I can’t help but think of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) died during the second reformation, and exactly a hundred years before the last (or third) reformation was prophetically announced, in the heartland of the first reformation, St. Andrews in Scotland. Nietzsche’s philosophical parable is, to a great extent, quintessentially opposite of what the second reformation had to accomplish, namely the establishment of the concept of becoming born again through the baptism of water and the Spiritual baptism through the laying on of hands, which thus makes the walk of faith in the Spirit an everyday reality. [The Anabaptists were the remnant who, after the first reformation, were mercilessly hounded by the Roman Catholics and especially the Protestants, based on their belief in the importance of the water baptism for believers. They were persecuted and killed. The leader of the Anabaptists, Balthasar Hübmaier, proclaimed these brave words in his book Short Apology: “I … say that infant baptism is a robbery of the right baptism of Christ.” He paid a very large price for this statement.]
On 22 October 1965, the influential Time Magazine offered only three large words on its cover, printed in red: Is God Dead? More than 83 years after Nietzsche had coined this phrase, the aftershock from the philosophical darkness had eventually started becoming visible in the social fibres of the time, and thus also in the era’s mode of thought. More than eight decades after Nietzsche had suggested, through his writing, that the Western civilization had themselves been responsible for the death of the idea of God, the dark spores started spreading throughout the ordinary lives of Americans and their theology. The core of Nietzsche’s cultural revelation was that the Western civilization’s functioning had become more and more dependent on the existence of a God, and that He thus became a shadow of our nihilism.
Remember what Zeph. 1:12 notes: “And it shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and punish the men who are settled in complacency …” In the light of Nietzsche’s story, ‘The Madman’, an epic of meaninglessness, this is largely man’s own fault, he argues, as it is us who killed God: “Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, 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. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? — Thus they yelled and laughed. / The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have 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 entire 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 any up or 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 night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’” (Nietzsche, F. The Gay Science, paragraph 125).
The readers of these teachings may wonder why we find it necessary to explore the history of an antichrist-like philosopher prophet. Apart from the fact that it provides context through which we can understand the sediment of the collective secular thoughts of the second reformation, it also offers a key with regards to the foundation of the postmodern era, the secular mode of thought of the last reformation, in which we currently find ourselves. Because this mode of thought allows for no external authority or point of reference nestled in God as Logos, all meaning is relative and thus not valid. God is no longer a beacon of meaning in an uncertain world; there are thus no conclusive insights or set values, but only shifting meaning. There are only interpretations, which embodies our always shifting infinite nothingness. Atheism is thus also a religion – a religion in nothing, a religion that believes that all things are meaningless and without greater purpose.
In his book Ends and Means, Aldous Huxley then surprises with this arresting statement, that “the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation” (p. 37). By this he means that the absence of the presence of God largely contributed to the womb that births emptiness and desolation. In a slow and irrevocable manner, this pried man loose of the age-old false image of religion which up until that point, was still the foundation of social acceptability and an ordered civilisation. Perhaps this was an absolutely necessary collective process, Oswald Spengler writes in his fascinating work, The Decline of the West: “atheism has run its course, and now gives way to religious renewal …” (p. 139). In the conclusion of The Twilight of Atheism, Alister McGrath comes to this important insight: “Westerners explore a new postmodern interest in the forbidden fruit of spirituality.” (p. 279).
We currently find ourselves in a time in which God, according to Zeph. 1:12’s prophecy, along with the highly intellectual communities that map the mode of thought of the time, visit the secular Christian community who have become “settled in complacency”, with lanterns of the seven Spirits of God. The knowledge of the glory that Christendom has lost, has led to a deep, insatiable lack. Our search for the True Presence of the Living God at the empty troughs of obsolete philosophy and religion is in vain.
In William Young’s hit book, The Shack, he tackles a range of themes: man’s questions about the world’s nihilism, the fact that the world seems to be beyond saving, as well as the accusation that God is distant. All of this occurs within the context of the main character, Mack, absolutely bereft, who starts to realise that God seeks him. Later in the book he can ask God the questions that fed his crisis of faith, for instance that if God knew how much pain and loss and suffering the world would entail, why He – who claims that He is good – would allow this to happen at all: “Mack looked at Papa [God], his eyes asking the question that didn’t need voicing. Papa continued, ‘First, by not creating at all, these questions would be moot. Or second, I could have chosen to actively interfere in her circumstance. The first was never a consideration, and the latter was not an option for purposes that you cannot possibly understand now. At this point, all I have to offer as an answer are my love and goodness, and my relationship with you.”
This is indeed the truth: through God’s consuming love and his desperate search to restore a relationship with us, postmodern man will come to the Lord, and His goodness, in the last days. Amen.
- Selah: Do you believe that God is only good?
- Read: James 2-5; 1 Pet. 1-2
- Memorise: 1 Pet. 1:11 (try to interpret this verse in the light of this teaching).
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read one of the books mentioned above.
