God is dead

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 from my comments on the discussion board of our Spring Course.

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God is dead points to the fact that our former structure of interpretation of everything, in which God was taken for granted as the higher value and the lens through which reality was understood, is gone. There is no longer a higher source outside of humanity to which to appeal to on what is true, good and right. It doesn't mean so much that God is not worshipped or believed anymore. God doesn't even need to exist for many Churches to exist - believers will have reasons for their own believing, but not for everyone believing. It is more so that normal nihilism has settled, where higher values are devalued by its use. Now different structures of interpretation compete in the same sale of values and worldviews.

One concrete way in which American Churches reinforce the death of God is by teaching theology of glory/prosperity. In it God is not the higher structure of interpretation of the world, but the believers' needs, plans and intentions. God is more of a partner in business, a tool as a means to an end. In a way, there is not even a need for God to exist, since the self-determination, winning-attitude, purpose-oriented faith are the higher values in which belief is founded. 

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From last Sunday's Sermon 

"We are disobeyers. It is in us, because of sin. And we know where the first and ultimate reason for that comes from: Eden. The sin of Adam and Eve’s disobedience was attempting to be equal to God

Isn’t this what we do so many times? We want to be god. We decide, we define. We plan. We adjust. And then we want God to comply, to obey, to be the sidekick who will stamp our plans with a big “approved”. If we are sincere we will detect it here and there in our lives. And then we get angry when things don’t go the way we planned.

This type of thinking and attitude contributes to the “death of God”. When it was said by Nietzsche in the XIX century, it was not about atheism. It was about the Christian society and Churches themselves sort of “killing God.” That means: When God becomes a side kick, one of many alternatives for life, a good option among many other good options in life; or a name to call only in need, then God is probably dead. For then we don’t even need to have a God to have a Church. People’s desire to feel good; their positive thinking and their affirmative faith making things happens are enough. Isn’t it true that you enter some churches today, or watch them online, and it looks like if Jesus didn’t exist, that Church would still exist anyway?[1]"

 

Full sermon here.


[1] This is what we need to avoid in our life. That I have a reason to believe in my God, but I don’t have a reason for everybody else to do the same.

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