Simply Said – Clarinda Herald Journal – March 2008

            “God is dead. And we have killed him.” So wrote philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was his intentionally provocative way of saying that the science and “enlightened thinking” of his day had rendered the Christian faith obsolete. He thought that the advances that mankind had achieved made it impossible to believe in God of the Bible. And so to fill the vacuum that he was sure would be created when God was removed as the foundation of society’s morality, law, and order, he went on to write a new philosophy for society that centered on the strength and wisdom of man.  

            Looking back, it’s clear now that like so many before him, Nietzsche jumped the gun in writing Christianity’s obituary. He died friendless, penniless, and insane. The seeds of his ideas for forming a new world, which bloomed briefly in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, are also (thankfully) dead. Meanwhile living faith and trust in the God he declared dead continues to flourish in the hearts of billions.

            So Nietzsche was wrong. Dead wrong. But as wrong as he was, he did manage to get one thing right – even if it was unintentional. In these early weeks of March, Christians all across the world are preparing to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It’s Christianity’s highest and most joyful holy day because it commemorates his victory for us over death and the grave. So we look forward to our Easter celebrations with eager expectation. But now in the time before we get there, and as part of our preparation, we do well to spend some time reflecting on what caused his death in the first place. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, came down from heaven and took upon himself the nature and body of a man for just one reason: to be our Savior from sin. He came to pay the penalty of suffering and death that we richly deserve on account of our countless offenses against God and against people. He did this when he suffered and died for us. It was his boundless love for us that caused him to go to the cross, and our guilt that put him in the grave. And so it’s right to say that through our sins each one of us had a part in killing the Lord of Life.

            This time before Easter, called the season of Lent, has traditionally been a period of rigorous self-examination, penitential sorrow, honest confession, and turning away from sin. It’s a tradition well worth keeping. Precisely so that we can rejoice all the more in finding our Lord’s tomb open and empty, let’s pause now to stand before his grave as his lifeless body is laid inside and the heavy stone seal is rolled into its place. Let’s think upon our own part in committing the worst crime in history: God is dead. And we have killed him.