Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

In 1882, Frederick Nietzsche famously proclaimed God is dead in his parable of the madman.

In it, Nietzsche warned that the modern zeal to rid the world of the divine would not turn out the way that the skeptics and

the utopianist predicted. In fact, the very deed of killing God, Nietzsche wrote, was far beyond

what they could imagine. Quote, 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? And then Nietzsche asked this, how shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all

murderers? What was 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? What sacred is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of

atonement? What sacred games shall we now have to invent? End quote. Now, as far seeing as Nietzsche was,

it's unlikely that he could have guessed all the various ways that his prediction would play out.

John Calvin called the human heart a factory of idols, and as it turns out,

our creativity in inventing festivals of atonement and sacred games knows almost no limits. For example,

a recent essay in The New Yorker described the rise of Disney adults who take multiple trips

to the various Disney parks every year, even taking on serious debt in order to do so.

One young woman who was described in the article spent over $15,000 on just six park visits in two years.

That's why author Amelia Tate wrote, quote,

So-called Disney adults have become a subject of online fascination,

with many people now questioning how much it costs to be one.

It's a genre of content that's become more popular recently,

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