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

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

The German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche was most famous for saying God is dead.

He did this in two places.

And thus spake Zarathrustra, Nietzsche promised humans would be the thriving successor of God if they would only move beyond religion and morality.

In contrast, the parable of the madman was more of a warning, written not to those who believed in God, but to those who actually didn't.

Quote, have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the

marketplace, 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. As he got lost, asked one, did he

lose his way like a child, asked another? Is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? As he gone on a voyage? As he immigrated?

Thus, they yelled and they laughed. Back in the late 19th century, many of the elites believe that

without a God weighing humanity down, progress would be inevitable. Nietzsche, however, believed that

these children of the Enlightenment had underestimated just how significant the loss of God would be.

And so his madman answered, where is God? I'll tell you, we've 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 horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth

from its sun? Whether is it moving now? Whether are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging

continually, backward, sideward, forward in all directions? Is there still an up and a 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 the night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?

You see, Nietzsche was not claiming that God had once existed and no longer did. Rather, he was

recognizing that God was the central reference point for Western life, politics, education, art, architecture,

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