The Problem: How I got there!

I can think of a thousand different ways to elucidate this cardinal problem. I will demonstrate through three reflections that captured me: Nietzsche, literary movements, and providence. All of these reflections became a litmus test that demonstrated the sickness of my own worldview.

Nietzsche

At first glance, I was not all that impressed by the German philosopher Nietzsche. His language was amazing. A German friend told me that Nietzsche is second only to Goethe in his effect on the German language. His philosophy, however, was judgmental, (He calls Kant an idiot, because he does not work out is ethics based on the idea evolution like Nietzsche. Kant can be called a lot of things, but an idiot is not amongst them.), and his conclusions did not seem to follow from his data.

In Nietzche's famous piece Thus Spoke the Zarathustra, his hermit protagonist accuses modern man of killing God. Nietzsche eluded me. When I anticipated an argument against the existence of God, I instead heard the voice of William James. The argument was not that modern man succeeded in disproving the existence of God, but rather that he lived as if he did. It was a practical argument. After the Enlightenment, or ideological movement of Rationalism, man act as though there was no God. Man willed the death of God.

I am in Nietzche's serves, for this lead be to reflect that I often made decisions in my own life, as if there is no God. Was I murdering God within my will and mind, when I made decisions as if He was not there? Absolutely!

Conviction: I, and many in the Christian community, have expunged the consciousness God and His presence (or believed that His existence has no practical import).

Literary Movements

I am currently teaching High School literature and as such I find myself spending a lot of time explaining the ideologies behind a literary movement. Last year I taught a sympathy to the Naturalist movement, but now I feel sorrow. Naturalism means that Romanticism lost its battle with the Enlightenment in a fight to decide wither the cosmos has meaning or not. Let me explain. . . .

Enlightenment is the child of the Rationalist movement, as I alluded to above. Rationalism believe that there are really only two sources of certain truth: A mathematical philosophy and the scientific method. The Romantics took this for what it practically meant: the end of love, truth, beauty, emotion, the soul, and subsequently humanity. But since the Enlightenment claimed reason as its virtue, Romanticism fought instead with beauty, emotion, and nostalgia. Enlightenment used nature and paganism as there most common object. The Transcendentalists argued that nature transcended scientific facts. Naturalism was the literary answer to Transcendentalism. Naturalism concluded that Nature was cruel and absurd. Naturalism is the opposite of providence (and natural selection). In naturalism and strongest and most virtuous die first, under the frigid sky of an uncaring cosmos.

My general acceptance of the argument of Naturalism means that I was accepting a worldview that was in substance anti-Christian. A world where providence is dead.

To be continued . . .