Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in 1882, “God is dead. God remains Dead. And we have killed Him”. This became a major article in Time Magazine in 1966 and created a lot of discussion. Nietzsche was referring to the scientific advances during the Enlightenment that caused people to turn their attention away from God. God was no longer needed in the daily lives of people; they thought they could shed the restraints of religious morality and be free to make their own value system.
David addressed this issue because it was prevalent in his day as well. In verse 4, David writes, “The wicked are too proud to seek God. They seem to think that God is dead”. He said they “succeed in everything they do. They do not see Your punishment awaiting them”. In reading through this psalm, we are struck with similarities today. If we are so great as humans having been released from the moral requirements of Christianity, why is there so much evil in the world? Instead of a utopia where we act as our own gods with goodness and virtue, we find a rise in the crime rate with theft and murder rampant in our cities and countryside. The reason there is so much evil in the world is there is so much evil in each of us. If we are gods, why should there be any limits to what we do? If there is no real God, there is no good or evil; it simply becomes a quest for “what I want”. No legislature has a right to impose a law on me because I was not asked what I wanted. There can be no democracy but only anarchy. The last verse in the book of Judges says, “in those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes”.
How have we gotten to this point in our society? It did not happen overnight. Maybe it started during our colonial period when some religious leaders and teachers began to accept Deism rather than Theism. Maybe it continued as people moved away from churches to begin new homesteads, farms, and ranches. With the addition of liberal theology, and the social gospel into our churches, many people may have lost interest as churches grew to be more like social clubs. Whatever the specific reasons, it was our abandonment of the principles and activities of the New Testament church as described in Acts 2:42-47.
What can we do to regain lost ground? The only way as indicated by Scripture is to start doing again what we quit doing. We need to daily read and meditate on God’s word and seriously pray for the lost, for our leaders, and praise God for His goodness. We need to lose our complacency and as Paul told Timothy “stir up the faith that is in you”. We may never see the results we hope for in our lifetime. But, if the church (you and me) will change our ways, future generations will see the benefits. Read Psalm 11 also.