Death of God

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
While attending seminary in the late seventies, I was required to read some theologians advocating the “death” of God. They charged “modern man” had grown too smart and sophisticated to believe in the God of the Bible. I feared if what these learned voices said was true, I might be getting all dressed up in a snazzy seminary education only to graduate and learn the prom was canceled.

As it turned out, the partisans of the “Death of God” movement could not have been more wrong. Far from succumbing to an early demise, “God” is flourishing. The problem in what sociologists are now calling the “post-modern” world is not that no one believes in God, but that everyone does, a least what passes for “God” among those deemed “spiritual” rather than religious. Judging from the forwards in my email, the internet is aflutter with talk of “God” as a sweet, sentimental Somebody, ever eager to send angels or otherwise cut you a break. (Please forward this column to ten other people within five minutes and you are sure to receive a blessing!).

Recently, a major survey of religious trends in America was released to great media fanfare. The USA Today headline proclaimed, “Faith is shifting, drifting or vanishing outright.” But in fact, “faith” isn’t on the decline. What is on the decline are self-professed Christians, especially those meaningfully connected to a local church. Today only 75% of Americans consider themselves Christians, a decline from 86% less than twenty years ago. If present trends continue, barely half of the population will be Christian by 2044.

While speaking of the God of orthodox Christianity, the renowned Catholic thinker, G. K. Chesterton, observed, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” That’s what I see happening in America. People are more gullible, religiously speaking, than they were when the culture was more grounded in Christian teaching and values. Talk of “God” and “spirituality” abound, but faith in the living God--the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--is sadly on the wane.

The good news is that Jesus remains the decisive clue to ultimate reality, the “way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The good news is that people yet hunger for a vital, personal relationship to the living God (John 17:3). The good news is that people need and want flesh-and-blood relationships with fellow pilgrims that no cyber-church can provide (Matthew 18:20). Our job as Jesus’ people is to get out the good news about him and his family, the church. Other voices, it seems, are drowning us out.

(For March 29, 2009)