Nietzsche, Plumbing and Jesus
By Ian McKerracher
Some of you know that the lion’s share of my working life was spent in pursuit of being an excellent tradesman. I was a plumber, no less, and enjoyed my chosen career as a calling of God as clear and significant as any call to a pulpit. The “excellent” part was a consequence of bringing my Christian Worldview to the job. I wanted to be the best plumber I could be in honour of my Lord.
I was (and still am) an inquisitive type of person. I think. I read. I listen. I try to find the truth of a thing, if it is available, or ruminate on the evidence in pursuit of a best guess, if that is all I can reach. That might lead me into topics where I have no standing on which to comment but, in the great traditions of tradesmen everywhere, I press on and will comment anyways! Thus, I come to a fellow whose name many know but only a limited crowd may claim to understand. The guy’s name is Friedrich Nietzsche.
“Well, I have found that, somewhere in the vast expanses of existence, Nietzsche, plumbing, and Jesus Christ are intersected in a most profound way. ”
Why (you may rightfully ask) is a plumber interested in Friedrich Nietzsche? Well, I have found that, somewhere in the vast expanses of existence, Nietzsche, plumbing, and Jesus Christ are intersected in a most profound way. You see, I have a habit of poking around the corners of the internet and find intriguing points of interest among the cascading dreck of boring opinions, written to bolster the writer’s ego more than to inform the public. If I ever fall to that level, just shoot me… (but not really because I am not a Nihilist like Nietzsche…more on that later).
In my virtual wanderings through the Electronic Universe, I came across a bit of writing taken from a book written by Carl R. Trueman, who is a Grove City College professor of biblical and religious studies. The portion of the chapter that was offered (you can read the article here) was something that Nietzsche wrote in one of his books. It is tagged as one of the most famous things that Nietzsche wrote. I guess that it is famous in philosopher circles but not so much in plumber circles. This story that Nietzsche wrote is in a book called The Gay Science and is subtitled The Madman:
The madman. 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. Has he got lost? Asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? Asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated? Thus, they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried: “I will tell you. We have 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 entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or 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 night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
“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 games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
The stark realities of life without the existence of a God are the atheistic ideas that Nietzsche covered in his book. He considered the ramifications of there not being any objective source for things like morality, or logic, or even the laws of physics or chemistry. He goes into the triviality of everyday subsistence to disturb the mud at the bottom of existence to look at what it would really be like if God did not concern Himself with the river’s course. If you REALLY want to know what that would look like, I suggest a video by William Lane Craig on “The Absurdity of Life without God”. A short version of the talk can be found here. In the full-length version, found here, Dr. Craig references “The Madman”.
“Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? ”
In my experience, many atheists with whom I converse online, are only vaguely aware or belligerently uninterested in the actual consequences of their own worldview. Their response to the rather dark, Nihilistic universe described by Nietzsche and detailed by Dr. Craig, if it is considered at all, is a brave boasting that they can live with the unaccounted absurdity without the need of any comforter. Face to the howling wind, the rugged individualistic hero stands courageously stalwart in his acceptance of the pitiless world in which he has been unmercifully dropped. Hence, the absence of God is of little consequence to them other than an ego boost and, if they believe that it may have some tangential effect on their lives, it would be, at best, a sidebar to their real purpose, which is to find reasons to laugh at theists.
So, this declaration of the collective guilt of the entire human race is of little concern in the worldview of most of the New Atheist crowd or even with the common armchair-atheist, most of whom seem to have decided together, that being obnoxious and rude towards people who believe in some religious reality somehow bolsters the arguments for atheism. If you have engaged them in conversation in any depth, you will find that this particular consequence to their idea is not always at the forefront of their own mind.
But this is the place where these three disparate things collide! Nietzsche, plumbing, and Jesus Christ all dance to the one and only tune of reality. If the world of Nietzsche is the right description of the real world, then the other two would be the absurdity. Jesus could not be the Son of God. He could not have resurrected. He would have no real significance at all, much like the atheist and everything he worked for and loved at the time of the heat death of the universe. The labour of plumbing would be, perhaps, something with which to feed the family of the plumber, though it and they are also on track with the rest of the absurdity to amount to a credit balance of ZERO. It would be, maybe, something to prevent Monday from colliding into Friday each week but there would be no reason to make any attempts at striving for excellence in plumbing or in any of the thousands or millions of careers sustained by the present world. All these efforts are destined to disappear; unfulfilled, unheralded, and unnecessary in a pitiless end of all things.
“He considered the ramifications of there not being any objective source for things like morality, or logic, or even the laws of physics or chemistry.”
But, if the World of Jesus Christ is the right description, then a plumbing career would be able to draw from it all that is needed to stave off the absurdity. I can work and enjoy my labours. I can accomplish something; build something, create something. Though this world is still destined for destruction, I AM NOT! I and the things which were invested in my life are destined to live forever with Christ in God. The actions that I did on the planet are, every one of them, significant things.
So, Nietzsche had his time in the sun. It is unfortunate that he descended into the hole of insanity and couldn’t get himself out. There is a debate about whether he was just autistic, early on, when he wrote the popular nihilistic tomes of his authorship or whether it was the ideas spawned by them that sent him over the cliff, but the end of the man was in the throes of a mental illness from which he never recovered.
Jesus, on the other hand, actually DID enter a hole of a grave. And He did come out again; an event for which there is a great body of historical evidence. His life significantly altered the course of history, ultimately affecting the life of this plumber and multitudes of others … and all for the better.