The Pursuit of God(hood) (Pastor Aaron Trelfa, 06/24/23)

The pursuit of Godhood is today's message.

We're gonna ask some important questions

about ourselves though to get started.

What would the best version of you be like?

What do you need to do in order to become that version?

What does best actually mean?

And by what standards are you judging yourself?

Do you mean that it could be any one of this?

Are you the fastest, the strongest, the kindest,

the funniest, are you the most intelligent?

How can you be the most artistic

or the most compassionate or the most disciplined?

Does the best version of you mean any of the following?

Any of those?

Or are all of your possible values you could embody

are some more important or better than others?

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for the opportunity

to hear you speaking to us through it.

We pray that that would be our experience this morning.

Lord bless us with the presence of your Holy Spirit.

We pray in your name, amen.

Amen.

Yes.

Yes.

God is dead.

God remains dead and we have killed him.

Or so declared 19th century German philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche.

With these words, Nietzsche was presenting

what he believed to be fresh news

in the aftermath of the enlightenment,

a time in which science, math, and philosophy

have displaced Christianity as the guiding authority

in truth and in our existence and in reality.

He goes on to say, the belief in the Christian God

has become unbelievable and that everything, quote,

built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it,

including the whole of our European,

and I included our Western morality,

is destined for collapse.

That's what he actually means by the statements

that God is dead and he remains dead.

Well, without the divine underpinnings of our existence

and our moral outlooks, our future becomes rather uncertain.

We ask ourselves, how shall we comfort ourselves,

the murderers of all murderers?

Who will wipe this blood off of us, he says.

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, the murder of God,

too great for us?

Well, rather high and lofty and serious questions to ask.

The last one he proposes is, must we ourselves

not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

That is worthy of murdering God.

Nietzsche, however, did not argue that the death of God

should be greeted with either jubilation or indifference,

but with a deep disorientation and mourning.

You see, even though Nietzsche was definitely an atheist,

even though Nietzsche definitely didn't have any kind

of positive feelings towards the Christian faith,

he certainly didn't think that it was the right kind

of morals for someone to live their life by.

He saw the Christian faith as a seticism

and an extreme, basically.

To live with Christian morals was to deny all the good

things that life has to offer.

You're supposed to just deny, deny, deny, deny, deny,

and that's not really living life.

But he didn't say that the death of God was good

or indifferent, but rather disorienting

and we should feel a sense of mourning.

Well, why?

Because he saw the Judeo-Christian moral system

as a mechanism for what he called value creation.

What he called value creation.

God was not just an innocuous source of faith and worship,

but he was the indubitable authority that lent power

and legitimacy to Judeo-Christian moral values.

He saw this moral system as at least as this mechanism.

This mechanism so embedded in Western culture

that it led to piety, altruism, and compassion

being regarded as commonsensical or even natural.

And he said, those are not bad things.

Those are not bad things.

Which is why if we are to avoid falling into a deep

and despairing nihilism, because his concern was that

if we got rid of this mechanism for value creation,

if we got rid of what was embedded in our Western culture,

if we just said God was dead hooray, then what's left?

An unshakable uncertainty for humanity and for the future.

Which could lead people into nihilism,

into just live and die and there's nothing else.

And that's why if we are to avoid falling into

this deep and despairing nihilism,

Nietzsche went on to say this, God is dead,

but given the way of men, there may still be caves

for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.

And we, we still have to vanquish his shadow too.

Now at first reading you might say,

well how does that actually help with this conundrum

of not falling into a deep nihilism?

No sense of real future, just live and die and be worm food.

How does even getting rid of the shadow of God

in the caves help with that?

Well in other words, mankind should decisively replace

even the shadow of values derived by God.

Again, how does that actually work?

Well what risk is there when you get rid of not only God,

but also his shadow?

Are there risks?

Well I think there would certainly be

something true to that.

Nietzsche laments that we would respond

if we got rid of everything, even up to the shadows.

He laments that we would respond by burying our angst

deep down and we would pick our fates

from one of the three following possible options.

One, we would delude ourselves with false beliefs.

He's saying God is dead and we should even get rid

of his shadow, but there are risks to doing it.

One risk, we might delude ourselves with false beliefs.

Another one, we might become irretrievably depressed.

And then three, we might distract ourselves

with vacuous pursuits and meaningless entertainment.

So for all of the ire that he had towards God

and the Christian faith, he still saw a purpose

in that it gave structure, it gave something

that people could guide their lives by,

it was a benefit to the Western society at large,

and so on, but he also said God's dead

and we should get rid of even his shadow from the caves.

Well, much like a parable that many of us

might be familiar with where a demon was cast out of a man,

and then the demon traveled around the world

for a little bit and found nowhere else to land.

He thought I'll go back to where I once was

and he went back to that man and found that the place

that he had occupied before just been swept clean

and tidied, but it remained empty.

The demon said that there's room for me,

but also I'll bring my friends.

You can't just create a vacuum and have a replacement

not ready for it or not be willing to have something

to fill the vacuum.

Humanity doesn't do well in a vacuum.

Nature doesn't do well in a vacuum with an emptiness.

Something has to be there.

So what was Nietzsche's solution to this new problem?

The Ubermensch, Superman.

That's where we get the term from.

We don't get it from life liberty in the American way

or whatever it is, freedom justice in the American way.

I think that might be more accurate.

We don't get it from some Kryptonian

who gets his power from the sun.

We don't get any of that, but that idea of a superhero

is built off of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the Superman.

The idea of the Superman fills the void

left by the death of God.

Defying nihilism, it actually provides

a new basis for value.

See, before we had God or the Judeo-Christian basis

for value, well that's gone and we get rid of the shadow.

This is his, I guess, suggestion for a replacement.

First presented in his 1883 book,

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche argues

that the Superman will not only replace Christian values,

not only, but it will actually provide

a template for radical improvement.

The Superman is a person who has transcended

beyond good and evil by perfecting oneself.

Now that by itself, if you've read any number

of self-help books in the last two decades,

that's a common theme.

We're not talking about some late 19th century philosopher

that doesn't have any impact on today's world.

Nietzsche's philosophy is deeply ingrained

in what you see all around you.

Really is.

The Superman does this by loving one's fate and destiny

with a will strong enough to embrace

everything he encounters in life,

including suffering, pain, and sorrow.

The Superman also embodies the concept of self-creation.

Self-creation.

How do you embody the concept of self-creation?

Well first, you assess the strengths and weaknesses

of your character.

Weaknesses are, they don't need to be hidden,

they don't need to be repressed,

since your weaknesses are a part of you.

In fact, your weaknesses can appear beautiful

if they are molded according to a particular

artistic plan, he phrased it.

Your weaknesses, if molded to an artistic plan,

can become beautiful.

He also suggests that the target of self-discipline

should not be self-castigation,

should not be self-loathing,

should not be repression.

Self-discipline is not to deny one of something you want

or you feel you need or what society,

not denial, self-loathing, or repression,

but rather self-stylization and mastery.

That's self-discipline.

It's not to repress, but to welcome and master it.

It is not the rejection of desires,

it is not the denial of urges and forces

that make up our lives.

Rather, it's the sculpting and the channeling of them

into a psychologically healthy and beautiful creation.

That's the superman.

In other words, we are to sculpt and channel

these desires and urges into an aesthetic whole.

An aesthetic whole, your appearance of beauty,

how you feel about yourself,

what you present to the world as yourself,

the aesthetic whole.

That's what you should be moving towards,

working hard on, desiring to achieve,

sculpt, and channel in order to attain.

This is the ultimate goal for humanity

that Nietzsche at least had in mind.

But how would that be achieved?

How would it?

Well, you have to live up to an independent aesthetic

rather than an external ethical standard.

It's you who decides, not an outside source.

This allows humans to truly fulfill their potential.

And notice, if you're following his train of thought,

it's your inherent potential, not your given potential.

That's a very distinct difference

from Christianity and his philosophy.

In other words, we would say this,

that the ubermensch is his own determiner of value.

You are your own source of what is valuable.

You affirm your own character and you even give it a style.

It's all about self-affirmation.

Do we hear any of that echoing today?

Do we hear being our own determiner of value echoing today?

Well, of course, of course we do.

We hear that left, right, and center,

and I would say especially in this current month.

It's a high and holy month in the secular calendar,

if you will.

Self-affirmation and affirming one's own character

is everywhere.

We must each revalue our own values

to become who we really are.

That's what he proposed.

On our own, we revalue our own values

to become who we really are.

He says this quote, you have your way, I have my way.

As for the right way, the correct way, the only way,

it does not exist.

Do we hear that echoed today?

Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt.

It is not a new theory.

We like to give the postmodern idea of subjectivity,

we like to think that that is postmodernism.

We like to think that that's very 21st century,

late 1900s, this was 1883.

And I would suggest it even goes before that.

It is not new.

We've just kind of repackaged it

with a different colored bow, if you will.

He's saying that this is a personal project.

We must determine and affirm our own values,

sculpt our own unique inner drives

into something complete in our own authentic way.

Do we hear that language?

There is no one size fits all solution.

None.

What's good for you may not be good for me,

but that's okay, what's good for me is fine for me,

and so on.

But we have to wonder if he is rejecting the idea

of God being alive and he's acknowledging

that all those morals are dead

and we have to get rid of the shadow

and we have to build on the Superman

and we have to achieve everything on our own,

et cetera, et cetera.

Well, he's trying to get rid of this idea of nihilism.

Well, how do you do that without asking

about the eternal end to all of these questions?

Because nihilism would suggest

that there is no eternal end.

It's the here and the now, you're dead, and that's it.

Go forth, have fun, make what you will of life.

But to what eternal end does Superman lead?

Quote, the ubermensch shall be the meaning of the earth.

I entreat you, my brethren, remain true to the earth

and do not believe those who speak to you

of supra-terrestrial hope.

That's a hope outside of this earth.

That's a hope from out there coming down here to help us.

That's a hope beyond this third rock from the sun.

I would suggest that we see some of this

as an underlying to some of the more extreme

environmentalism that we have in today's society.

We have to protect, even at the risk of what it might do

to people just to save the earth.

That's in a nutshell what you might hear from someone.

According to Nietzsche, there's no life

beyond this one on earth.

What he says, what he, he answers the question

about the eternal end by saying that,

rather we live a life of eternal recurrence.

We recur or we occur again and again and again

on this earth for eternity.

You die but then at some point you come back

and then you die and then you come back.

It's his own take on reincarnation.

There's no real ascending in order

like other beliefs in reincarnation.

You just continue to be in a never ending cycle.

As I've studied Nietzsche's Superman

and this future for humanity,

there are several questions worth asking.

There's a lot of questions worth asking

but here are some few pointed ones.

One, is humanity even capable of achieving Ubermensch?

Are we even capable of it?

What would that world look like even if we could?

Is a happy society filled with independent,

self-determining Ubermensch?

I mean this is, this is, this is that independent spirit

that Americans are known for taken to its logical conclusion.

But is that a happy society filled with people like that?

Well what about our drives for cruelty and other evils?

Who here is aware of the natural bent towards evil

and cruelty amongst humanity?

I'm aware of it, I've seen it.

You don't have to look hard or far.

Pick a corner on the globe and it's there.

Little ones, young kids demonstrate the natural bend

towards chaos, disorder, et cetera.

But remember that his philosophy is that

even those weaknesses can be made into something beautiful

when they are accepted and then stylized

into your aesthetic.

Even those evils, but what about them?

Are all human drives actually permissible?

Should we really aspire to live

with this idea that all drives can be made beautiful?

Think of the serial killer.

Think of the worst abuser in mind.

Think of the genocidal dictators.

Think of, think of the worst.

Can that become beautiful?

Well according to him it could be.

And then should we really aspire to live aesthetically

rather than ethically?

Is hope for the life we have here on earth

the best hope to have?

Is cultivating an aesthetic package more important

than fighting for justice?

These are questions that he does not quite answer

with his proposal.

But before we answer these questions,

we have to consider another quote murder if you will.

Two murders today.

One, he proposed it was God and we did it.

Two, the death to self.

That's our other consideration this morning.

Humanity has tried what Nietzsche proposed.

And not only in recent years, throughout humanity.

Philosophers, wise men and women,

cultures in every spot around the planet,

they've tried different variations of this.

I would say that the clearest examples

have been much more recent as secularism,

as this denial of God's impact in society

has really taken root.

It is much more common and traditional

that a belief in an external source of morality

be the case, be what's accepted.

Most of human history had that.

Even in the most debaucherous cultures,

they had gods that told them to be that.

But really from the French Revolution onwards to today,

from the French Revolution onwards to today's present day,

that's really where we've seen these kinds of ideas

get deeply ingrained.

Well, how has it turned out?

I would say it's currently being carried out.

And how has it turned out?

Well, one, Nietzsche worried that these would be

the results of not replacing God.

As we've not replaced God, how has it gone?

Have we deluded ourselves with false beliefs?

Oh yeah, right now, many prominent people

can't tell you the difference between a man and a woman

and who's got more natural athletic ability

or who naturally has more of a nurturing personality.

That's obvious with our senses and our logic.

You can see it.

You don't need the PhD to tell you otherwise.

Do we have other false beliefs?

Well, you get rid of God, you get rid of an outside creator,

even in other pagan beliefs, they had an outside creator.

Well, now we believe that the tadpoles, our kids,

are fond of talking about this morning.

Those are our greatest grandparents.

I mean, there's many beliefs.

There are many false beliefs that we have deluded ourselves

and then I would say,

that just kind of seems to be getting worse.

We now believe that it is good and noble

to end your own life prematurely.

We believe it's good and acceptable for people

of all various attractions,

including the old to the very young, be permissible.

And some are arguing actionable.

I'm talking illicit relationships.

There are many now who think that it's a good thing

for society to let criminals out of jail,

to allow violence to run rampant without a check,

to openly lie and then hide

and get rid of anything that suggests.

They are saying this is good for us.

Is that a false belief and are we deluded by it?

What about our second point that Nietzsche was concerned about?

Becoming irretrievably depressed.

As we have not replaced God, has that gotten better?

No.

My friends, it is a rather worrying state

when it comes to depression and anxiety

and suicidality in our country today.

In the last three years, it's skyrocketed.

Skyrocketed.

And the most concerning thing is that

it's skyrocketed and the most concerning numbers

are in the age groups where it historically

has been the least present.

The young adults and the children

at ever increasing younger ages.

We now have, don't quote me on this,

but I believe it's somewhere around 20%,

I think it's 20% of Americans are on either

an anti-anxiety or an anti-depressant.

And in terms of like consistent daily use,

they're just as needed and then they're off of it,

like regular use.

It's higher amongst women in the United States.

I believe it's one in three.

One in three women are on anti-anxiety

or anti-depressant medication.

That does not indicate to me that we've done well

with this concern.

Seems to me that we are continuing to become

more irretrievably depressed.

Well what about this?

We're distracting ourselves with vacuous pursuits

and meaningless entertainment.

How have we done as we've not replaced God?

Have you heard of TikTok?

Facebook, Instagram, what about just the never ending

24 hour coverage of just sports?

I like sports.

I like to be athletic, I think it's good for your health

and it's kind of fun to watch it.

But how absorbed are we into the ups and downs

of various teams all over the place?

How emotionally invested are we?

And let's just really ask, is it really going to add

to your eternal salvation whether or not your favorite team

does well or not?

But how invested do you get in it?

How much money do we spend on vacuous pursuits

and meaningless entertainment?

How much better could that money be spent

elsewhere?

We haven't done well with this.

Nietzsche worried that these would be the results

and even though he had a proposal

and our society has tried it, that's only gotten worse.

It's only gotten worse.

From the beginning, the lie has been told

that to replace God, to kill God,

was to enable us to become God.

We read this from the serpent's mouth after Eve had said,

God told us, don't touch the tree, don't eat it or we'll die.

He says this, you will not surely die.

For God knows that when you eat of it,

your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.

Genesis three, verses four and five.

The serpent is saying, God did not create everything good

and very good.

He withheld something from you and God is jealous of you

so he kept it back.

Now you can have what God doesn't want you to have

and as in partaking, you will become God yourself.

You will elevate yourself way high above your current status

and you will know things and experience things.

You will be a superman.

Just don't trust God's word.

Just desire to usurp him.

Our verse from Isaiah that Elena read for us,

that was Lucifer in heaven thinking these very things.

I'm gonna ascend high above the stars of the north.

I'm going to sit in God's throne.

I'm going to be like him and here he's sending it

right on to humans.

This is an old, old, old lie.

Nietzsche is again just repackaging it.

God withheld one thing from humanity.

What did he withhold?

Evil.

He said you can have everything else.

You can have it all.

Eternal life, presence with me,

a beautiful relationship where no one's fighting,

trees and animals and everything in harmony

and it's working.

It's working.

It's working.

Animals and everything in harmony and it's working well.

I'm gonna keep one thing from you.

And that's evil.

That's wickedness.

I don't even want you to know about it,

much less experience it.

And the long sad history of what believing this lie

has brought is well known.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

and the wages of sin is death,

Paul writes to the church in Rome.

We know the results of this.

We know what it is when we try to do it ourselves

or when we've tried to ascend to Godhood,

when we've tried to pursue Godhood,

when we think that we are inherently better than we are

and we just develop that and turn it into

some artistic style,

what happens?

Immorality, debauchery, pain, suffering,

lies, deceit, murder, war and the list goes on.

We've seen death occur and even though some

some faiths profess this recurrence,

this eternal recurrence,

I have yet to meet someone who I actually knew

that died before me.

Seems to be not the case.

But we have good news because as Christians,

we don't believe that we are just stuck

in a nihilistic cycle here on this earth.

We don't believe that our sinful condition

brought on by Adam and Eve is all that we have

and we certainly don't believe or accept this idea

that to take a sinful condition and mold it like putty

and maybe paint a little picture on it

or give it some lipstick makes it any better.

I think there's an old saying,

even if you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

Well, even if a pig rolls around in mud

and you hose it off, it's still a pig.

Now you can take humanity and you can take sin

and you can take all of the evil wicked desires

and urges that we naturally have.

You can try to paint it with something rosy.

You can try to wash it off.

You can try to just give it new names and say,

ah, it's not exactly what we ever thought that it was.

It still is.

And it still leads to the same results

because by their fruits, you'll know it.

And we just know it.

We also, as Christians know that the wages of sin is death

is not the end of it all because it goes on,

but the free gift of God is eternal life

and Christ Jesus, our Lord.

The Christians have to hang on to this hope.

We've seen the other option fail miserably.

Nietzsche and others that have proposed something

like his Superman have always failed

in rather glorious fashion.

So what do we declare this morning?

God did die.

He did.

But he's not dead.

That's the rest of the story.

That's where Nietzsche should have kept going.

If you actually read about his life, it's rather sad.

He had some really devout Christians in his life,

but apparently his upbringing affected him differently.

It's a very traditional, very traditional story.

It's a very traditional siblings

and so on in the Christian faith.

God did die, but he is not dead.

I've heard it recently described this way

that if you hear a professed Christian

describe Jesus as was,

then they've missed the mark

because we serve a risen savior.

We can describe Jesus as is.

He did walk this earth, but he is alive.

He was here, but he not was.

He's not only in the past.

So what is our solution to the problems that we see?

What are the solutions?

What is the solution?

I would suggest that the solution is not to pursue Godhood,

but to pursue God.

Not Godhood, but God.

Jesus says as the crowds were gathering

more and more around him early in his ministry,

this from Mark chapter eight,

if anyone would come after me,

let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels

will save it.

Pursue me, he says.

You have to get rid of the dirt.

You have to get rid of the ugly.

Look at your weaknesses and say,

okay, maybe that's a real part of me,

but I don't have to be that weak for eternity.

My weaknesses don't have to define me

and I can't take my weaknesses and make them pretty.

I need to deny myself, take up my cross,

follow after Jesus.

Because if we lose that life for his sake,

then we will ultimately save our life.

I would also suggest that the solution is not Superman,

but a renewal of self in Christ.

Not the development of you on your own

through your own efforts by your own means

in your own individualistic way.

That's not it, that's not the solution.

All of those hypothetical questions that we asked,

could we even achieve it?

The answer is no.

How good would society look even if we could?

Not good.

All of those questions can be answered in a negative.

Because the solution is not Superman,

but a renewal of self in Christ.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death

in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead

by the glory of the Father,

we too might walk in newness of life.

We have to talk about two different kinds of deaths.

God died, but he's not dead.

But we do need to die.

There are parts of us that do need to die.

There are parts of us that are not good to hang on to

and they are not good for society to champion.

They need to die.

They need to be put on that cross right with our Savior

where he took our place and all of those sins need to die.

The good news is that even though we might die,

Christ was victorious over the grave.

And so just like God died, but he's not dead.

That's because you and I need parts of ourselves to die.

That doesn't mean that we're dead.

We can live.

We have to live in Christ.

We can have a better life, but it has to be in him.

We can have hope in something outside of this earth

better than anything we've ever seen.

But our hope has to rely on him.

It has to because everything else has failed.

This is a reoccurring theme in the New Testament.

Quote, therefore, if anyone is in Christ,

he's a new creation.

The old is passed away, behold, the new has come.

Second Corinthians 517.

Galatians 220, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh,

I live by faith in the Son of God,

who loved me and gave himself for me.

From the beginning, it was God's intent

that mankind would live in harmony with him.

From the beginning, God created men and women

to live without the knowledge and the experience

of sin.

From the beginning, God said,

I only desire the best for him, for them.

They just need to rely on me and live with me

and abide with me and I with them.

That was God's plan all along.

We messed it up because we accepted the lie of the Superman

and we still accept the lie today.

We need to reject that idea.

We need to reject the idea that self-affirmation

is all it takes.

God did not come to affirm you in your sin.

He came to save you from your sin.

God did not come to affirm you in the worst things of you.

He came to save you from the worst.

God did not come to say, Jesus did not come to say

that the best you have right now is the best you'll ever have.

He came to say, I have something better for you

and I've had it in mind from the beginning.

That's what Jesus is saying.

Are we willing, I shouldn't phrase it that way,

are we willing to let part of ourselves die today?

Are we willing to say that we need that outside

ethical and moral standard that comes from a perfect

and holy and beautiful God who loves us infinitely?

Are we willing to say, yes, we need that

or are we going to cling desperately to the serpent's lie

repeated through Nietzsche and onward to today?

Which one do you choose?

We talked about the last message for Vacation Bible Day

and the last message for Vacation Bible School annually

has to do with the gospel message.

It has to do with salvation.

It has to do with, it's fun to learn these stories

and it's great to play these games

but really do you know Jesus?

That's how Becky puts the capstone on BDS every year.

That's how we need to put a capstone on all of this.

It's good to have some games and it's good

to do all of these other things

and there's a lot of, it's a lot of good things

when it comes to living life on this planet

but is that enough?

Do you want more?

You need to grasp hold of what God is offering

and pursue God.

Don't pursue Godhood.

You will always fail as you pursue Godhood

and I would encourage you from today moving forward,

pursue God.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your loving kindness.

We thank you that you've revealed yourself to us

in many meaningful and powerful ways,

not least of which through your word

and through the person, Jesus Christ.

Lord, I pray that we would not be distracted

by other failing options out there

but we would look to you, the giver and sustainer of life.

We would look to you who is our past,

our present and our future.

We would look to you who fails not

but lifts us up by your right arm.

Lord, I know each one of us here

has fallen and fallen multiple times

and I do pray that you would let us

through the power and the presence of your Holy Spirit

discern those areas that drag us down.

Not so we can try and turn them into something beautiful

but so we can reject it

and rather look to you to fill us with your presence

and a love that is beautiful, a mercy that is beautiful

and a character modeled after Christ.

Lord, we thank you for hearing our prayer.

We thank you that you are ever faithful

and you will never leave us nor forsake us.

Lord, we claim this not today

but we claim it each day moving forward

all the way until Christ returns.

We thank you for being with us

while we pray in Christ's name, Amen.