Since the beginning of civilization religion has been a mainstay for humanity to get through life.  That is, until recently.  More is to be said about the decline of traditional religion in our day to day lives.

In our world reason is ascendant.  We look to our own resources of knowledge, the methodology of science, and our can-do motivation to find “a solution” to the inevitable suffering that is entailed in the human form of life.  The optimism, the general expectation of success which I recall from my childhood in the 1950s has been shattered in the later years of the 20th century.  Our deification of reason, the reverence, and liturgy-like practice of the scientific method has failed in a spectacular fashion to corral the willfulness of human nature.

Our proclivity to pledge allegiance to a strong-man-savior promising to give peoples an identity and by colonization through conquest bring prosperity is the shoddy story of the 20th century.  First there was the Kaiser and the-war-to-end-all-wars, then along came Hitler and Tojo.  I need not mention the series of localized wars following the two big ones:  Vietnam, then Iraq, and Afghanistan lasting for many years, leaving these countries wrecked.  These are merely wars that appear on the American bill of conquest.  There are many additional,  a butcher’s bill of blood and mayhem, accruing to other countries still being fought.   The global saga rolls on.  The list of strong men inured to violence is long: Putin, Duterte, Trump, Kim Jong-Un, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, and others.

What has happened to us, to put the question bluntly.

One hundred years into the modern era Nietzsche was not speculating, making a pronouncement intended to sensationalize, when he wrote his parable announcing the death of God.  His words were a diagnosis as you might hear spoken by your doctor.  Naturally at the time and ever since Nietzsche’s words are received as the epitome of the absurd by professional religionists, and by all who wish to maintain their individual piety.  Nietzsche in 1882, pictures a town crier making an announcement in the gray dawn of a urban street of the murder of God.  It is a shocking revelation because the townspeople themselves are the accused.  God is absent, nowhere to be found because he has been murdered,  ‘been  disappeared’ by the townspeople themselves.  Of course the panic stricken bearer of the news, the only one who recognizes what this truly means, — is laughed out of town, driven to silence.  He stumbles off, making his way to various churches which he enters in order to proclaim a funeral service for the dead God.  The passage by Nietzsche is called the Parable of the Madman and you can read the vivid prose for yourself  CLICK HERE.

Gods, a god is murdered when the society which claims them as their patron(s) become riven with cruelty, or blatant injustice due to great income disparity, or frivolous and decadent in aspiration due to great wealth, or oppressive due to long standing ingrained racism.  To state the matter more bluntly:  the Christ of Christianity who suffers along side the dispossessed, the god/man who champions humanity, who is a harbinger of new beginnings, of resurrection — is murdered continually by the policies and day to day practices of life-as-we-know-it in this country.  That is how gods die.  Gods die when cultures overripe, deconstruct themselves by injustice and cruelty and improvidence and avarice.  God-as-Jesus is an absurdity, meaningless in 21st century American society.  The Greco-Roman pantheon of divinities ceased to matter with the decay of the Roman Imperium.  And so it goes in our own time.  Gods ancient and modern never die at the first blow, as said Albert Camus.

There is nothing more to say.

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Wait.  There is always hope, while there is life there is hope.  You and I are alive, we have the privilege and the responsibility to fashion a better future.

So, I offer this tune, the theme of the movie The Posideon Adventure.  The 1972 movie was the tale of a ocean liner sinking, a saga of survival for those who were lucky.  This song was written for the movie and sung by Maureen McGovern.  The songs original title was, Why Must There Be A Morning After?  It was given the more optimistic title “there’s got to be a morning after”.   I like the original title best because the future always hangs in the balance, there can be no guarantee.

Why Must There Be A Morning After?

There’s got to be a morning after
If we can hold on through the night
We have a chance to find the sunshine
Let’s keep on looking for the light

Oh, can’t you see the morning after?
It’s waiting right outside the storm
Why don’t we cross the bridge together
And find a place that’s safe and warm?

It’s not too late, we should be giving
Only with love can we climb
It’s not too late, not while we’re living
Let’s put our hands out in time

There’s got to be a morning after
We’re moving closer to the shore
I know we’ll be there by tomorrow
And we’ll escape the darkness
We won’t be searching anymore

There’s got to be a morning after
(There’s got to be a morning after)
There’s got to be a morning after
(There’s got to be a morning after)
There’s got to be a morning after
(There’s got to be a morning after)
There’s got to be a morning after
(There’s got to be a morning after)
There’s got to be a morning after
(There’s got to be a morning after)
There’s got to be a morning after
(There’s got to be a morning after)

By songwriters Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn