top of page

Crutch- God is Dead

Updated: Oct 23

Religion is often dismissed as a crutch—a relic of humanity’s superstitious past, something we invented to make sense of a world we once feared. In our modern, secular age, these myths are seen as outdated fragments, no longer needed in a world governed by science, logic, and reason. We claim to have freed ourselves from the shackles of the divine, from the notions of good and evil, sin and salvation. Now, we stand confident in our rational minds, convinced we grasp reality in its totality. Yet with the crutch removed, we find ourselves stumbling.


In this so-called freedom, we despair.


Nietzsche’s haunting proclamation, "We have killed him—God is dead," wasn’t a triumphant cry, but a warning. In casting aside the divine, we didn’t just shed outdated beliefs—we lost the entire moral and mythic framework that gave life meaning. Now, unchained from God, we drift. Without the divine, we are reduced to mere animals, surviving in a world of cold logic and ruthless competition, with no higher purpose to guide us. We thought we’d liberated ourselves, but instead, we’re adrift—lost, isolated, and unsure of who we really are.


Yet as Iain McGilchrist has shown in 'The Matter With Things', science, logic, and reason can only take us so far. In focusing exclusively on the rational, we have forgotten the importance of intuition, of knowing with the heart. We have lost our sense of awe, adoration, and the kind of knowledge that allows us to be both loved and to love. Beyond the limits of scientific understanding lies a deeper truth—one that cannot be fully grasped by intellect alone. It is in our openness to the mysterious, to the sacred, that we rediscover what truly makes us human.


We may have killed God, or the idea of God, but we have not killed love. Love—mysterious, ungraspable, transcendent—remains. And in love, we are drawn back to what we thought we had lost: the sense of the sacred, the divine spark that gives life its meaning. Love isn’t just an overexcited firing of neurons, a chemical quirk of the brain—it is the heartbeat of the universe, the pulse that runs through everything. Yes, we are but dust, but we are dust that loves. And in that love, we touch something eternal.


Love points us toward something greater, something real and credible that logic cannot fully explain. It invites us out of ourselves, calls us to sacrifice, to give, and to belong to something larger than our small, isolated selves. In love, we encounter the divine—the mystery that still speaks to our restless hearts, even in a world that claims to have moved beyond God. The crucified one, the symbol of self-giving love, still calls to us. We thought we’d silenced him, but his voice remains, calling us home. And in love, we might just find our way back to the sacred, to the mystery that has never left us—even in the absence of the God we thought we had killed.


At present

I know partially;

then I shall know fully,

as I am fully known.

So faith, hope, love remain, these three;

but the greatest of these is love.


-Rev'd Jon Swales, 2024



0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating
bottom of page