This is a striking statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Often, I believe, this is a misunderstood statement. In my studies of Nietzsche, I don’t think he was proclaiming the truth of atheism, but rather something much more profound.

It could be argued that he was writing about the aftermath of enlightenment and the difficulty believing in the modern-day Christian God. Consider, for years, the Christian word was the final word on science, math, the world, politics, ect. Then the enlightenment came around and challenged that. Showing that the then Christian thought process was clearly flawed. So then, the all power word of God, as uttered by the clergy, was being killed; God was, then, dead or dying.

I tend to think that his expression on the death of the immortal is a bit more profound…
I think Nietzsche was trying to illustrate that we as a society, as well as individuals, have become creatures. We create morals (which was once entirely a divine attribute), we create ethics, philosophies, rules of life and action, we discover and define rules of the natural order. Therefore, the death of God is the birth of our responsibility. It is an affirmation of the need for finding oneself and being true and responsible to that ‘self’. When we take on the mantle of creation (which has always been reserved for Godhood), we shoulder the responsibility of that creation. We then determine what has value, or better, what will have meaning and what won’t.

I believe we strive to life to learn to become who and what we are. As Shakespeare put it in the mouth of Macbeth, “I dare do all that may become a man, who dares do more is none.” Or, from another one of my favorites, Walt Whitman’s explanation in Prometheus Unbound:

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with
perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!

This is daunting, if you think about it. So, Nietzsche follows it up with a couple of questions. Essentially, where do we go from here, and , “how shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?” Comforting oneself is difficult, but a necessary part of life. “So, how do you?” There in, as the bard would tell us, lies the rub. Perhaps it gets easier, the further down the path of self-realization. But I believe, our focus just changes and the superfluous worries of life fall away.