God is Dead – The Quest For Meaning
God is Dead
28.03.24
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” (Friedrich Nietzsche).
In the last couple of months, I’ve been rehearsing the same songs over and over again for an upcoming gig.
This week it wasn’t any different, however, when I started playing I was overcome with boredom and frustration.
I just couldn’t bear to play the same thing again!
So I started browsing a few songs on Spotify, for some unknown reason, I remembered this Brazilian guy who I used to love when I was going to the church in my teenage years.
First of all, this guy is a beast with the guitar and a harmony genius – Who is Jacob Collier next to him? haha.
But what was really appealing to me was his views on Christianity and how they were translated into his lyrics.
He’d constantly question the rigid structures imposed by most priests and how they kill a genuine faith and connection with god.
Furthermore, he’d criticize how those megachurches exploit their members.
There’s this particular song that I listened to on repeat Coração de Pedra, translated as Heart of Stone.
The chorus says something like this:
“God no longer lives in temples made by the hand of men, god will never be chained to the walls of a religion.
God no longer lives in temples made by the hand of men, God will never be enclosed in the darkness of those who still have a heart of stone”.
Listen here – João Alexandre – Coração de Pedra
This song took me way back to when I was a teenager still trying to figure out my beliefs around god and the world.
Like many, I couldn’t find my answers inside a religious system, and for a long time, I had to wander alone.
Of course, when I got disillusioned with Christianity, I got into a massive depression as there was nothing else to replace it.
However, I was finally free to craft my own cosmovision.
When Nietzsche states that “God is dead” he’s not referring solely to the Christian god, it’s something much deeper.
You see, for centuries religion gave men a sense of meaning and purpose, but recently it was debunked by the new god of science.
Consequently, old myths, symbols, and metaphors are dying in the hearts of men, and there’s nothing else to ignite the quest for a deeper sense of meaning.
The positivistic paradigm suffocates the soul and puts us at the mercy of the devouring vacuum of nihilism and the dark facet of the unconscious.
Carl Jung explains that a religious system provides a framework for the conscious mind to be protected from the unconscious and also translates our experiences.
However, it’s something ready-made. For some people, it still works as a living thing, but to many, like myself, religion has lost its salvific value.
That’s where Jungian Psychology thrives, as its ultimate goal is to unravel one’s personal myth and be capable of building our own cosmovision.
This is something Jung calls the symbol formation process, in other words, craft our own values and create our unique sense of meaning.
When Jung speaks of god, he is not speaking of a really existent metaphysical ens, but of the psychic image of what constitutes the greatest amount of libido, the highest value operative in a human soul, the imago Dei.
Someone’s god is what structures their whole psyche. As Jung says, “There are men “whose God is the belly” (Phil. 3 : 19), and others for whom God is money, science, power, sex, etc.” (C. G. Jung – V6 – §67).
However, when we don’t actively and consciously engage in this process, we’ll operate with a system that wasn’t crafted by us, or worse, vices, traumas, and addictions will become our gods.
(I talk more about that here – How To Disrupt Any Addiction)
That’s why, I believe we’re here to carve our own paths and create our unique sense of meaning.
This doesn’t mean that we can’t be inspired by old traditions, it simply means that it must be our conscious creation or it won’t bear any true meaning.
The quest for inner truth always takes me to the concept of Pistis, that is, being faithful to the law of our beings.
That’s the main message of my free book PISTIS – Demystifying Jungian Psychology.
It’s worth the read!
Lastly, you can hear one more song. The world deserves to know this guy, haha
João Alexandre – Você pode ter
Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life
Start your journey with Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual
