A Change of Focus

What is your life-defining focus?

There once was a madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning sun. He ran to the marketplace and shouted, “I’m looking for God!” They laughed at the man and scoffed, “Is he lost? Is he hiding? Has he gone on vacation?” The madman whirled on them and said, “I’ll tell you where he is! We’ve killed him, you and I.”

This is a condensed and slightly altered version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Parable of the Madman” from his book The Gay Science. And I understand completely if you think a reference Nietzsche is an odd way to begin the penitential season of Lent. After all, Nietzsche was an atheist.

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

And yet, I think it’s the perfect place to start. That’s because the most basic thing that so many of us need to repent is our unacknowledged atheism. This is going to take some explanation. So, let’s look first at what we mean by sin, then we’ll take up the idea of repentance.

Many of us think of sin as breaking the moral law. And strictly, this is correct. Murde…