So how can we prevent our theological convictions from turning into some sort of Sartrean “bad faith” in the face of tragedy, suffering, and existential despair? Although a great many responses come to mind, this one is perhaps the most apt: Learn from those who have suffered greatly and kept the faith.

Several years ago, I was in Bath, England, with some friends to visit the ancient city and investigate a few Jane Austen haunts. While strolling around, I found my way into St. Michael’s Church, in which there was a contemporary art exhibition of some local artists. One piece in particular caught my attention. It was a shark engulfing a man down to his ankles. Although I can’t remember the artist’s name, the title definitely stuck with me: “Biography Shapes Theology.”

The more I read the history of philosophy and theology, the more I become convinced that biography has a disproportionate—but all too often unacknowledged—effect on an individual’s worldview. Case in point: Friedrich Nietzsche. He was born in Röcken, Germany, in 1844 into a pious Lutheran family, and his father was the community’s pastor.

“[My father] was the perfect picture of a country parson, gifted in spirit and heart, adorned with all the virtues of a Christian,” Nietzsche later recalled. The young Friedrich adored his father, Carl Ludwig, but then tragedy struck. In 1849, Carl died from an excruciating brain disease. The young boy struggled to understand why his faithful father had to leave the world in such great pain. Nietzsche’s brother, Joseph, died a year later. His doubts about Christianity began to grow. Friedrich, his mother, and sister were forced out of the parsonage to make it on their own. They were reduced to living with his imperious grandmother.

Nietzsche, for the time being, remained interested in the Christianity lessons he was required to take at his boarding school. His piano compositions included texts from the Psalms. By the time he had entered the University of Bonn, however, the years of creeping doubt in the aftermath of his tragic story proved to be too much. Although he went to Bonn to study theology, he abandoned the pursuit in favor of philology.

So often, evangelicals portray Nietzsche as some sort of monster filled with unreflective hate towards theism in general or Christianity in particular. But if you go back to the beginnings of his apostasy, you will find a great deal of regret after losing his faith. “Where is God?” he writes in The Gay Science, and continues:

I will tell you. We have killed him, you and I. We are his murderers. But what were we thinking when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we moving to now? Away from all suns? We are continually then, all of us, falling. Backwards and forwards, and sideways. Is there even still an up or a down?

This is a lament, not a broadside. And there can be no doubt that Nietzsche’s journey away from his father’s orthodoxy emerged in response to his father’s tragedy.

Simply put, experience is a tempting but poor substitute for theological prolegomena.

Diminished Life

This is the persistent story of heresy. Life takes an unexpected turn, anxieties mount, and fears that God isn’t there grow. Deus Revelatus yields to Deus Absconditus. We believe that God’s silence or hiddenness means divine antipathy or impotence.

Consequently, we lash out. Heterodoxy is definitely Freudian, too. We try to kill the Father by saying his Word isn’t true or his character isn’t good, but after the attacks and the assaults, God is still there and sovereign. Only the quality of our life has diminished.

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