Are we in America, more and more, getting to be hollow men and women? By hollow, I mean void of true purpose—like a drum making much noise but empty.

Let’s see why this is, even though we live in an age of sky–rocketing technological advances. Personally, as a published poet, every fiber in my soul protests the thought, the notion there is no God.

Hearing the sounds of a musical score by Bach or Beethoven; seeing the burgeoning of spring in its emerald elegance with chirruping robins in a chorus of hope; greeting new life in the miracle of birth; seeing the ebb-tide of a soul about to span the stars in its flight to its Maker, all these cry out from the deepest part of our heart, and we voice with the Psalmist: “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”

However, note that Friedrich Nietzche, the German philosopher of the last century, gave atheism (the root of our troubles, as I see it) a boost when he described his madman running into the town square with his lantern looking under tables and benches, crying out, “Where is God? I can’t find God. God is dead and we have killed him.”

So now, according to this philosophy, we find ourselves in a purely materialistic universe. Angels and demons are laughed off stage and the spirits of men logically disappear with the concept of a dead God.

Hollow? Hopeless? Let us look at the further repercussions of a dead God philosophy.

It’s a foregone conclusion if there are no absolute standards of right and wrong, all feelings of guilt are soon obliterated—wiped out! We do as we please, turn our backs on life itself.

Consider thls tragic story. Our nation laments the loss of 45,000 American combat soldiers in Vietnam, which was horror enough. Yet we show little emotion over nearly an equal amount of abortions in our state last year.

What has snapped in the American psyche that lets our citizens condone things done to unborn babies which they would not permit to be done to the family cat. Hollow men and women? You be the judge.

As I view it, the “God is dead” philosophy has permeated all of our culture.

We can readily see in the world of art the confusion of those who view the so–called masterpieces of the present generation. Many of us can’t understand the squiggles, slashes of color, the strange formations that comprise modem art.

We see a canvas on which is painted a leg sticking up, a dangling foot, an arm in a corner. Then, staring at us is a solitary eye. You wonder if the picture has been hung upside down.

Or again, study the lack of meaning in the realm of much of today’s rock music, a cacophony of unbearable, strident sounds with ear-deafening decibels. This loud-twanging music doesn’t make sense.

This, of course, is only part of the story, part of the many things that tell us we live in an age of hopelessness.

Did you know the No. 1 killer on our college campuses is suicide? In fact, atheism is the death of hope and Leads to a withering of the soul. And if you want to see the ultimate results of this “Godless” philosophy observe the ghoulish Karl Marx regimes of Russia, China, etc.

In the words of one writer: “What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster?”

So what is the answer to this dilemma? My personal experience and conviction is that Christianity reverses aU these negative trends. Christianity gives meaning to life, the ground for reason and provides the removal of guilt, through the death of Jesus Christ, and the free offer of His Salvation.

So, hollow, hopeless citizens, there is hope for you and me if we look to the cross of Calvary. 

Reprinted with permission from the December 10, 1983 Grand Rapids Press. Mr. Walburg is a free lance writer living in Grand Rapids.