In addition to Freud’s atheism, there are many others, including Nietzsche, Barthes, and Foucault, who argue that God is a contradiction to life, for the death of the Author, and that the strategic alignments of power interests are out to control knowledge, relationships, and truth. While these thinkers have some salient insights, their wayward conclusions have contributed to the cultural construction and propagation of a cynical, pessimistic, and decentered self. Yet, in the face of such views, the counter-cultural and always avant-garde perspective of Christian promise and hope defies this manufactured status quo. Destroying idols and listening to symbols is one of the keys that unlock Living spirituality and possibilities for engaging God. When this takes place we are no longer trapped within a network of self – other power plays that exploit us, but we are embraced by a Divine love without measure, where freedom leads to redemption and transformation. Being loved in this manner supplies us with a new self and an identity that goes far beyond any of our own making.
