Yesterday, I noted the death of climber Jeff Lowe.  I testified to the power of his life and the lessons we all can draw from living through challenge.  As I thought about his passing, I happened to read a review of a new book about German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.  Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for his remark, which he made at the peak of the rise of modernity in the late nineteenth century that, "God is dead.  And we have all killed him."
     When we dig into the background of Nietzsche's remark, we see that, in truth, he is entirely accurate.  God isn't dead because he no longer exists; he is dead because people no longer believed in him.  As a result, Nietzsche opined, we live in a world devoid of any love, meaning, or affection.

     But a world, Nietzsche insisted, open and amenable to pursuing the highest heights of adventure and challenge.  it is the world of many a mountain climber--and countless others, too.  With the evisceration of the supernatural, humanity has no boundaries, moral or otherwise:  it can be anything it wants to be.  Or not be.
     If we accept the idea of God, we accept the idea of transcendent moral boundary.  If we do not, we accept the idea of humanly engendered moral boundary.  With the former, we have external moral limits; the latter, the limits are all our own.  With the latter, we are remarkably free; with the former, we live under an often ambiguous constraint.
     Either way, however, we live in a fallen and unpredictable world.  Hence, our challenge becomes this:  how many challenges will we accept to achieve perfection in a world that will never know it?  And how will we know when we find it?