When we wonder why the language of traditional Christianity has lost its liberating power for nuclear man, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that

man sees himself as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man’s historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip.

Nuclear man no longer believes in anything that is always and everywhere true and valid. He lives by the hour and creates his life on the spot.

man confronted with all this and trying to make sense of it cannot possibly deceive himself with one idea, concept, or thought system which could bring these contrasting images together into one consistent outlook on life.

but he bases his commitment on the conviction that it is better to give your life than to take it,

Here man becomes aware that the choice is no longer between his world or a better world, but between no world or a new world. It is the way of the man who says: Revolution is better than suicide.

There he feels that he belongs to a story of which he knows neither the beginning nor the end,

When Christianity is reduced to an all-encompassing ideology, nuclear man is all too prone to be skeptical about its relevance to his life experience.

In the absence of clear boundaries between himself and his milieu, between fantasy and reality, between what to do and what to avoid, it seems that Peter has become a prisoner of the now, caught in the present without meaningful connections with his past or future.