Religion itself teaches us that the Ideal toward which all strive sacrificed Himself for humanity, and who shall dare contradict such claims? If we have chosen the position in which we can accomplish the most for Him, then we can never be crushed by burdens, because they are only sacrifices made for the sake of all.

Marx started out as a Christian believer. When he finished high school, the following was written on his graduation certificate under the heading “Religious Knowledge”:

His knowledge of the Christian faith and morals is fairly clear and well grounded. He knows also to some extent the history of the Christian church.

However, in a thesis written at the same time he repeated six times the word “destroy,” which not even one of his colleagues used in the exam. “Destroy” then became his nickname. It was natural for him to want to destroy because he spoke about mankind as “human trash” and said, “No man visits me and I like this, because present mankind may [an obscenity]. They are a bunch of rascals.”

Marx’s First Anti-God Writings

Shortly after Marx received this certificate, something mysterious happened in his life: he became profoundly and passionately antireligious. A new Marx began to emerge.

He writes in a poem, “I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above.”~ So he was convinced that there is One above who rules, but was quarrelling with Him. Yet, the One above had done him no wrong. Marx belonged to a relatively well-to-do family. He had not faced hunger in his childhood. He was much better off than many fellow students. What produced such a terrible hatred for God? No personal motive is known. Was Karl Marx in this declaration only someone else’s mouthpiece? We don’t know.

At an age when most young men have beautiful dreams of doing good to others and preparing a career for themselves, the young Marx wrote the following lines in his poem “Invocation of One in Despair“:

So a god has snatched from me my all,

In the curse and rack of destiny.

All his worlds are gone beyond recall.

Nothing but revenge is left to me.

I shall build my throne high overhead,

Cold, tremendous shall its summit be.

For its bulwark – superstitious dread.

For its marshal – blackest agony.

Who looks on it with a healthy eye,

Shall turn back, deathly pale and dumb,

Clutched by blind and chill mortality,

May his happiness prepare its tomb

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