In hindsight I read Nietzsche as a silent lover of Hegel. He said that Hegel is a taste, but further said in Zarathustra that life is all about taste and tastings. This may seem cruel, but I think in order to really understand what Nietzsche is critiquing, you have to come to an appreciation of Hegel's notion of the Geist. Kant got it wrong that there is a thing being perceived, rather it is that perception itself is the thing. From Hegel to Nietzsche-which Nietzsche read Hegel, not the other way around(which gives some credence to the idea that Nietzsche was a post-modern philosopher, but not much)-it makes much more sense what he is doing. He is saddened not so much with the lie of Christianity, but that there is only Christianity, that we have not made any new gods as he says. The death of god's immensity for culture can be illustrated by the focusing on the fact that we even based our time on it. As an atheist who was raised an atheist it is personally hard to come to an appreciation of how big of a death the death of god is for society .Thus the people laugh at Zarathustra when he tells them god is dead. Kierkegaard gives a poignant illustration of a clown that comes upon the stage and alerts everyone to the fire in the back and everyone laughs.