How Should Christians Respond to the Life and Now the Death of Anti-Christian Polemicists Christopher Hitchens?
December 16, 2011
How Should Christians Respond to the Life and Now the Death of Anti-Christian Polemicists Christopher Hitchens?
By Doug Phillips, President Vision Forum Ministries
He was probably the most famous anti-Christian of the last decade — a man who made his living scoffing at God and encouraging others to do the same. But now Vanity Fair writer and author of God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens, is dead at the age of 62. He will be remembered by most for his sarcasm, biting wit, and ‘indefatigable energy and venomous glee” in the cause of atheism and various contrarian agendas.
How should Christians respond to the life and death of one of our most capable public adversaries?
1. We should remember that despite the perception many had of his brilliance in the cause of Atheism, Hitchens never escaped the reality of the knowledge of the existence of God.
In the death of Hitchens we see the horror of the sin of pride in the face of God’s authority and man’s mortality.
When God created the world, He created it very good. There was neither suffering, nor death. All this changed when man — created in the image of God and the very pinnacle of creation — broke the law of God and plunged himself, his progeny and the world itself into a state of death. In His mercy, God not only sent an eternal solution to the problem of death, but He created man and the universe such that each of his billions of human creations over the span of history would have the clear and unequivocal witness of God upon their conscience such that they were without excuse.
Hitchens’ own battle with cancer was a reminder of this inescapable witness. It was also a reminder of the authority of God over man. It was a call to humility. Certainly Hitchens had opportunities to be humble — family members and adversaries appealed to him in the name of Christ, but his response was to be resolute in his autonomy and mockery of Christ. As his body was decaying and death was looming over the horizon, he continued to reject the God who made him and to publicly minimize the prayers offered on his behalf by others.
The spiritual lostness of Christopher Hitchens was not for want of evidence or logical argument — he had all the evidence and witness and logic in the universe available to him. It was staring him in the eyes, but he irrationally loved his decaying mind and body, more than the witness of the eternal God.
2. We should observe that despite his brilliance, Hitchens was what the Bible describes as a fool.
When I describe Christopher Hitchens as a “fool” I am not mocking or ridiculing him. I am using the very precise and inescapable language of Scripture which declares that” “the fool has said in his heart there is no God.” Only fools deny what is clear because it has been revealed in creation, in their hearts and in the testimony of Scripture. Fools can be brilliant. They can have numerous degrees and diplomas. But all who say in their heart — “there is no God” are fools. Which is why December 15, 2011 marks the death of one of the most outspoken and notorious “fools” of our lifetime.
3. We should note that despite his contrarian perspective, Hitchens was obsessed with God.
Like all outspoken Atheists, Hitchens was a man obsessed with God. Over the course of his life he wrote numerous articles, books, engaged in debates and conducted many interviews — a goal of which was to warn people to see religion as a dangerous blight on humanity, and to free themselves from the “mythology” of Christianity. Hitchens spent most of his life talking about God, ridiculing God and making his income by selling hatred for God through his unique, acerbic wit and acrimonious repartee. All the way to the end, a primary subject of his discussion in interviews was God. He spent his life thinking about a Creator he told others did not exist.
4. We should acknowledge that Hitchens spent his life building on the borrowed capital of Christianity.
Christopher Hitchens, like all skeptics and scoffers, lived, operated and survived in our Father’s world. And while he suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness, he often played by rules and conventions which only make sense in a Christian universe.
Hitchens was a married man. There is no rule of evolution, no principle of atheism which logically leads one to embrace the convention of marriage. Marriage is a divinely ordered creation institution. And yet Hitchens married — twice. Not only did he marry, but he shocked the world by declaring that men should provide for their wives who should be able to stay out of the workforce and live at home with children because they were “the gentler sex.”
Hitchens was a wordsmith who built his life around language and logic — both of which only make sense in a universe created by the God of the Bible. Language as a means of communication designed by God is one reflection of the way in which man is created in the very image of God. It is a reflection of the word-based nature of our Faith and a foundation for understanding truth. Atheists like Hitchens and the scoffers on Mars Hill found in Acts 17 are obsessed with words and with logic, even as they fail to acknowledge that the very laws of logic are only meaningful and transcendent if they are universals, a reality which can only be presumed in a world designed by the Christian God of the Bible.
5. We should be clear that the death of Hitchens is not a time for Christians to rejoice or ridicule. It is a time for sorrow, compassion, sobriety and greater resolution.
The death of Hitchens is not a time for rejoicing, or joking, or chest-puffing by Christians who for years were the object of Mr. Hitchens unique brand of vicious sarcasm. Whatever disagreements advocates for Christ have with Mr. Hitchens, those differences have all been resolved, though with a tragic result. To the best of our knowledge Hitchens remained a scoffer and God-hater to his last breath. This is a loss to all true believers who desire that none should perish.
When believers pass from this life to the next there is reason for rejoicing, even in the midst of sorrow. The Bible says that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” But when a fool and a scoffer dies, the Christian’s posture must be one of special sobriety and holy fear before the Lord.
Each of us will face our maker, and when we do, it will not be our choices, our merits, our opinions or our deeds which will matter as to the question of the state of our eternal soul. All that will matter is whether or not we were saved by the grace of God.
Those who were saved by the finished work of Jesus Christ will not brag. There will be no “I told you so’s” in heaven. Nor will there be any sense of vindication that we were right and our critics were wrong. Our sole focus will be on the God who saved us and redeemed us and the gratitude and worship which is owed to Him.
And this perspective of humility, gratitude and worship, I believe, is the correct posture of the Christians on earth who watch as the enemies of Christ pass from this world into the next, and face the living God.
Christopher Hitchens and the Ultimate Question
At the end of the day, the issues of life can be boiled down into two or three fundamental questions dealing with ultimate authority. Every human must address these questions.
Christopher Hitchens spent his life asking one of those fundamentals, the same question Pilot asked: “What is truth?”
For millennia, this has been the question of philosophers, critics, and yes fools, who insist that this question may only be answered on terms that establish them, and their puny intellects, as the final arbiters of what is right and what is wrong.
Hitchens never found the answer. And that is an eternal loss.
1. Gen 1:31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
2. Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned
3. Rom 5:15-17 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.); Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
4. Rom 1:16-23 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
5. Ps 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.; Ps 53:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.
6. Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold [hold down] the truth in unrighteousness;(see definition of “hold” below:)
NT:2722 κατεχω katecha hold firm, hold back (from Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament © 1990 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved.) b) The vb. is more frequently used figuratively: 1) negatively, of those who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18), of the power of the law “by which we were held [captive]” (7:6; cf. Gal 3:23; H. Schlier, Rom [HTKNT] ad loc.); ® 4 on 2 Thess 2:6 f.; and 2) positively in the parenetic direction to hold fast “the word” (Luke 8:15; not in par. Mark/Matthew), “the traditions ” (1 Cor 11:2), “the gospel ” (15:2), “that which is good ” (1 Thess 5:21), or the confidence and hope of the confession (Heb 3:6,14 [meaning uncertain]; 10:23). (from Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament © 1990 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved.)
7. Gen 2:18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.; Matt 19:5-6 For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
8. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
9. 1 Thess 4:13-18 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
10. Psalm 115:16