The Wisdom of Christopher Hitchens

Author and renowned Atheist Christopher Hitchens died last Thursday. He was outspoken against God and the gospel, finding the entire idea of substitutionary atonement completely repulsive.

I was listening to the NPR news piece about his life and death while driving last evening and heard several things that fascinated me about the man. One was his recount of what it was that first turned him away from belief in God. A teacher at his school when he was nine years old, according to Hitchens, explained that God had made the grass and leaves green as a gift to mankind. He told C-SPAN:

"She says, 'This is an excellent thing and proof of the glory of God, because he could have made vegetation orange or red, something that would clash with our eyes, whereas green is the most restful color for our eyes!' And I sat there in my little corduroy shorts, and I thought, that's absolute nonsense."

Strike one for apologetics. This is the best reason for not using apologetics in trying to convince people of the existence of God. As a former Atheist, I can tell you that no intellectual argument, regardless of how sound it may seem to the mind of the believer, is going to truly convince people of the existence of God. If it were able to intellectually convince them of the existence of God, it still cannot lead them to redemption – only the gospel can do that. And from experience I can tell you that the scriptural gospel can penetrate even the hardened heart of the intellectual. Only the gospel can do that.

Interestingly, Hitchens intrinsically understood some of scripture’s great presuppositions. In 2007, he compared what he called “this supposed God” to the North Korean dictatorship - "an absolutely impermeable dictatorship that couldn't even be criticized, let alone overthrown, that went on forever, that supervised and invigilated your every waking moment and would not stop torturing you even after you were dead. To wish this to be true is to wish to be a slave."

Compare that to the language of Paul in Galatians 3 and Hitchens was three-quarters of the way there: “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” (Galatians 3:23 ESV) Hitchens had recognized a truth that many Christians still have not dealt with; God has enslaved the world under His law. I am sure that Hitchens heard many times over how much God loved him, but intellectually it was impossible to get past that fact that God, when approached on the basis of law (the only basis he could understand) is an impossible task-master. Intellectuals tend to recognize this and avoid God specifically because of it, where your run-of-the-mill believer finds the idea of slavery preposterous. The mushy love of God we frequently preach has none of the audaciousness of biblical grace that destroyed the dictatorship of law and fear.

He recognized one other thing that many Christians fail to realize – that Christianity is not moral. Not that it is immoral, but it might be more accurate to describe it a supramoral; above morality. Late in his life, as he battled cancer, he said this: "Under no persuasion could I be made to believe that a human sacrifice several thousand years ago vicariously redeems me from sin. Nothing could persuade me that that was true — or moral, by the way. It's white noise to me." He was correct. There is nothing moral (morality being man’s sense of right and fair) about the substitutionary death of Christ. It is preposterous from a human standpoint. And that is the very thing that makes it so amazing. When we moralize the gospel, we strip it of amazing.

I am sorry that Hitchens had to die lost (if he did). He was a man of incredible intellect and courage. But he leaves lessons that we may use to consider how we should reach people like him for the gospel. I am sure that he was very hardened toward the gospel and would never have allowed anyone to get very far into it without shutting them down. Still, I can’t help wondering what might have happened if the teacher who had soft-peddled apologetics to his class had instead introduced them to Paul’s gospel? What could a man with his gifts have done for the Kingdom?

God Bless