The Godless Congregants

http://news.yahoo.com/atheist-mega-churches-root-across-us-world-214619648.html

http://missoulian.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/religion/atheist-mega-churches-effort-spreads-in-u-s-after-success/article_ad9199fe-5395-11e3-ab58-001a4bcf887a.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/atheist-mega-churches/3489967/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliyahu-federman/atheist-megachurches-may-_b_4278761.html

Should I ever have the misfortune of becoming an atheist (you'll have to indulge me in a quick hypothetical flight-of-fancy), the first thing I should want to do is reclaim my Sunday mornings. I would want to sleep as long as possible and perhaps indulge in a weekly half-dozen donuts or some French Toast. If I decided that it would be a good day to spend with friends, I would want to wait, at the very least, until the afternoon. Second, even as an atheist I should want to immediately acknowledge that the Jews and Christians have gotten at least one thing right, and that is the beautiful idea of the Sabbath. Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, so also the God of Israel, fabricated pseudo-deity that He is, somehow got one thing right. Why would anyone argue with a religion that is dogmatic about the fact that its adherents ought to get some rest?

I have been left utterly dumbfounded, therefore, as I have read (or skimmed) story after story about the sudden, unexpected rise in "Godless Mega-Churches" across the United States. At the very least, it is an admirable piece of publicity. Whenever a number of almost identical “news” stories about anything that is not really news begin appearing across the journalistic spectrum, one must really assume that it really has more to do with a sudden influx of capital into a marketing department than anything truly alarming. Further, I happen to know, from those who have had the misfortune to attend, that these sorts of congregations have been around for years, and though they may have grown, they remain just as inexplicably self-defeating as ever.

It’s not a particularly big deal, of course. It is not as if Christians ought to feel in any way intimidated by the fact that the godless have chosen to imitate them. Flattered, maybe, but confused, certainly. That a person should want to waste a perfectly good Sunday morning in celebrating something as incorporeal as a lack of belief is almost impossible for me to believe; as strange as if an historian suddenly began devoting a day each week to acknowledge that they refuse to believe in the War of 1812. I suppose it shouldn’t matter much to me that they refuse to believe in the event, but it is undeniably strange (and a bit sad) that they should feel like it is worth wasting a perfectly good weekend in celebrating.

But there is precedent for all of this. There was a strange tendency after the French Revolution, a time in which secularism seemed to have taken a foothold among the French (though only after the brutal murder of hundreds of priests and bishops—an achievement which ought to haunt the skeptic much in the same way the crusades haunt the Christian), to sell churches at public auction and to turn churches into “halls of reason”. Suffice it to say the effort was brief and destined for failure, though that didn’t stop it from being copied, first in Communist Russia and now, of course, in America.

Yes, these ill-fated “cults of reason”, after dying quickly in France (after their absurdity was realized), have been revived in America (and, according to many of the articles, in a number of other “progressive” nations), where it seems our godless communities are forever slow to learn the lessons of history.

I see only two possible explanations for the current influx of anti-god churches (and I suspect that the truth involves a combination of the two): First, I think that, in part, it is all intended as a parody, though as parodies are generally supposed to be funny, one can only assume that this particular parody has been either poorly considered or poorly executed (or both). As far as I know, having (thankfully) not exposed myself directly to these cults, there is nothing particularly funny about these services. Second, and far more important, I would suspect that there is a very genuine desire, even among the godless, to experience the beautiful things that have always been found perfectly naturally within Christianity, but which are only rarely tasted by those on the outside. It is about time, quite frankly, that the skeptic  should come around to understand this.

Christ told His disciples that they would be known for their love for one another, and this remains true today. The love of God, shared between believers, continues to be the defining feature of true Christianity, and it is often demonstrated in our Sunday gatherings. Indeed, this love has long been one of the forces most capable of drawing the wandering masses to the church. It was only a matter of time before someone outside the church considered that they might be able to fabricate this love by imitating the communion of the saints, even if it means leaving out both communion and saintliness.

I can only assume that these services have perfectly mastered some of the superficialities of the church—they surely have talented musicians leading the masses in hymns devoted to nothingness; they likely have inspiring “sermons” by talented motivational speakers. But I can only imagine that attending these services must be something like spending an evening at a movie theater, with arms full of candy and soda, only to find that someone has forgotten the film. I hardly envy someone being forced to stare at a blank screen.

It really should be the most obvious statement in the world, but God is the only thing that makes a church service worthwhile; without Him, there really can be no church. One may go for community, but it is only a belief in God that allow for a true community; it is only the example of His love that allows true love between brothers and sisters. To be perfectly honest, if it was not for the very presence of God, it would take a team of oxen to drag me to church. And yet, it is one of God’s great modern miracles that I do not merely go to church; I go joyfully, because He is there.

To make this phenomenon even stranger, it has been said that these new congregations have been known to draw, not just the purely godless, but also those who fall into the "spiritual but not religious" camp. But this is to be expected, for one can hardly imagine a sadder or more misguided camp than this, and while the Christian ought generally desire to see the Christian church filled with all types of people, these included, I have always found it difficult to understand or explain those who have lost all sense of truth and fallen into the deep, dark pit of “spirituality”; those who reject the objective, of whom God said, “because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth”.

Now, being aware of all this—that the Christian church is only worthwhile because of the presence of God, and that it only stands because it is built upon an objective truth—it is difficult to feel any fear or intimidation about these congregations. One can hardly compare a momentary, bitter, flash-in-the-pan imitation movement to the one, true, consistent Church that has been growing and thriving for 2,000 years, showing no signs of stopping. No matter how much momentary media attention they may garner now, the fad of secular churches and godless congregations is destined to destruction, for one cannot conceivably unite over a belief in nothing. Just as schoolboys may find momentary pleasure in forming clubs, uniting over the giddy simplicity of themes such as, "No Girls Allowed", it is inevitable that they will discover, later, that girls may not be so bad after all, so also will godless churches inevitably collapse under the realization that they were founded under a premise that could never carry any weight. 

The Glory of Man

The Literature of the Heretics, pt. 7

“Probably the most daunting task that we face, as partly rational animals with adrenal glands that are too big and prefrontal lobes that are too small, is the contemplation of our own relative weight in the scheme of things. Our place in the cosmos is so unimaginably small that we cannot, with our miserly endowment of cranial matter, contemplate it for too long.” – Christopher Hitchens

“Of course, it could be argued that humans are more capable of, for example, suffering than other species. This could well be true, and we might legitimately give humans special status by virtue of it. But evolutionary continuity shows that there is no absolute distinction. Absolutist moral discrimination is devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution.” – Richard Dawkins

“What is man that you are mindful of him?” asks King David in Psalm 8, “...and the son of man that you care for him?” These are questions that man has wrestled with for exactly as long as he’s existed as man. Where are we, as human beings, to be placed among the vast panoply of living creatures? Furthermore, who are we to even ask such questions as these?

It never ceases to surprise me that these sorts of questions can still incite such bitter disagreement; they are questions that prove almost endlessly divisive with certain audiences, and how they are answered reveals a great deal about a person’s preconceptions and prejudices.

I, for one, believe very strongly in the intrinsic glory of mankind. I believe, and not only because the Bible says so, that human beings hold a unique place, both among the creatures of the Earth, and in the universe at large. Man is the nothing less than the height of all creation; the apex of all that is and all that ever will be outside of heaven.

A small part of me can see why some would find this statement controversial (and, strangely, politically incorrect), but the rest of me understands that it is nothing more than the most natural belief in the world. It is a belief often (derisively) associated with faith, but it really is the very opposite of a statement taken on faith—it is the only conclusion backed up by tangible evidence. It is a thing that an innocent child, born into the world and not in any way predisposed to believe or not to believe in either science or religion, would automatically assume. An innocent could only look at the world and see the vast gulf between man and animal and it would take no measure of faith at all to assume that there was something unique about man. They would gaze into the heavens and they would find no evidence to suggest that the ground on which they stood was anything but the most remarkable place in the universe.

What requires faith is to take the opposite stance. The heretics go to great lengths to remind their readers that they (both author and reader alike) are nothing special; they are mere mammals communicating with other mammals. That they have evolved something like speech is nothing to be boastful about; it is simply what nature has accomplished. That they are able to sit in their studies behind their computer monitors and ponder the truth of their own existence is nothing at all to be boastful about. It is no different than a dolphin whistling a tune into the vast sea—well, different in degree, maybe, but certainly not in kind.

If ever one wants to truly rile a humanist, one need only tell them that there is something somehow important about their humanity. Christopher Hitchens calls it an “obvious” atrocity that the theist should believe in Himself as privileged among creation. He thinks it ignorant that we should believe there to be anything special about our planet. But why should anyone be so sensitive to humans being pleased by their humanity? Why should anyone treat it as if it were some great sin (if that word is appropriate) to believe in human uniqueness?

And this goes doubly so for those who believe that it is somehow in bad taste to indulge in a little “cosmic anthropocentrism”. Even at the risk of offending the undiscovered “other” beings on other worlds, perhaps in other galaxies (or other universes?), I have no problem stating emphatically that man is unique among the creatures just as the earth is unique among the planets. Man is unique among the creatures of the earth because he alone has stepped beyond reason and created art and mythology; the earth is unique among the planets because it has man (and cedar forests and rolling, lavender covered hills and a few other things that we have not yet found elsewhere).

Hitchens demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of history than when he says that, “We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.” The truth is not nearly as dramatic as historians like to believe: Galileo did nothing more profound than provide evidence to confirm the existing theory that the earth revolved around the sun (something that would certainly have been determined within a few years even without him). Any impact beyond this is mere extrapolation by scientists and philosophers with agendas other than discovering truth.

The case of Galileo does present an interesting dilemma for the Christian, of course, and it really ought to be briefly dealt with, once and for all: The church (for reasons I have trouble fully understanding) once had a difficult time accepting the revelation that the Earth might revolve around another body. They thought it somehow harmful to the faith to discover that we were not a stationary body around which the universe rotated. This led, of course, to the famous Galileo incident, which the heretics bring up time and again, as if it somehow encompasses the absolute worst moment of the church’s history. Reading a humanist account of the “persecution” of Galileo (which consisted of a comfortable house arrest and a less-than-forceful denouncement) leads one to almost believe that the Crusades and Inquisition were summer picnics in comparison. Kill as many heretics as you want, but don’t touch the scientists. Nevertheless, it is worth admitting that the church was clearly in the wrong in the case of Galileo, but only because it is indicative of a greater problem: the church has long focused on things that really don’t matter. We should have had far more important things to think about than what some Italian astronomer was saying about the solar system, but we got bogged down by it and are still reeling from the effects today.

How could it possibly have hurt the church to learn that the sun is at the geographic center of our solar system? What do we lose when the Earth moves out of the center and we are made smaller and (seemingly) more insignificant in relation to the size of the universe?

Nothing at all is lost. In fact, much truth can be gained by this understanding. The church ought to have been wise enough to see the benefit of what Galileo was demonstrating: that we, the glory of God’s creation, are but atoms in relation to the universe. But we do not need to be great or geographically centered, for when we are made less, God is made more (John the Baptist was on to something with his beautiful statement, “He must increase and I must decrease”). The size of the universe makes it all the more remarkable that He should care anything at all for us.

So, on the cosmic level, we may not be at the center of things, but we remain unique and privileged. Telescope after telescope continue to be built to scan the heavens for planets outside of our solar system, and scores have been found already, the result being that we remain unique. Dead planet after dead planet is discovered and catalogued; we land rovers on dead planets in our own solar system that may have once been covered in water, and yet we remain unique, for water is not the thing that makes the earth unique. Man is.

I’ve heard countless accusations of “human arrogance” or “anthropocentrism”—but the reality is that there are really few things more beautiful than anthropocentrism. There are few things more comforting than the knowledge that we, the highest of creation (to say otherwise requires a particularly blind sort of faith) hold a special place in the universe. The sun may not revolve around the Earth, but there is nothing on the sun, nor on any other planet in our solar system, that has ever taken the time to understand this. Like it or not, we are the center of the solar system, and we are the center of the known universe.

How is the Christian to respond to this? To many, anthropocentrism is akin to pride, and that is what must be guarded against. The most perfect response comes, as it often does, in the Psalms, reflecting, not the small, human-centered universe that the heretic believes was taught by the early church, but a vast, awesome place:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

And crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen,

And also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

What is this but a perfect statement of a perfect paradox: the glory and the humility of man? Our true place in the universe can only ever be understood in our relationship with God; and because I believe in this, I have no problem reaffirming that science alone cannot capture the awe and splendor of creation. And that’s a pity.

The Disdain for What Was

The Literature of the Heretics, pt. 4

One thing I have never understood—that I freely admit to never having understood—is the vehemence with which the heretics denounce beliefs about nature that do not conform to their own. When I say this I am not referring to their opposition to their contemporaries, like myself, who disagree (they have every right to disagree vehemently with me). Rather, I mean their strange reverence for the shifting of historical paradigms and the consistent change of perspective brought about by nothing more complex than the passage of time.

The heretics—at least, some heretics—simply cannot bring themselves to believe that anyone could have been ignorant enough to ever have believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system (or the universe), or that matter was made up of anything but atoms. They stand on their high-horses and ridicule anyone who came before them, not merely as the products of a less-enlightened age—but as malicious contributors to the stunting of knowledge.

I am referring, of course, to the concept commonly called “chronological snobbery,” as made famous by C.S. Lewis, who rightly considered it one of the hallmarks of the heretic. There is a decided inability to empathize with our predecessors in thought or deed; a decided lack of understanding of the movement of history and how things have really played out.

I made special note before to say that this particular trap only ensnared some heretics. I am focusing here specifically on Christopher Hitchens, who is an offender to the point that some of his more clear-minded acolytes really ought to have pointed out how petty he had begun to sound. On the other hand, at least in this area, I can give some credit to Richard Dawkins, who at various points actually acknowledges his separation from the past. For example, when mentioning Lord Kelvin’s theory that the earth could not be billions of years old or else the sun would have spent all of its fuel, Dawkins notes, “Kelvin obviously could not be expected to know about nuclear energy.” Of course he couldn’t.

Likewise, when discussing the “changing moral Zeitgeist,” Dawkins makes an astute observation: “The American invasion of Iraq is widely condemned for its civilian casualties, yet those casualty figures are orders of magnitude lower than comparable numbers for the Second World War. There seems to be a steadily shifting standard of what is morally acceptable. Donald Rumsfeld, who sounds so callous and odious today, would have sounded like a bleeding-heart liberal if he had said the same things during the Second World War.” While I am certain that I disagree with the argument Dawkins is ultimately making, he raises an interesting point: we cannot ultimately comment on history through the lens of the twenty-first century.

Now, consider those relatively magnanimous comments compared with just a few of the cringe-worthy denunciations of Hitchens:

“The early fathers of faith (they made very sure that there would be no mothers) were living in a time of abysmal ignorance and fear.”

“Aquinas...was convinced that the fully formed nucleus (not that he would have known the word as we do) of a human being was contained inside each individual sperm.”

“Augustine was a self-centered fantasist and an earth-centered ignoramus: he was guiltily convinced that god cared about his trivial theft from some unimportant pear trees, and quite persuaded—by an analogous solipsism—that the sun revolved around the earth.”

The last seems to me to be the most egregious. Disagreeing (even vehemently disagreeing) with Augustine’s theology is one thing—a thing that wouldn’t bother me in the least—but what sort of snob does it take to criticize a man for saying that sun revolved around the earth in a time when everyone said that the sun revolved around the earth? And what possible reason could Hitchens have for being so upset that Augustine felt guilty for stealing fruit? Hitchens, like many of his scientific colleagues, also frequently derides ancient scientists for refusing to believe in atomism, even though it was proposed by Democritus in the fifth century, B.C., ignoring the fact that no one believed it because there was no evidence for it.     

There is the assumption (and Hitchens was not alone in believing it) that to believe such things as geocentrism (the idea that the sun revolves around the earth rather than the other way around) or to fail to believe in atomism could only have been a product of ignorance brought about by dogma—but the truth is exactly the opposite: I would be far more inclined to ridicule any foolish pre-Galilean astronomer deluded enough to believe in anything but geocentrism, or any pre-Newtonian naive enough to put any amount of faith into atomism. The humanist makes a great deal out of common sense, and from the perspective of man before the invention of the telescope there was no reason, apart from pure love of dissent, to believe in anything but that the Earth was at the center. The early astronomers were not being willfully ignorant in their beliefs; they were being observant, which, I understand, is something generally applauded in science.

Would any of us be foolish enough to ridicule the darkness of Dickensian London because they had not yet mastered the incandescent light? Do we think, as we read Great Expectations, that someone really ought to have just flipped a switch and so do away with that dreaded gloom? Should we mock them for thinking that they had achieved anything at all with their primitive gas lamps when there are such greater sources of light to be discovered? There is a pitiful perception that time has made humanity wiser, more intelligent, and less prone to being duped, when the truth is that we simply know more. We have no greater capacity for knowledge—we simply have a greater (and often contradictory) body of knowledge through which to sift.

It did not take two thousand years for science to reach its present state because it was stifled by dogma or because it was persecuted by the church. In fact, apart from isolated incidents that are given more than their due weight, science really has not been persecuted by the church. So few are the actual occurrences, in fact, that Hitchens had to stoop to making one up: “Atomism was viciously persecuted throughout Christian Europe for many centuries, on the not unreasonable ground that it offered a far better explanation of the natural world than did religion.” Suffice it to say, this didn’t happen at all. Atomism was never persecuted. No, science was not held back by religion, it was held back by the fact that it took people a while to figure things out.

Though it may be common among the heretics, Hitchens’ snobbery seems especially egregious, as he seems to imply that, in a similar situation, he would surely have easily seen through the “ruse” of superstition. Had he been born centuries earlier he would have been the exception; the revolutionary able to see the world as it truly was. But he would not have. If he really believes at all in reason he would have looked into the sky and come to the conclusion that the earth was at the center of things. He would have looked at the material world and decided that it could not possibly have been made of atoms. He would be the same ignorant fool that he derides.

Suffice it to say, I can’t help but think that this chronological snobbery plays a large role in preventing people from believing in God. There is a strange sense, and I have written about it several times before, that we, as human beings, have become something unique; that we are somehow different from all who came before us. There is a sense that we have the right to mock our primitive ancestors and their primitive beliefs because we have come to know and understand so much. Suffice it to say that there is no real evidence to support these conclusions. The truth, if one cares to really look at it, is humbling. We may know a few more facts about the world, we may have unlocked a few more of the universe’s gears and pulleys, but in fact we have gotten nowhere. We think that we have understood enough to supplant God in the minds of the people, relegating Him to a “God in the gaps” but in truth we have only just begun to realize how big those gaps truly are, and just how big a God would be needed to fill them. We believe that we are inching our way closer and closer to the eternal, but the fact is that our advancements might come in leaps and bounds and yet the eternal will remain the eternal.  

If the situation demands anything it is precisely the reverse of chronological snobbery. We ought to be humbled by a history that shows humanity leaping every hurdle to obtain knowledge and understanding; to shine the light of understanding into the darkness. It must be disheartening to the humanist that the majority of his fellow humans have not yet accepted the glory of self-worship. It must seem strange to the devoted secularist that the world remains religious despite the tremendous achievements of science. The fact is that reason is not all it’s made out to be. Faith is on the rise, and no appeals to science or reason have stemmed the tide; and almost certainly the petty arguments of a few heretics don’t seem to be doing much either.

The Literature of the Heretics

Part 1

It is impossible to understand, let alone face, an enemy that one has ignored.

The difficulty faced by many Christians today, who seem as bold as ever in standing up to the heresy of skeptics is that they have never actually bothered to listen to the skeptic. This is as general a truth as they come: the Christian is far more likely to be found reading the words of those with whom they generally agree than of those who oppose them. We tend to flock, like swallows to Capistrano, to the words and arguments that reinforce the ideas we already hold.

I don’t say this because I think that it is a generally bad thing. After all, the famous heretics of today must have become famous because their heresies are powerful; they have demonstrated an ability to shake the faith of their readers. And though I would never say that there is anything for the Christian to fear from skeptical literature—really, I believe that it is the other way around: an atheist ought to be extraordinarily careful about what he reads if he is to guard his faith—I can nevertheless understand those who do fear it, who are afraid—deathly afraid—that by so much as cracking the spine of The Origin of the Species they might be ingesting the poison of doubt—a slow-acting, bitter concoction that will lead to the death of faith. So we close our minds to the ideas of the heretics.

For some these fears are well-founded: the heretics who create literature are very good at preying on the fears of weak believers, and the power of their words are only increased by their certainty. They state things as facts; they make every point as if one would be a superstitious fool to disagree; just as the humanist scientist knows that, if he is to disprove faith, he need only confidently state that he has already done so.

What I have discovered, though, is that one blessedly reaches a point in their faith where the confidence of the heretic is no longer sufficient ammunition to be led astray. While the weak and the new—those Paul admonishes for craving spiritual milk rather than solid food—might find ample reason to abandon their faith when faced with well-written heresy (and should therefore seek only edifying words), the mature believer need not fall prey to such false fear. Eventually one can explore the literature of the heretics freely, to understand them in order to reach the steady hand of the gospel into a non-believing world.

It was in this spirit that I spent several years seeking the truth about science, only to find that our progress in science has provided neither an implicit denial of God, nor explicit evidence against His role in our lives. Science, I learned, is perfectly harmless, once one gets past the scientist’s assertions that he stands on the cusp of destroying God once and for all. I can say with confidence that there is nothing to this because I have sought the truth for myself.

Now I have begun down the same path in exploring the literature of the unbelievers. There are certain pieces of literature that, if the assertions of the skeptics are to be believed, amount to an almost absolute destruction of the faith; modern documents that prove, once and for all, that God has no place in our lives or our world. There are men who are as much prophets and priests of the secular world as have ever been found in Christendom.

My next several posts will be spent in addressing some of the claims made in two of the most popular of these works: Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Hitchens, who died in 2011 and now understands the tragedy of his life’s work, was as famous for his wit as for his humanism; he appears to have been likeable as a person, but incendiary as an opponent to religion. Dawkins, on the other hand, takes a more scientific approach to speak against faith, having written numerous books on the evidence of natural selection in addition to cataloguing the social evils of religion.

Both of these books, I readily admit, I have read in their entirety. And, I can say without hesitation, I am no closer to abandoning my faith than I was when I began the first pages.

I am not, of course, the sort of reader either of these men had in mind when they wrote their books. In almost any persuasive work there is the understanding that the arguments will be the most effective against the undecided or the fence-straddlers. A polemic against Christianity is far more likely to mollify those who already share the belief than to sway those who are already Christians; these books, like the pleadings of politicians, are meant for those who take the middle-ground. Their arguments will far more readily persuade those who already had lingering doubts than those who have faced and conquered their doubt.

Of course, Hitchens considered the difficulty somewhat differently: "Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design)." He is forgetting, of course, of those "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" who were converted later in life rather than indoctrinated in their youth--a remarkably bountiful school of individuals almost too numerous in my own church to count, but never mind that little fact.

There remains little expectation, either by Dawkins or Hitchens, that a person like me (a faith-head of the indoctrinated type) would likely be made an atheist by reading their books. They might hold out hope that by some miracle (if it is appropriate to use such a word in this context) I might stumble in my faith, but the odds are certainly against them in this, and they know it. After all, they don’t believe, as I do, that there is a Holy Spirit or a God who is able to change even the hardest of hearts. They know that there is very little chance that a person like me, who actively opposes their offensive, will be convinced to abandon them. I believe, however, that there is a force powerful enough to prick the conscience of even the most ardent opponent to faith, and that we are but tools of this force. This is why I will persevere in speaking out.

Now, about these books:

I have to admit, first off, that while both books thoroughly engaged me through the first several chapters, by the time I finished either of them I was no longer avidly consuming every word or making detailed notes on every argument. I was no longer finding cause to highlight select passages on every page or even to stop and consider my own responses to the arguments presented. I became, in fact, almost disinterested.

The reason for this wasn’t exhaustion—I admit that I had geared up for a fight when I sat down with these books, and I was more than ready to be challenged. Eager to be challenged, even. It was not that I found the arguments presented by Hitchens or Dawkins to be horribly off-target and unwarranted; on the contrary! The truth is that, more often than not, I agreed with them.

I think that both Dawkins and Hitchens would be horrified to learn that I, a proud Christian who believes in conquering the world for the gospel of Jesus Christ, find myself in common, if not frequent, agreement with these anti-religion screeds, despite the utter disparity between my life’s mission and theirs, despite the fervor with which they denounce my beliefs or the reams of paper I would happily use in demonstrating the futility and hopelessness of theirs.

 “Yes,” I said emphatically, more often than not as I read of some tragedy or another perpetrated in the name of religion. “Yes,” I could say without hesitation, “there have been many shameful things done by those who claim to be religious. Yes, these are things that should be both understood and spoken out against.”

The joyful truth is this: these books spend chapter after chapter detailing the horrors of religion, and as they did so I could happily agree, because I recognized the one thing that eluded the authors: they were hardly ever writing about my religion. Dawkins titled his book The God Delusion, and Hitchens, God is Not Great, and in both cases I found many, many mentions of many, many gods, but I found hardly any mention of my God. They only rarely touched on the things I believe, the positions I hold, the relationships that are central to my life. Hitchens affirms that religion poisons everything, and yet he seems to have taken very little notice of what I believe. Both men have penned scathing critiques of religion—and many of their attacks are not entirely dissimilar from those of Christ Himself, who thoroughly lambasted the religious zealots of his day, or of the Apostle Paul, who fought fervently against the early church becoming a slave to religiosity. Dawkins and Hitchens might wince at the comparison, but there is truly something eerily similar about their arguments and those of the very Christ they deny.

I won’t attempt to defend religion here. Where would be the point in that? I won’t defend the horrors of the suicide bombers of Islam, the Temple Prostitutes or Caste system of Hinduism, or even the cultural evils of many Christian denominations today. I’ll proudly stand by the humanists in condemning the cult of Westboro and the bombing of abortion clinics and I will proudly denounce a so-called Christian openly acting against the Word of God. Some things are simply indefensible. I will only defend the God of the Bible, who is as wholly separate from these things as good is from evil.

The points of agreement I find with these men may be evident and surprising, but our disagreements remain far more important—carrying, as they do, the weight of eternity. And while I agree with many of their points—and I would encourage all believers to become familiar with these points and to never hesitate in voicing their agreement—I do not excuse their intentions. These men may not understand the God that I worship, they may not even believe in Him, but their efforts are nevertheless to destroy Him (a paradox, to be sure, but what is life without paradox?). They may not have ever understood the Bible, but they still seek to build a society that has no need for it.

I will spend the next several posts offering my counter-argument to these books, for they represent nothing less than an opposition to God, and that alone makes them worth my attention. I only hope that I am able to demonstrate that, though they have learned much about religion, they seem to know almost nothing at all about Jesus; and that is the true tragedy.