A book has recently been published, authored by Christopher Hitchens, entitled god Is Not Great. No, that is not a typo in the title, because in the book Hitchens does not want simply to deny that God exists, but to argue that belief in the existence of “god” is toxic to our existence as humans. We don’t need “god” and are better off without “god,” he says, hence he puts the name in the diminutive case as a sign of its insignificance. He is, you see, not simply an atheist, but one of the most eloquent and witty spokesmen of a new breed of cultured despisers of religion — the anti-theists.It behooves us as Christians to understand some of the anti-theist perspective and to think about what the Gospel has to say to those who find the very idea of God offensive. In this edition of Millennium Thoughts I want to take some time to consider a Christian response to one part of the anti-theistic agenda — the claim that the idea of God makes our lives puny and limited.North Korea. You can’t defect from North Korea but at least you can die. With monotheism they won’t let you die and get away from them. It’s the wish to be a slave. Who wants that to be true? It’s demanding the servile condition. . .The fact that one’s appearance on earth is a random process conditioned by evolution and will end in extinction isn’t a welcome conclusion. It’s just an inescapable one, and to be in denial about it is odd.” The implications are just these, that a truly serious thinker will not only understand that life has no larger meaning or purpose, he will embrace it and live with panache and verve in the face of such prospects.
“It would be horrible if it were true that we were designed and then created and then continuously supervised throughout all our lives waking and sleeping and then continue to be supervised after our deaths – if that were true, it would be horrible. I’m very glad there’s absolutely no evidence for it at all. It would be like living in a celestialWhat is most notable in the above paragraph is his conclusion that monotheism demands “the servile condition.” In Hitchens’s view, there can be only one conclusion to belief that there is a “god.” The existence of a singular sovereign deity, he argues, would make our own lives meaningless pawns in a game designed by this Being. We loose the dignity of being free and being self-determining. We are reduced to the level of idiocy, because only “god’s” will, in Hitchens’s understanding, has any ultimate significance in a monotheistic worldview. For this reason, he not only embraces a real antagonism toward the thought of “god’s” existence; he thinks that only weak-minded people would ultimately embrace such belief.
We see this in his statement (noted above): “The fact that one’s appearance on earth is a random process conditioned by evolution and will end in extinction isn’t a welcome conclusion. It’s just an inescapable one, and to be in denial about it is odd.”
It would be easy for us to hear statements like this and simply shake our heads and say how disgusting. However, we ought to stop before we dismiss his rant and contemplate exactly what he is saying about “god” as he understands the concept of deity. This is important because as we do we begin to discover that the Gospel offers a view of God that is very different from the “god” that Hitchens hates. (I do not for a moment think that he would necessarily be interested in even the Christian God, but we should at least be thoughtful about our own view of God so that we can then reply to folks like the anti-theists.)
First of all, Christians could agree that it would be intolerable if the existence of “god” meant that all of our lives are “supervised,” in the way that Hitchens understands it. We could agree that the idea that we are watched and criticized and threatened each time we stray from the norm of “god’s” will is horrible. We could agree that this idea is horrible, but not because we want along with Hitchens to be able to define the meaning of our lives by our own rationality and choices. Instead, we could find such a concept wanting because the Christian doctrine of providence means so much more than the grotesque caricature that Hitchens embraces.
God’s providence means that God is inviting us to be engaged with him not just now, but forever. While this belief does tell us that God does not leave us alone, is not a statement about being supervised! In various ways the Christian tradition has claimed that God watches over us, because He has made us and redeemed us so that we may become “partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). The Apostle Paul uses another analogy, he says that we will “reign with Christ.” This is not the language of supervision, but of hope.
It implies a great dignity to human beings, i.e. that we are called to a great mature freedom, being elevated to a greater glory than we could achieve in all of our merely human freedom and efforts. Christians are called to believe that we can be redeemed and given a share in God’s divine joy and pleasure and greatness, because we are to be “united with God in Christ.” Whatever else that means, it does not imply a “slavish state.”
Believing this to be the destiny of our lives in Christ, we believe that we are not called to be slaves, but friends of God through Jesus Christ (John 15 and Romans 3). Following and obeying the teachings of Jesus, passed down by the Church, is a way to accept God’s invitation to be disciples of a Lord who promises joy and love and fulfillment as we learn to walk in a way that leads to greatness of Life. It involves trusting that he knows better than we. And in our trusting all of our choices matter greatly, not because we are supervised, but because we are invited to greatness. Walking toward that calling requires true humility to trust and obey, but it is certainly not servitude for those who know God’s love.
Of course, we do believe that God supervises the world’s affairs in such as way so that no one can escape God’s judgement upon sin and wickedness. But why would even this belief be completely unwelcome news to anti-theists? Does it not mean, among other things, that ultimately there will be justice for all? People such as Hitler and Saddam, Stalin or Nero, who committed grave evils, will not escape the just conclusion that their lives call for. How could that be “horrible?” If there is no “god” — as Hitchens would prefer — then some people never really get the justice that they should. That would be truly horrible. Perhaps anti-theists cannot bring themselves to believe in this judgment, but that is another matter.
Anti-theists might retort, “Ah, yes, but the very providential deity to whose judgement you refer must not care enough to stop the horrors of these persons you mention.” However, the Christian reply to this mystery is two-fold. First, we can point out that thought the anti-theists did not want a “god” who makes us slaves — who takes away the significance of our own choices. Then we might observe that the awful price we pay of not being supervised in every choice — of being moral agents who are not pre-determined to certain acts — means that we are capable of horrible free will and selfish power. Yet, God will not allow us to avoid justice in the long run, even if eternity is the place where that justice is served. The second part of our response can only point to what we believe about the Cross (mentioned in the last Millennium Thoughts). Our reply to the mystery of evil is simply to say that God has suffered because of the abused freedom of human choices. The anti-theists may not believe the word of the Cross, but it is not as though we do not have something to say about the meaning of evil in light of the eternal significance we have in God’s eyes.
For Hitchens, however, the very idea that our lives have some larger meaning is itself ludicrous. He finds it “odd” that religious believers are “in denial” about the randomness and finitude of our existence. Such a rejection by Hitchens of the very natural human impulse to believe in God, however, does not take science very seriously. And Hitchens claims to be all for science. Anthropology and sociology can demonstrate that human beings have always been irrecoverably religious. All peoples have some idea of deity and the afterlife. And even genetics supports the view that human belief in God is our default orientation. According to some researchers in the human genome, we are genetically hard-wired to believe in the transcendent. (See Dean Hamner’s book, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes, Doubleday Publishers.) Of course, Hitchens might say that such is bad science, but it is, at least, science, and not superstition.
Hitchens hates the “odd” views of the vast majority of human beings — that there is some meaning and purpose to life and it is related to the divine — he must hate lots of views. In fact, Hitchens says in the very same “Guardian” interview that he cannot stand anyone who believes in “god.” — no matter how she might define the “god” she believes in. Well, that includes a lot of people throughout all of history. Hitchens is like the guy who once said, “I love humanity, its just people I can’t stand.”
In the final analysis, what should Christians think in light of the arguments of a Christopher Hitchens? First of all, we can realize that the anti-theist movement is in no way the intellectually superior point of view that it claims to be. Even more importantly, however, the God that we believe in and love is not the “god” in which the anti-theists disbelieve and despise. We should, as well, carefully consider if we need to repent for misrepresenting the nature of the Triune One. Our God is One who invites us to share in His life, he does not seek to control ours. God wants to guide us into fullness of Life, but that is a far cry from supervising our every thought. Finally, our God would have us experience the freedom of knowing that our lives have an eternal and transcendent meaning. Perhaps all that seems “odd” to anti-theists, but someday they will see how strangely quaint was their own dismissal of the Truth.
For Hitchens and anti-theists the concept “god” is reprehensible in part, because in their minds it implies a imposed dominance over us and, therefore, a belittlement of our humanity. He describes himself and his perspective in an interview in the English paper “The Guardian.”