Posts tagged ‘Atheism’
The Problem With The New York Times’ God Problem
God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515
The polemical can sometimes become the enemy of the thoughtful. This seems to be what has happened in an opinion piece penned by Peter Atterton for The New York Times titled, “A God Problem.”
Mr. Atterton is a professor of philosophy at San Diego State University who spends his piece trotting out well-worn and, if I may be frank, tired arguments against the logical integrity of Theism. He begins with this classic:
Can God create a stone that cannot be lifted? If God can create such a stone, then He is not all powerful, since He Himself cannot lift it. On the other hand, if He cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then He is not all powerful, since He cannot create the unliftable stone. Either way, God is not all powerful.
This is popularly known as the “omnipotence paradox.” God either cannot create an unliftable stone or He can create an unliftable stone, but then He cannot lift it. Either way, there is something God cannot do, which, the argument goes, means His omnipotence is rendered impotent. C.S. Lewis’ classic rejoinder to this paradox remains the most cogent:
God’s omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, ‘God can’ … Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
Lewis’ position is the position the Bible itself takes when speaking of God. Logically, there are some things Scripture says God cannot do – not because He lacks power, but simply because to pose even their possibility is to traffic in utter nonsense. The apostle Paul, for instance, writes, “If we are faithless, God remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). In other words, God cannot not be God. He also cannot create liftable unliftable stones – again, not because He lacks power, but because liftable unliftable stones aren’t about exercising power over some theoretical state of nature. They’re about the law of noncontradiction. And to try to break the law of noncontradiction doesn’t mean you have unlimited power. It just means you’re incoherent and incompetent. And God is neither. To insist that God use His power to perform senseless and silly acts so that we may be properly impressed seems to be worthy of the kind of rebuke Jesus once gave to the religious leaders who demanded from Him a powerful sign: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign” (Matthew 12:39)!
Ultimately, the omnipotence paradox strips God’s power of any purpose by demanding a brute cracking of an irrational and useless quandary. And to have power without purpose only results in disaster. For instance, uncontrolled explosions are powerful, but they are also, paradoxically, powerless, because they cannot exercise any ordered power over their chaotic power. Omnipotence requires that there is power over uncontrolled power that directs and contains it toward generative ends. This is how God’s power is classically conceived. Just look at the creation story. God’s power needs purpose to be omnipotence, which is precisely what God’s power has, and precisely what the omnipotence paradox does not care to address.
For his second objection against God, Mr. Atterton turns to the problem of evil:
Can God create a world in which evil does not exist? This does appear to be logically possible. Presumably God could have created such a world without contradiction. It evidently would be a world very different from the one we currently inhabit, but a possible world all the same. Indeed, if God is morally perfect, it is difficult to see why He wouldn’t have created such a world. So why didn’t He?
According to the Bible, God did create a world where evil did not exist. It was called Eden. And God will re-create a world where evil will not exist. It will be called the New Jerusalem. As for the evil that Adam and Eve brought into the world, this much is sure: God is more than up to the task of dealing with the evil that they, and we, have welcomed. He has conquered and is conquering it in Christ.
With this being said, a common objection remains: Why did and does God allow evil to remain in this time – in our time? Or, to take the objection back to evil’s initial entry into creation: Why would God allow for the possibility of evil by putting a tree in the center of Eden if He knew Adam and Eve were going to eat from it and bring sin into the world? This objection, however, misses the true locus of evil. The true locus of evil was not the tree. It was Adam and Eve, who wanted to usurp God’s authority. They were tempted not by a tree, but by a futile aspiration: “You can be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). If Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had a tree around to use to try to usurp God’s prerogative, they almost assuredly would have tried to use something else. The tree was only an incidental means for them to indulge the evil pride they harbored in their hearts. If God wanted to create a world where evil most assuredly would never exist, then, He would have had to create a world without us.
Thus, I’m not quite sure what there’s to object to here. The story of evil’s entrance into creation doesn’t sound like the story of a feckless God who can’t get things right. It sounds like the story of a loving God who willingly sacrifices to make right the things He already knows we will get wrong even before He puts us here. God decides from eternity that we are worth His Son’s suffering.
The final objection to God leveled by Mr. Atterton has to do with God’s omniscience:
If God knows all there is to know, then He knows at least as much as we know. But if He knows what we know, then this would appear to detract from His perfection. Why?
There are some things that we know that, if they were also known to God, would automatically make Him a sinner, which of course is in contradiction with the concept of God. As the late American philosopher Michael Martin has already pointed out, if God knows all that is knowable, then God must know things that we do, like lust and envy. But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them. But to have had feelings of lust and envy is to have sinned, in which case God cannot be morally perfect.
This is the weakest of Mr. Atterton’s three objections. One can have knowledge without experience. I know about murder even though I have never taken a knife or gun to someone. God can know about lust and envy even if He has not lusted and envied. The preacher of Hebrews explains well how God can know sin and yet not commit sin as he describes Jesus’ struggles under temptation: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet He did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus was confronted with every sinful temptation, so He knows what sin is, but He also refused to swim to sin’s siren songs. The difference, then, is not in what He knows and we know. The difference is in how He responds to what He knows and how we respond to what we know.
One additional point is in order. Though I believe Mr. Atterton’s assertion that one cannot know certain things “unless one has experienced them” is questionable, it can nevertheless be addressed on its own terms by Christianity. On the cross, Christians believe that every sin was laid upon Christ, who thereby became sin for us. In other words, Christ, on the cross, became the chief of sinners, suffering the penalty that every sinner deserved, while, in exchange, giving us the righteous life that only He could live (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). In this way, then, Christ has experienced every sin on the cross because He has borne every sin on the cross. Thus, even according to Mr. Atterton’s own rules for knowing, in Christ, God can know everything through Christ, including every sin.
I should conclude with a confession about a hunch. I am a little suspicious whether or not this 1,140-word opinion piece in The New York Times decrying faith in God as illogical was written in, ahem, good faith. This piece and its arguments feel a little too meandering and scattershot and seem a little too clickbait-y to be serious. Nevertheless, this is a piece that has gained a lot of traction and talk. I’m not sure that the traction and talk, rather than the arguments, weren’t the point.
Whatever the case, Theism has certainly seen more compelling and interesting interlocutions than this piece. God, blessedly, is still safely on His throne.
Pain, Suffering, and Morality
I’ve been doing a fair amount of thinking lately on suffering and its effect on faith. In one way, I can’t help but believe and even assert that there is every reason to question God in the face of great suffering. Elie Wiesel’s gut-wrenching account of his time in a Nazi concentration camp comes to mind not only as a natural response to pain and suffering, but as a needed one:
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget these flames that consumed my faith forever.[1]
Elie’s description of his first night in a concentration camp should arouse in us nothing other than horror, grief, and sympathy. Although I don’t know precisely how I would react to such an experience, I would be naïve to think that Elie’s reaction could never be my reaction. The scene is just too jarring. The brutality is just too disgusting. The deaths are just too agonizing. I too could question God.
And yet…
Some did not respond to the concentration camps the way Elie Wiesel did. One survivor of the camps, Alex Seidenfeld, in an interview with the Associated Press, said simply, “We stayed alive. We survived. How could this have happened without the almighty?”[2]
Elie looked at all those who died and asked, “How can God be?” Alex looked at all those who survived and asked, “How can God not be?” Elie looked at all those who died and angrily shouted, “God didn’t stop this!” Alex looked at all those who survived and declared, “But God did save some of us from this!”
The question of where God is in the face of suffering is really a question of God’s role in the midst of suffering. Is God’s role to stop us from suffering or to save us through suffering? In one sense, it is both. But the first role, at least according to Scripture, doesn’t find its full expression until later, at the end of days.
Ultimately, I would argue that, even if God does not stop all suffering, it is difficult to surmise from the existence of suffering that God does not exist. C.S. Lewis famously explains why:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? … Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless – I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense.[3]
C.S. Lewis puts his finger on the reality that the problem we have with suffering is that we believe and perceive that it is, in some sense, wrong. It is unjust. But if we reject God, we lose the privilege of saying that anything is wrong or unjust because, without God and His ordering of the universe, standards of organized morality disappear into the ether of a universe that coalesced around the free-for-all of chance. This world and all that is in it, to borrow a phrase from the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, is nothing more than “the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms.”[4] In this view, suffering exists in the same way that a ball that lands on black 22 on a roulette wheel exists. It just happens to happen sometimes. There is nothing more to be said about it, at least not morally.
Arguing against a moral God in light of what is perceived to be immoral suffering, then, is an argument that collapses on itself. You can’t argue against God using a framework that has its basis in God. Either suffering just is, or it is somehow just wrong. To question how there can be a good God who allows bad things assumes that, even if implicitly, there is a God and that, in some regard, He is not playing by His own rules, or at least by what we perceive to be His rules. If this is the case, it may be fair to ask Him, “Why?” But, as a Christian, I would propose that it might be even better to ask Him for help. From what I hear, even if God doesn’t always stop suffering, He is quite adept at blessing people in suffering.
_____________________
[1] Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 33.
[2] Aron Heller, “Observant survivors keep the faith after Holocaust,” The World Post (1.26.2016).
[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1980), 38
[4] Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 12 (London: Routledge, 1985).
Angry At A God Who Isn’t There
The other day I heard the story of a distressed parent. Their son had gone away to college as a Christian and had returned as an atheist. They wanted to know what they could do to bring their son back into the fold.
Honestly, hearing this boy’s story distressed me. After all, nothing less than this young man’s very salvation is at stake. I was tempted to break out into a rant about how far too many colleges and universities deliberately and relentlessly undermine faith while uncritically peddling a deluded vision of a far-flung utopian secular humanistic paradise, but I stopped myself and instead asked a simple question: “Why? Why did your son become an atheist? Was it because of something he heard in some class from a professor, or was it because of something else – something deeper?”
Many atheists like to present themselves as cool and collected, calmly examining empirically verifiable data and coming to the inevitable and emotionally detached conclusion that there is no God. But the reality of atheism is far less viscerally clean.
A couple of years ago, Joe Carter penned an article for First Things titled, “When Atheists Are Angry At God.” In it, he notes a strange phenomenon: many people who do not believe in God find themselves angry at God:
I’ve shaken my fist in anger at stalled cars, storm clouds, and incompetent meterologists. I’ve even, on one terrible day that included a dead alternator, a blaring blaring tornado-warning siren, and a horrifically wrong weather forecast, cursed all three at once. I’ve fumed at furniture, cussed at crossing guards, and held a grudge against Gun Barrel City, Texas. I’ve been mad at just about anything you can imagine.
Except unicorns. I’ve never been angry at unicorns.
It’s unlikely you’ve ever been angry at unicorns either. We can become incensed by objects and creatures both animate and inanimate. We can even, in a limited sense, be bothered by the fanciful characters in books and dreams. But creatures like unicorns that don’t exist – that we truly believe not to exist – tend not to raise our ire. We certainly don’t blame the one-horned creatures for our problems.
The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at Him.[1]
But why is this? Why would people who don’t believe in God become angry at God? Carter goes on to cite Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University:
Studies in traumatic events suggest a possible link between suffering, anger toward God, and doubts about God’s existence. According to Cook and Wimberly (1983), 33% of parents who suffered the death of a child reported doubts about God in the first year of bereavement. In another study, 90% of mothers who had given birth to a profoundly retarded child voiced doubts about the existence of God (Childs, 1985). Our survey research with undergraduates has focused directly on the association between anger at God and self-reported drops in belief (Exline et al., 2004). In the wake of a negative life event, anger toward God predicted decreased belief in God’s existence.
In other words, atheism is not as viscerally clean as many atheists would like to have you believe. Atheism is not always the product of cool, clean, detached observation of empirically verifiable date. Instead, atheism is often the product of not disbelief in God, but rebellion against God because a person feels slighted by God in some way. Atheism, although it may hide between a veneer of intellectualism, is also heavily emotional. It’s hardly a wonder that the Psalmists says of the atheist: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). Atheism is not just a matter of the head. It’s also a matter of the heart.
I never quite did get to the root of the atheism of my friend’s son. But I suspect it was more than just some smooth-talking college professor that led him down the road to unbelief. That’s why, when sharing my faith, I not only try to speak to a person’s head; I try to minister to his heart.
[1] Joe Carter, “When Atheists Are Angry At God,” First Things (1.12.2011).
ABC Extra – In Sickness And In Health
Death is inescapable. It doesn’t matter how rich or how poor, how healthy or how sick, how old or how young a person is. Eventually and inevitably, death comes for each one of us. After Steve Jobs passed away, many bloggers and journalists spoke of how Jobs sought to receive “the best care money could buy.” And indeed, he did receive terrific care from world-renowned doctors. But although they may have been able to prolong his life, they were not able to save it. He passed away last year. Death came for Steve Jobs. Shortly after the world-renowned and lovably cantankerous atheist apologist Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer, he described his ailment in his characteristically colorful tone: “Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups.”[1]
Like Steve Jobs, Christopher Hitchens turned to the most “brilliant and selfless physicians” money could buy, and though they may have been able to prolong his life, they were not able to save it. He passed away last year. Death came for Christopher Hitchens.
Death is inescapable. And yet, I find it interesting that, particularly in the case of Christopher Hitchens, it wasn’t just medical professionals who were working to prolong his life, it was Christians who were praying to redeem his life.
In worship and ABC this past weekend, we looked at the story of a demon-possessed boy in Mark 9. Initially, the disciples try to heal this boy, but they cannot (cf. Mark 9:17-18). Jesus, however, is able to drive out the torturing spirit (cf. Mark 9:25-27). Beleaguered by their embarrassing failure, the disciples ask Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” Jesus’ answer is clarifying and convicting: “This kind can come out only by prayer” (Mark 9:28-29). This boy could not be healed by a pill, a surgery, a physician, or an exorcism rite. Rather, persistent and consistent prayer was the key to this boy’s recovery.
For all of man’s collective medical wisdom, there are still some diseases which can be healed only by prayer. This is why James asks, “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14). Prayer is more powerful and potent than any human remedy. For prayer has God’s will and mercy as its answer.
Tragically, even in the face of certain death, Christopher Hitchens wrote, “Please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries.” Christopher Hitchens’ commitment to his atheism was unflappable. He refused to believe that his kind of sickness could “come out only by prayer.” Then again, after asking people not to pray for him, he added this little caveat: “Unless, of course, it makes you feel better.”[2]
Christopher Hitchens never came to understand and see that prayer is not just for the therapy of weak minds, it is for the strengthening of brave souls. Prayer, perhaps, really could have made him feel better – not only in his cancerous plight, but in his eternity as well. For not only can God hear our prayers and sometimes grant us a temporal recovery, He will hear our prayers and always grant us a glorious eternity through Christ. And that is a gift and blessing we dare not miss.
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God and the Debt Crisis
It was a rough day on Wall Street. On Friday, Standard & Poors downgraded United States debt, taking it from its time-honored AAA rating to AA+, with a warning that another downgrade could be in the making. Today, the markets reacted as the Dow Jones plunged 632 points and closed below 11,000, its worst one day loss since December 2008. Though I’m no financial analyst and would never deign to give anyone counsel concerning our fiscal future, right now, the economic horizon of our country does not look particularly bright to me.
The current debt crisis has invoked a fair amount of personal reflection concerning the ethics of managing money. From greed to irresponsibility to politics to entitlements, there is much to be said concerning our pecuniary predicament. But it was an article in The Huffington Post that led me to some new and sober analysis on how we, as Americans, view our finances. The article was titled “Why Atheism Replaces Religion in Developed Countries” and was written by Nigel Barber, who holds a Ph.D. in Biopsychology. Barber’s thesis runs thusly:
Atheists are more likely to be college-educated people who live in cities, and they are highly concentrated in the social democracies of Europe. Atheism thus blossoms amid affluence where most people feel economically secure. But why?
It seems that people turn to religion as a salve for the difficulties and uncertainties of their lives. In social democracies, there is less fear and uncertainty about the future because social welfare programs provide a safety net and better health care means that fewer people can expect to die young. People who are less vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature feel more in control of their lives and less in need of religion.[1]
Barber’s argument, then, is this: The more money you have, the less religion you need. Religion is for those who cannot secure their futures via monetary means.
There are a couple of things that strike me as odd about Barber’s argument, not the least of which is its conflict with much of the empirical evidence. According to Barber, money and religion compete with each other in an inverse relationship. The more money one has, the less religion one needs. But many studies do not bear out this assertion. Take, for instance, the percentage of atheists in our nation throughout the years. In 1944, 4% of our nation’s citizens were atheists. In 1964, it dropped to 3%, remaining steady through 1994. In 2007, it crept back up to 4%.[2] Over the course of sixty-three years, through good economic times and bad, the percentage of people who self-identify as atheists has remained remarkably consistent. Indeed, the economic vitality of our country seems to have no effect on the religious sensibilities of our people. Moreover, because our nation is one of the most economically prosperous in the history of the world, one would expect to see a much higher percentage of self-declared atheists. But this is not the case. Statistically, atheists make up a small segment of our population, regardless of our economic state.
The second thing that strikes me as odd about Barber’s argument is his massive assumption that all human desire can be reduced down to a single need: the need for security. Barber’s argument runs like this: Our foundational need is to feel secure. And we will get the security we so earnestly desire one way or another. Some superstitious people get security from religion. Enlightened people, invigorated by their economic prosperity, receive security from money and the government that doles and dishes it out. But is this really true? Can money, managed by the government nonetheless, really offer the kind of security human beings desire and need? If our latest financial crisis is any indication, it cannot. Finding refuge in money is like finding security in a house of cards. The slightest jolt can send it crashing down.
Additionally, is the need for security really the only fundamental need human beings have? What about the need for purpose in life? Atheism, with its commitment to a closed and sterile universe, cannot offer the transcendent purpose that human beings seem to innately desire. Bertrand Russell, the famous British atheist philosopher, explains with clinical sobriety the view atheism has of the universe and of human beings:
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck. And of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.[3]
Is it any wonder Bertrand didn’t make it as a motivational speaker? But Bertrand is simply honest enough to admit what so many atheists have fought so vigorously to sugarcoat and excuse: The inevitable philosophical concomitant of atheism is fatalism. If atheism is true, that means we are born, we live to struggle against the evolutionary goads, and then we die. That’s it. Our lives are merely blips against the backdrop of a cold, and ultimately triumphant, evolutionary system.
This is why atheism will finally never carry the day. Atheism will never carry the day because human beings want their lives to count for something – something bigger than money, something bigger than accomplishments, and something bigger than even this life itself. And only God can meet this want. And it seems only reasonable to recognize that if only God can meet this want, then maybe there is a God who has placed this want in human beings in the first place. Doctrinally, we call this the natural knowledge of God. And all human beings, yes, even atheists, have this knowledge – even if they fight this knowledge.
All of this leads us back to our debt crisis. The economic future of our nation is indeed frightening, but it is not surprising. After all, stocks and bonds, debt limits and balanced budget amendments simply cannot offer what God offers, no matter what Nigel Barber may assert. For capital cannot offer comfort and hope. Only God can offer that. That’s why so many in our nation continue to trust in God – through this crisis and the crises to come.
[1] Nigel Barber, “Why Atheism Replaces Religion in Developed Countries,” The Huffington Post (July 26, 2011).
[2] Matthew Hutson, “One Nation, Without God,” Psychology Today (September 1, 2009).
[3] Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (London: Routledge Classics, 2004), 19.
An Atheist Confronts Death
I recently learned that Christopher Hitchens, noted atheist and author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has been stricken by cancer. In an article for Vanity Fair, Hitchens makes what I consider to be some astonishing statements. First, he is so bold as to personify death: “I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.” Death has a face in Hitchens’ mind – and a grim face at that. Death is a Reaper. Actually, death is the Reaper with a capital “R.” No longer is death merely a force of nature. It is a sinister character. I, hopefully not surprisingly, would agree. Death is sinister because death is sinful – the result of a fallen and broken creation. Of course, Hitchens continues by calling this character “predictable and banal,” which I suppose it is, for we all die, but it doesn’t make it any less grim.
Hitchens’ second astonishing statement comes at the end of his article:
I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups.
This statement did more than astonished me, it blew me away. First, as far as I can tell, the “blind, emotionless alien” to which Hitchens refers is the cycle of life and death, standardized and ruled, according to many atheists, by evolutionary theory and natural selection. It is what another atheist luminary Richard Dawkins called, “the blind watchmaker.” And yes, if true, this cycle is blind and emotionless. Indeed, it is more than emotionless, it is merciless. It cares not about our lives and our fears and our hopes and our dreams. But curiously, Hitchens continues by noting that this “blind, emotionless alien” is “cheered on by some who have wished me ill.” How something “emotionless” can be moved by “cheers” of encouragement, I do not know. But I do know that it is morally base to cheer on the death of another. Theologically, death is a result of sin. To cheer on death, then, is to cheer on sin. Death may be inevitable and sometimes, as in cases of war or capital punishment, sanctioned and permitted according to the governing authorities and the concerns of justice, but it is not cheer-worthy. Blessedly, however, Hitchens continues by noting that on the side of his life “is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups.” It almost sounds as if Hitchens is admitting that “selfless physicians,” “selfless” being a moral designation foreign to committed evolutionary atheism, and “prayer groups” have some sort of power to cheat death. Is Hitchens admitting that prayer works? If so, how does he think it works? And why does he think it works?
I myself believe that prayer does work, but only because of the One to whom we pray. For the One to whom we pray has power over death. As the apostle Paul writes, “‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57). Jesus conquers death and brings life. There’s an empty grave to prove it. And it is in that spirit that I pray that Christopher Hitchens’ grave stays empty for a good time longer in this present age – and on the Last Day. Christ has the power to make it so. I pray that Hitchens learns to trust that.
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