Thoughts on the Death of Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes it is difficult not to admire elements of Christopher Hitchens' obvious giftedness. He was a wordsmith, he was an excellent writer, and he had a kind of level of humor that just made it difficult to be consistently angry with Christopher Hitchens despite his obvious desire to blaspheme.

I think it was almost something about the honesty of Hitchens' detestation of God that was refreshing in a day when so many are functional atheists but don't have the spines or the guts to be open about their blasphemy.

I would prefer a Christopher Hitchens to a hypocritical liberal Episcopalian who pretends to honor the name of Christ and yet is having Wiccan meetings with some woman who calls herself a bishop in what used to be a church.

I'd prefer to deal with a Hitchens than someone like that, to be perfectly honest with you. Christopher Hitchens, as I was saying, is a very intelligent man and yet he was very foolish. Very foolish. There's going to be Christians running around, they're going to be going, oh, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

And that's what Psalm 14 says. But one of the problems that a lot of evangelicals have, a lot of conservative Christians, is they think that that term foolish means stupid and it doesn't mean stupid. Naval, remember Nabel?

We call him Nabel. It's actually Naval. That's a term for foolish. And it really, I mean, it could be used in certain contexts of a stupid person, of a person who's just not bright. But that's not what the psalmist is talking about.

And in fact, the Greek Septuagint uses Afron as its translation of that term. And it's one who does not utilize the capacity of understanding that is theirs. Has the ability to understand, but does not do so.

And that's the kind of atheism that Christopher Hitchens represented. He had tremendous gifts from God. You cannot deny his capacity to speak, even to reason, but not to recognize the inconsistency of his own position.

A brilliant man, widely read, and yet foolish. Foolish because he did not utilize the capacity to understand that was his. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. The one lacking understanding.

And it's, remember what Calvin said at the beginning of the Institutes in that excellent opening section, where he raises the ages old question. Which comes first, our knowledge of God or our knowledge of ourselves?

And people have answered that in various ways. Calvin primarily comes to the answer that it is knowledge of God that gives us the only true foundation for knowledge of ourself. And of course, we're dependent upon God's revelation for that.

But Christopher Hitchens was a man who didn't know himself. Because for various reasons, and they came out in some of the things that he said. He hated the God that he knew was there. I mean, the term detestation is not too strong for the terminology that Hitchens himself uses as to his dislike of the God of the cosmic North Korea, as he liked to express it.

He did not want to worship a God who was sovereign and who was omniscient to the point of knowing even the thoughts and intents of Christopher Hitchens' heart. He might have been willing to worship a powerful deity who was limited in some way, shape, or form.

But he would not worship the God that he knew the scriptures represented. And he was very good at recognizing when he was debating Christians who were basically wimps. I mean, he knew enough about the God of the Bible to know which one was which.

And he frequently called out his opponents for, in essence, I don't know, dodging? Hiding the truth about the God they were supposedly defending? And so here is a man who, from the world's perspective, was wise and intelligent and insightful.

And yet, from the Christian perspective, from God's perspective, from the perspective of the creator as he has revealed himself in scripture, he suffered from the same foolishness that all idolaters do, because Christopher Hitchens was an idolater.

If you refuse to give the worship to God that he is due, you are an idolater. And in his sickness, Christopher turned to the only God that he had. I am certain that he received the absolute best medical treatment in the world.

They were doing genetic therapy and all sorts of stuff. I mean, he had access to treatment that many of us would not have access to. But he died. And we can thank God for science and we can thank God for medicine, but it is all under the authority of the very God that Christopher Hitchens even worried himself that he might give in to at the end.

One of the things we noted in the articles that Hitchens wrote shortly after he began chemotherapy and his voice began to fail and his appearance began to change, one of the things we noted was there seemed to be a fear on his part that he might give in.

And so, one of the first things he said was, well, if you ever hear that Christopher Hitchens called out to God right toward the end, just chalk it up to the disease or the medicine. He was trying as best he could to not let the home team down because they were pretty much all he had when you think about it.

Now, will there be stories circulating? I'm sure there will be because the inevitable desire of the Christian is, well, you know, I hope right at the end. But the fact is we have here a man who dedicated a major portion of the last years of his life.

He didn't realize they were going to be the last years of his life, but the last years of his life to a campaign against the creator himself. And it might be easier for a lot of folks to say, well, you know, I'd rather see a hypocrite punished than an honest rebel.

And I guess in a sense you could at least say that in many ways Christopher Hitchens was more honest about his rebellion than most people are, that's for sure. But once again, when we are faced with the death of the ungodly, we are faced with the need to look at our priorities and to not allow our priorities to be determined by emotional feelings.

And I think many evangelicals fall into that particular area of problem. And that is, well, you know, he said he's going to stand before God someday. If he stands before God someday, he's going to say, why didn't you make it easier?

Why didn't you make it clearer? Why didn't you? And the reality is Christopher Hitchens heard more of the truth than the vast majority of mankind. If Christopher Hitchens cannot be justly punished, who could be?

Who could be? I mean, when major portions of the world's population that lived and died without even being literate depended upon hearing a message from somebody else, when most people in Europe in the medieval period didn't move more than seven miles from the place they were born in any one direction, here's a man who traveled the world, was fully literate, widely read, and had tremendous access to the truth, a brightness of light beyond compare, unapologia, without an apologetic, without a defense, and knowing all of that, remained adamant as far as we know.

Even in the face, he had to know. He had to know that his death was inevitable. Now, of course, it was complications from the cancer and treatment of the cancer, pneumonia, very frequently one of the things that is involved, that took him.

But the fact of the matter is, he knew, and what does this show us? That no matter how much light one has, unless there is grace, if any mind should have been capable of turning itself, wouldn't it have been Christopher Hitchens?

How many arguments were presented to him? How many people looked him in the eye and said, I'll pray for you. But no matter how intelligent you are, no matter how convinced you are of the coming of your own demise, yet there was this insistence upon remaining a rebellion.

And so, I am saddened in the sadness of the prophets when they spoke of, you know, why will you perish? Why will you perish? Really did pray that God would be merciful to Christopher Hitchens. But at the same time, at the same time, I must recognize that God's purpose in Christopher Hitchens will be fulfilled.

You look at Pharaoh, you look at Nebuchadnezzar, how many examples do we need from scripture to be convinced that God even has a purpose in the ungodly? And do we value our emotional feelings about a fellow creature above the very honor and glory of our creator, sustainer, and redeemer?

And I would suggest to you that if we succumb the temptation to whitewash the reality of the judgment that is justly due to Christopher Hitchens and to every single one of us, then we do so because we really, truly do not have a godly set of priorities as to what is really important.

For a Christian, it should be our desire. It should be our desire that God's name and God's glory, God's power be made known. And in fact, this is the radical element of it, our lives should be laid upon the line because our lives are not our own.

We've died. Our life is hidden with Christ and God. God can do with us as he wishes. And if he so wishes to use us in that way, to bring about his honor and glory, then that should be our desire. And so Christopher Hitchens has passed from this world and I do not know what conversation took place upon Christopher's recognition that there is more to man than, well, as Douglas Wilson so often said to him, Adam's banging around.

But something tells me that despite the bravado that Christopher Hitchens offered so often during his life, despite that brave claim to stand before God and say, I refused to submit to you because you didn't make your revelation clear enough and you didn't do this the way I thought and I will not submit to the celestial North Korea.

Something tells me that when any creature, no matter how inveterate they are in their detestation of God, when they see their creator in his glory, knowing now truly who they are and who he is, I don't think that that bravado is going to last very long.

I think it will be removed immediately. Much more that could be said about Christopher Hitchens, but the phones are open, 877 -753 -3341.