New Peril

I realize this is a departure from my usual fare, so perhaps I should start with a personal note just to give the reader some context.

I have been stricken with intractable insomnia. No matter what remedy I try, chamomile tea, warm milk, melatonin, vigorous exercise, etc I am rarely able to sleep for more than two or three hours. Though I am certainly not asleep during the wee hours, neither am I wholly awake. The nights stretch on and on. I have turned to YouTube for solace and companionship.

I have consumed all manner of content: I am working my way through The Complete Sherlock Holmes Audiobook Collection (65 hours, highly recommended!). I watch natural history documentaries, biographies, historical concert footage and a surely unhealthy amount of toxic, abusively partisan news programming. But the content that draws me in again and again is a series of debates that took place in the 2000s between Christopher Hitchens and an unending parade of the “Warriors of Christ” who went up against him in battle.

For those who are not familiar with the name, Christopher Hitchens was an Oxford educated journalist, author, a polemicist of frightening skill and a rabid anti-theist (not an atheist, there is an important distinction here). If, when looking up the word “erudition” in the dictionary, you do not actually find his picture, you should contact the publisher and point out this omission. In the year 2026, you may be considered suspect to say, “I have read everything,” but at the time of his death in 2011, I believe Hitchens could credibly make the claim that he had read “everything that matters.”

In any debate, Hitchens would be the first to assert that the Bible (the “authorized” King James Version, specifically) is the seminal text of Western civilization. In the “Hitch” worldview, you have no business discussing the history, politics, economics, literature or philosophy of any era, in any forum, if you cannot handily find your way around the scriptures. Any of our Warriors who tried to trip up Hitchens with a sly, backhanded reference to some obscure 16th century Christian apologist, regretted the move immediately as Hitchens slapped him down (and they are all men) by quoting passages of the work from memory and pointing out that our Warrior had actually erred in his interpretation and misrepresented the text.

Another thing to note about Mr. Hitchens, is that, though he was genial, he was savage, maybe even gratuitously so.  He took great pride in the fact that he had written a book entitled, “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.” in which he attempted to raze the myth of Mother Tereasa’s piety. Decrying the fact that the Vatican had closed down its only useful office, that of the “Devil’s Advocate”, he flew to Rome after the Reverend Mother’s death to testify against her canonization. He often quipped that he was the only person to ever have worked for the Devil “pro bono.”

Watching these debates is like unexpectedly coming upon 9/11 footage of the “second plane” gliding through a clear blue Manhattan sky towards the South Tower of the World Trade Center.  You know exactly what is going to happen, but for some reason you feel compelled to watch until the aircraft smashes into the structure, impacts the 77th floor and explodes.

Most of these debates unfolded in the classical format: the combatants were introduced, then opening remarks (15 -20 minutes), rebuttals (5 – 10 minutes) and closing remarks. The content of the debates was so predictable that the memory of one pretty much bleeds into the next. 

They typically unfolded as follows:

• Our Warrior puts forth the argument that Christianity is a logically coherent worldview that can be supported independently of the Bible and then claims that all human morality and secular authority flow from this worldview. 
• Hitchens rebuts by reading from the interminable list of horrific and appalling crimes perpetrated by the followers of Christ. He asks how this Biblical appendix, this orgy of violence, denigration and depravity could possibly form the basis for any moral authority.  
• Questions from the gallery then follow, and then everyone goes home flustered and unsatisfied.

Nothing was ever said by either camp that resolved any uncertainty. Those who arrived atheists went home atheists, Christians went home Christians. While the spectacle was perhaps entertaining, on the level that bear-baiting and cock fights are entertaining, once you have watched one, there is little to be gained by watching another. 

And yet I did, over and over again.

You might think that, given my own atheistic views, I would be routing for the home team, cheering on Mr. Hitchens as he skewered (perhaps vivisected would be a better word) our noble Warriors of Christ. But this is not the case. What I chiefly felt as I watched was incredulity and frustration. 

“WHY DO YOU CONTINUE?”, I would ask our Warrior du jour. Why do you pick yourself up off the mat, bloodied and humiliated only to make yet another statement, no more defensible than the last, trying again and again to prove that the Bible “just makes sense?”

I wanted to jump through the screen, travel back in time 20 years, grab our Warrior by his side-whiskers and scream, 

“Why can’t you just stand tall and in all simplicity and Christian humility make an unequivocal declaration of your faith?!”  For god’s sake, man, just grab a pair of testicles and a spine and say, 

“You know what? You’re right. This does not actually make a lot of sense. There are things in the Bible I do not understand and things I cannot readily explain.” But even so,

“I believe my redeemer liveth!!”

If our Warrior knows his scripture, then he knows that this is all his god requires of him. Under any reading of the text, this declaration is entirely sufficient. He has satisfied that which is necessary. There is no aspect of salvation that will be denied him simply because he cannot wholly understand the “Word.”

I don’t pretend to be a Biblical scholar, but I had a solid Christian upbringing and I cannot recall any chapter or verse where it is written that complete comprehension is part of the bargain of salvation. This retreat from the fray does not constitute failure or defeat. There is no shame.

If he does this  — if our Warrior simply declares  — he is protected. Perhaps he cannot claim victory on pugilistic points, but he has ended the debate. 

What can Mr. Hitchens say in response to this? Can he say, “No. You are wrong. That is not what you believe at all!” How would that play out polemically? But by just conceding the obvious  — that the Bible is genuinely difficult  — and simply affirming his beliefs in the face of this uncertainty, our Warrior has nullified Hitchens’ entire arsenal. All of his education, training and hours of fanatical study of tactics and strategy come to nothing.

And let’s be frank, perplexity and contradiction (you can call them “mystery” if you wish) are rife in the Bible. Scientifically, it is a non-starter, metaphorically and morally it is problematic at best, and in terms of historicity it is a complete dumpster fire. 

But do you know what? It is trivial to have faith in something “easy,” something that just prima facie “makes sense.” 

If, however, our Warrior can nurture and grow an intimate relationship with his “living god” (whatever this god’s existential status might be) in the face of daily assault by heathens, doomed unbelievers, and heretics; if he can endure long, devastating nights stricken by uncertainty and doubt only to surface into a daylight of yet even more struggle and abuse; if our Warrior can emerge from this battle  — the one in which he actually has some skin in the game  — with his beliefs intact, then I am forced to concede that what he has is “true faith.” And although I cannot share the content of our Warrior’s beliefs, this is something I must respect.

This is where the anti-theist and I part ways. I will respect the beliefs of our Warrior; Hitchens decried them as flawed, primitive, and the source of all evil in the world.

But the path where Hitchens and I do again converge is in a disdain for the unending parade of slick purveyors of Armageddon propaganda and deathbed salvation porn, spewing the spurious (as though it were fact) that the text of the Bible contains any evidentiary support for the veracity of our Warrior’s hard fought faith. 

I can claim no more access to the Truth  than my brothers and sisters in the religious ranks,  but I can say that the textual evidence for either position does not exist. If such verifiable evidence could be found, we would not be locked in this destructive debate of centuries.

You cannot say: 

“Of course Jesus died for my sins, just read the Bible, it’s all right there!”

This is folly. Any Warrior who attempts this path is doomed. He will be consumed and digested by the terrible maw of the polemicist. It is an assertion wholly unfit for purpose. 

And in the final wash, it does not matter. 

Our Warrior’s success or failure attending a lectern set before a crowd of thousands who paid $15 a head in the gleeful hope that they might see him pilloried and humiliated is completely irrelevant if all that is wanted is simply “A Closer Walk with Thee.”

If our Warrior does somehow make it to heaven (and I genuinely hope he does!) and St. Peter finds his name in the scroll of the saved, invites him in and the porter shows him to his suite of rooms in the House of Many Mansions, my sincerest hope for him is that to the left of the fruit basket, among the towels and scented soaps, there will be a little booklet on the bureau  — the first dividend of his salvation  — bearing the title,

Welcome Home Valiant and Victorious Warrior! Here are Your Answers. This is How it All Makes Sense.

Epilogue

Christopher Hitchens, an enthusiastic and lifelong smoker, was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in June of 2010. Public reaction to this news was varied, as one might expect given the polarizing effect of his beliefs and polemics and his status in the pantheon of popular culture.

There were the predictable pronouncements from the Old Testament Christians who found it fitting and just that he should be so poetically and specifically be struck down by god in the very organ from which he had blasphemed. To this Hitchens replied that he had done far more to offend god with his penis, yet that organ seemed unaffected.

There was, however, a quieter undercurrent of reaction from what I will call the New Testament Christians. September 20th, 2010 was internationally declared “Everybody Pray for Christopher Hitchens Day.” Hitchens spurned the voluminous outpouring of offerings to be ministered to and prayed over. He exhorted the faithful “not to trouble deaf heaven with [their] bootless cries”.

Christopher Eric Hitchens died of pneumonia two weeks before Christmas in December 2011 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, aged 62.

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** Many thanks to “VG”, and “L” who took the time to review and provide helpful comments on earlier versions of this text.