When Athiests Die

This week marked the death of Christopher Hitchens, famed atheist and writer. His recent book God is Not Great enjoyed considerable travel and joined him in the ranks of the popular genre of writers shrieking about how they either do not believe in God, or hate Him, or both. Accounts explained that there was nothing new in the book but the cobwebbed platitudes were played with acerbic wit.

 Ecclesiastes announces that there is, speaking of death, one fate for the righteous and the wicked. This also is not new information but it does plot a knowable fence line for our plans on earth. Great or small, famous or infamous, we all exit eventually. The way in which we leave however, makes all the difference.

 It was Dylan Thomas who wrote the often quoted Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, an unblessed and jagged lyric that lacerates the soul with its powerful wrenching against pitiless fate. I bring this up because his ode could be the best anthem for the atheist. Shaking his clenched hands and teeth he vows to never go gentle into that good night and to rage, rage against the dying of the light. Ironically this very rage is the poignant recognition that there is Someone against which to flurry the fists. How could one be angry about the stealing of his life if there is ultimately, no one to steal it?

 Hitchens asserted that faith is the surrender of the mind. For him, every thought and intent of the mind (more exactly, his mind) was logical. God instructs that the thoughts and intents of the mind are wicked. These two theses are not necessarily conflicting. However, it may be deduced that if every thought and intent of the heart is wicked then it is assuredly unlikely that they are as logical as atheists like Hitchens believe(d). The problem here has nothing to do with native intelligence. Rather, it is the sin nature in man that corrupts all that he is, heart, soul, mind, and body. The Bible teaches that everyone has sinned and gone his own way. This is inclusive of the human mind and logic. It explains why it is so frustrating to argue and win arguments with atheists. It is childless simplicity to argue them into a corner but then they twist away with insane assertions that truth is relative, your facts are not their facts or other unfathomable rubbish as they strut away with their noses to the ceiling. None of that behavior has anything to do with having an ability to formulate syllogisms. It has everything to do with the power of sin laying hold of the mind and dragging it toward hell as its final destination. Hence, these battles are not won in the power of the flesh with clever arguments.  Rather, the Spirit of the living God is the only One, who, by His power and sovereign choice, can renew a man’s mind.

 Hitchens wrote that religion poisons everything. However, what he and most atheists typically fail to recognize is that their own atheist philosophies carry all the properties of a well formulated religion. Do we Christians have a Savior? So does the atheist. For the atheist, man is his own savior. The collective of man, the central government, is the provider and savior of every lost or wounded soul. Do Christians have a law from their God by which to live? Atheists also have their god’s law. It gathers in stacks and piles in the law libraries, dustier and more unread than the law of Moses they so despise. Their god of government could never simplify its principles to a list of ten. Rather, they fill every corner of thought and life and continue to multiply. While our God multiplies bread theirs multiplies regulations and oppression. Our Savior came to bring liberty to the captives. Theirs comes to captivate all liberty and chain men to the earth. Atheists always believe in god. They just refuse to believe in the living God.  

 Psalm 10:4 tells us that, ‘The wicked in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, “There is no God.” Yet, even as he denies the existence of God he carries in his soul the terrifying expectation of judgment and eternal wrath against him. This is why atheists so often become viscously angry when we quote Scripture to that effect. After all, why become angry over statements about the future that cannot possibly be true? Why rage, rage against a judgment that will never occur?

 At the end of it all, after we cross that fence line into the eternal garden, our expectation is different in every way. We do not face terror. Our Savior not only has power but has the will and the promise to bring us peacefully before His throne. The Apostle Paul speaks of our God, “who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are not dreading the dying of the light. Rather, we are, “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” Atheists struggle to be brave, able to alone traverse the dark divide death demands. Their raging reveals their inner souls, therefore, let them rage. But, we, we have hope in Christ.

 Don Schanzenbach 12-17-11

The American Hope Project