This past week renowned author and atheist Christopher Hitchens passed away of esophageal cancer. Hitchens is author of the bestselling book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Christians around the world have used his death as an opportunity to throw a final posthumous punch. Maybe you won't interpret it this way, but let's look at some quotes to be sure. Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, tweeted, "My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now." Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also went to Twitter to drive his point home. He said Hitchens's death "is an excruciating reminder of the consequences of unbelief. We can only pray others will believe."
Let's be honest. These are not evangelical Christians showing a deep, sincere love for the loss of one of the world's great minds. No, this is simply the abuse of an opportunity. This opportunity allowed them to make an arrogant show of themselves on the world's leading asinine-soapbox, Twitter. This is not love. I'll say it again...this is not love. We're called to love one another, regardless of beliefs. And our love is also to be sincere. So it really frustrates me that so many prominent evangelical leaders used Hitchens's death as an opportunity to score a point for the God team.
If you still don't think that these little tweets are unfair and unloving, consider again Warren's statement: "My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now." Don't you think he could have left off the "He knows the Truth now" part? Wouldn't that have sounded so much more gracious? When I read these online postings, what I see is this: "You didn't believe in God, you got cancer, and now you're dead. Well, that's what you get for not believing in God." So to all the arrogant evangelicals out there, remember this: The same grace that saves you, regardless of anything you've done (and all the stupid tweets you've posted), is the same grace that comes to Christopher Hitchens. Don't act like you know God's ways...and remember the humble prayer of the tax collector in Luke 18.
In God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens says that organized religion is "hostile to free inquiry." These evangelical 'tweeters' are doing an excellent job to affirm Hitchens's statement. We should embrace differing views, rather than argue against them. I think it's easy to read certain passages of the Bible and conclude that we need to oppose those who oppose God. This is one of the main irritants that fuels my love/hate relationship with the Bible. Still, the Bible should never be cherry-picked. Love for those with differing views is the main, undergirding theme of the book. We too often forget that.
