From the Mail Online: Peter Hitchins describes his journey back to Christianity, and his dispute with his atheist brother Christopher, on the release of his new book, The Rage Against God.

I have, however, the more modest hope that he might one day arrive at some sort of acceptance that belief in God is not necessarily a character fault, and that religion does not poison everything.

Beyond that, I can only add that those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case which is most effectively couched in poetry.

Tip: Ed Veith at Cranach.

One of the enduring legends of the West is that of Hypatia of Alexandra, immortalized by authors as far separated in time as Edward Gibbon and Carl Sagan as a humanist martyr, a scientist who was murdered by 5th Century Christian fanatics for the “sin” of inquiring into the mysteries of the natural world.

Our friend Ori Pomerantz directed me to this entry from the blog Armarium Magnum, concerning a recent movie about Hypatia. The author, who identifies himself as an atheist, points out that there is zero historical evidence for the idea that Hypatia died for science. According to the record, she got caught in a political crossfire and was killed by a mob that didn’t care (if it even knew) a bit about her scientific activities.

There’s an anecdote about C.S. Lewis that I’ve always enjoyed. One of his friends told of walking down an Oxford street with him one day, when they were accosted by a beggar. Lewis stopped and gave the man some money.

“You know he’s just going to go off and drink it up, don’t you?” the friend asked as they went on their way.

“Yes, well,” said Lewis, “if I’d kept the money I’d have probably gone off and drunk it up myself.”

There’s a wonderful humility and recognition of shared humanity in that story, I think.

Some people take the wrong lessons from such stories, though.

The essential thing is that Lewis was giving away his own money.

Years and years ago, I sat in on a teaching session led by a Lutheran pastor (we’ll call him Pastor Number One). He told a story of his own, one which (he thought) taught a profound lesson. I think it taught a lesson too, but not the one he thought it did.

Pastor Number One had taken a pastoral educational class which called for a “real world experiment.” Each pastor in the program was required to pack away all his clothing and his wallet, put on old, dirty clothes, and go out to spend a few days on the street as a homeless person.

Pastor Number One told, with some indignation, of getting in to see the pastor of a church (let’s call him Pastor Number Two, shall we?). Pastor Number Two had looked at him and said, “You’re strong and healthy. Obviously you’re able to work. Why don’t you get a job?”

“He was lecturing me!” Pastor Number One exclaimed, recalling the outrage. “I was hungry! I needed food! I didn’t need a lecture!”

I’ve often thought about Pastor Number One over the years, and it seems to me his righteous indignation was a little unjust.

Because the fact was, Pastor Number Two had had his number. Pastor Number One was indeed strong and healthy, and perfectly capable of working. He had come into the church under false pretenses, and had lied in Pastor Number Two’s face.

Pastor Number Two (if my experience in a church office where I saw [and helped] a lot of transients is any indication) had probably, over the years, developed a pretty good nose for bovine sewage.

What Pastor Number One saw as cold-heartedness, was in all likelihood just the exercise by Pastor Number Two of his fiduciary duty not to waste the money entrusted to him by his congregation (as well as a determination not to enable unhealthy life choices, or treat grownups like children). If Pastor Number Two was being judgmental, so was Pastor Number One.

And Pastor Number Two had the moral advantage of not being a liar.

Evangelical Outpost linked today to this article, questioning the traditional understanding of the martyrdom of Lady Jane Grey. Even if all it says is true, for me it doesn’t diminish the pathos of her youthful martyrdom.

Then I read an article about Auschwitz in Smithsonian Magazine.

So I’ve been contemplating human suffering today.

Have you ever thought this thought? I’ve thought it many times: If I had been God, and had known that giving human beings free will would result in all the evil and horror that have in fact been produced, I wouldn’t have given them free will. And if the human project was unsatisfactory without free will, I’d have just skipped the whole business.

I have an answer that satisfies me intellectually. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Apparently, in God’s economy, the good He is creating far outweighs all the innumerable evils perpetrated by man since the fall of Adam. From the viewpoint of eternity, we’ll look back and say, “Yes, it was well worth it.”

Now that answer raises a hundred questions in my mind. Questions for which I have no answer, and for which we have been given no plain answers.

This, I guess, calls for faith.

But it also argues, I think, for courage on God’s part. Granted, He saw the outcome from the beginning. But part of that outcome, I believe, was His own assumption of all that evil on the cross.

I read somewhere that, in the early years of the Superman comic strip, the writers came to a crisis when they’d made their character so powerful that they couldn’t come up with a challenging enough opponent for him anymore. That was when they invented Kryptonite. Something that took all that power away.

God did it in real life.

I can’t find the reference, but G. K. Chesterton wrote somewhere that all those scoffers, who call God evil for creating an evil world, are right in a sense, and that God acknowledged it (in a way) by explicitly accepting the punishment for creating all that evil.

Whatever else you think, I think you’ve got to admit it’s no cowardly strategy.

T4G Talk #8 from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Thursday on the Michael Medved radio show is Disagreement Day. On Thursdays, he sets an hour aside specifically for people to tell him he’s wrong about homosexuality, tax policy, and George Bush’s culpability in blowing up the World Trade Center.

Today, he had a call from a young man who wanted to disagree with him on the legalization of drugs. This caller said he smoked pot every day, and it wasn’t doing him any harm. He mentioned, as an aside, that he was a “born-again Christian.” Medved, who is Jewish but who knows quite a lot about our beliefs, questioned him more closely on that point. It turned out that he did not go to church at all, and had recently moved into his first house “with my girlfriend.”

I suppose there’s an element of Pharisaism in my response to that call. Certainly I fail to live up to the standards of Christianity in many areas of my life, not least in my cowardly flight from almost all personal interaction with other humans. But I think I can claim (at a minimum) that I know I’m doing wrong, and that I acknowledge that I ought to do better. I’ve been given grace to feel some guilt. I’m afraid that Michael Medved’s young caller is representative of many people who claim Christian faith in our country today. He didn’t seem to be aware that a Christian is called to live in any way that’s at all different from his neighbors.

I don’t know for a fact that this is true of the caller, but I think a lot of people claim Christianity purely as a nostrum for their own spiritual aches and pains. “Try Jesus! Now in Extra Strength! He’ll have you feeling better in no time!”

In point of fact, genuine Christianity often makes a person much less comfortable in life. We have been promised persecutions and tribulations, and to be reviled for Jesus’ sake. The joys and consolations of Christian faith have absolutely no necessary connection with comfort.

Lutherans like me have a complicated relationship with the book of James, where it says, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17) We don’t interpret that to mean that faith and works are equal partners in the operation of grace. We reject absolutely the idea that any effort of our own can contribute to our salvation.

But, as we read it, works are the sign and byproduct of grace. You can tell a genuine faith from a false faith by looking at its fruits. If someone is living no differently than he did before his “conversion,” it’s probably not a genuine one. Someone has paraphrased Luther as saying, “We are not saved by faith and works, but by faith that works.”

(Not from the movie)

It probably won’t surprise you much when I inform you that I passed up the opportunity to listen to my president’s State of the Union address last night.

Instead I popped my DVD of Groundhog Day into the player, and watched it for the eleventy-second time. It was almost shorter than the president’s speech, and definitely less repetitious, from what I’ve read.

And it’s the right time of year.

I think Groundhog Day is my It’s a Wonderful Life. As I’ve mentioned before, IaWL just depresses me. The only message I get from it is “George Bailey has a wonderful life, BUT YOU’RE NOT GEORGE BAILEY!”

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, presents a lesson I can agree with—“If I had the chance to do my life over about a million times, I might eventually figure something out.”

I understand the original script was written by a Buddhist, and that the filmmakers cut out some of the more explicitly Buddhist elements. I suppose, to be consistent with myself, I ought to reject the film for the merest taint of Buddhism.

But what kind of theology does It’s a Wonderful Life present? Salvation by good works and self-esteem. “You may think you’re a miserable sinner, George Bailey, but they think very highly of you in heaven!” Not exactly Christian law and gospel.

What I like about Groundhog Day is the non-theological material—the simple moral journey of a man who does actually come to realize that he’s a sinner, and then works to become somebody whose life contributes. It’s not a saving knowledge, but it’s a good thing for the people who have to live with him.

To a large degree, it’s about humility. I could name some prominent people who seem to think that humility is for their country, but not for them as individuals. Such people need to wake up and see their own shadows.

(Crossposted at Mere Comments)