Christopher Hitchens and the Glory of God's Mercy

 

     Christopher Hitchens is dead. He died yesterday (Dec 15 2011). He was an Atheist; a loud one. He was 62. He was an author, and a father and a husband; in that order it seems.

If the name and picture don't ring a bell, he's known for saying (with an English accent) things like:

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either."

and

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”

and

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”

    I respect the man for being vocal about his beliefs (though he wouldn't have called them that) and I can even admire him for the veracity with which he kept them, but there's a section of his Globe and Mail obituary that caught my attention:

"In response to Mr. Hitchens’s outspoken and steadfast atheism, the faithful clamoured to the heavens, organizing prayer groups and even going so far as to designate Sept. 20, 2010, as Pray for Hitchens Day.

Don’t bother, unless it makes you feel better, he told the devout, insisting that he wouldn’t recant his atheism so long as he was lucid and rational. And he issued a plea asking people to forgive him if he did make a deathbed conversion, arguing that if such a thing happened, it wouldn’t be him speaking but a “half-demented” entity racked by pain and riddled with drugs."

     It's his desire to be forgiven by his friends if he recants his Atheism, that gave me pause. It's almost as though he's leaving the possibility for such a conversion... open?  That can't be right, the man was one of the most fervent and outspoken of Atheists yet here he is making a theological statement?

     Hitchens saw the possibility of recanting Atheism and espousing God, if he were "half-demented", drugged up, and in incredible pain. He saw the possibility. What if the Holy Spirit was starting to get to him? Would such a conversion be valid? Could it be? Many would say that it would only be an attempt by Hitchens to "hedge his bets" perhaps as an extreme version of Pascal's wager. Theological misunderstandings of Blaise Pascal aside, what if Hitchens' (hypothetical) conversion was legitimate?

     I have said this many times: the question eternal destination for any person is out of my pay grade. I am not the Lord. I know though, that God gives Grace to the humble though he opposes the proud.

     What if that's really what it took to humble Christopher Hitchens, esophageal cancer, his own death, great pain? What if it happened?

      What if he believed?

     Then I'd have a new brother, that's what.

I hope I do.

Thankful for Grace
-Kevin

Justice Wins: A Post About Franz Stangl, Treblinka, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

 

     Last night I watched a documentary on the History channel. It was about Franz Stangl, the one time Kommandant of the Treblinka extermination camp. I won't go into the details of Treblinka's operation (you can read about that here) but I will say that over the course of it's operation, Treblinka is estimated to have seen anywhere from 700'000 to 1'400'000 Jews pass through it's fake train station and into its gas chambers.The camp was staffed byless than 150 people.

     One hundred fifty people were responsible for the deaths of up to one million four-hundred thousand people. Stangl himself was eventually tried and convicted of war crimes and the deaths of nine-hundred thousand people. The numbers are staggering alone, and all night I've been trying to imagine a just outcome to all this, on this world. The simple fact is that there isn't. What can we do? Line up the offenders and shoot them? Is that justice? Do we torture them, and then kill them? Is that Justice?

     There is nothing that we can do to mitigate the enormity of Treblinka. Nothing we can do for justice, to make any of this right.

     Franz Stangl died in Dusseldorf prison in Germany of heart failure in 1971. Is that Justice?

"Cargo. They were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity-it couldn't have; it was a mass-a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'What shall we do with this garbage?' I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo."

"My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty..."
                                                                                                 -Franz Stangl