WhatFinger


Commonalities between Christians and Atheists

A Malnourished Faith Encounters Robust



It is a self-evident truth that the level of allegiance to a belief system, despite one’s deficient understanding of what the latter truly entails, is commensurate with the degree of personal trust one has invested in it. This maxim applies both to those who see the universe as a product of random impersonal forces, and those who believe that the universe is sustained and guided by a personal, Supreme Being, who is intimately engaged even in the most mundane affairs of men. Both agents share a common, primordial yearning to make sense of the world around them, and their respective beliefs will inevitably have a profound influence on the manner that each navigates through life.

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This partly explains how a committed Atheist like Christopher Hitchens, who has been blessed with a prodigious intellect, and appears - at least outwardly - to function in the world with some measure of personal tranquility and satisfaction, manages to successfully grapple with the haunting dissonance that must inevitably reign any time he stops to perform an unbiased audit of his own personal existential thesis; namely that, in this vast universe he can only at best insufficiently apprehend, he still feels qualified to venture - in a most absolute sense - a well considered verdict that God simply does not exist. There is a cohesive fusion as it were, between the central tenet of Atheism, in which Hitchens stakes his whole existence, and the unflinching spirit with which he affirms his unbelief; down to the very manner he conducts his daily life. In fact, if we were to ask Mr. Hitchens what it means to be an Atheist, I doubt he would have any difficulty summarizing, in an intelligible and concise fashion, what it is that he believes (or in his case, does not believe) and the reasons why he remains irrevocably committed to such principles. However, upon closer scrutiny, his defense would yield certain inconsistencies that might lead any reasonable person to challenge its basic integrity. But even though the substance of his conviction quickly evaporates once its supporting premises are carefully dissected, Hitchens’ loyalty to his somewhat fragmentary theology is in its own way a rather admirable, albeit tragically misdirected virtue. There is something courageous about this defiance, which can not always be said for some of his less devout, God fearing counterparts, who often try to hide their lukewarm devotion behind the trendier façade of agnosticism. Such is the case of retired minister Marilyn Sewell, who under the auspices of Portland Monthly magazine was recently invited to dialogue with the acerbic Mr. Hitchens. Ms. Sewell, a teacher, psychotherapist, prolific author, and self-proclaimed “liberal Christian”, is accredited with turning the First Unitarian Church of Portland congregation into one of the largest in the United States. Presumably, this should lead the reader to infer that such an accomplishment is definitive proof that her favored sermons consistently bore faithful witness to the Truth, but there is something to be said for the incorrigible human craving to have our ears tickled. In this fascinating encounter, both Sewell and Hitchens sought to engage the presumably unexplored commonalities between Christians and Atheists. But most interesting about this whole exchange was Ms. Sewell’s unsolicited capitulation of everything that she, as a professing Christian - and the presumptive featured advocate for the opposing side - was supposed to hold most dear. Ironically, it was Hitchens, the self anointed crusader against the poisonous influence of all things religious, who in a surprising reversal of roles, candidly rebuked Sewell for her appalling spiritual ignorance. “I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally” noted Ms. Sewell, as if proud of her supine piety and exemplary tolerance toward the more enlightened skeptics. “I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example)” she continued, to a patently unimpressed Hitchens, who may have wondered what it was she counted as compelling reasons for believing in the first place. It was in this tenor that Hitchens rendered his exquisitely ironic rebuke: “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian”; a terse reminder to a timid heir of the kingdom, on the utter foolishness of squandering a gift which the instructing apostate had been denied by the unsearchable hand of providence. Still this was one of those rare instances when there was actually an underpinning consensus between two alleged opposites. But this unlikely affinity did not stem from Hitchens’ intellectual neglect of his own firmly held beliefs, but rather Sewell’s, who seemed to consider it a virtue to belittle the importance of the nonnegotiable tenets of her own faith, turning the latter into a rather anemic version of the original, which in theological parlance is also known as Heresy. But what Hitchens and Sewell really have in common is their unwillingness to subject their respective worldviews to more serious and deeper scrutiny than their own personal level of comfort will allow. The same self imposed blindness which keeps Hitchens from recognizing - or should I say admitting - the grave inconsistencies of his belief system, also keeps Sewell from admitting how far removed Christianity is from her own loose interpretation, which boils down to nothing more than the shallow remains from the wake of an unsparingly progressive deconstruction. Some may raise the objection that in this era of spiritual pluralism no one is entitled to pass judgment on what ultimately constitutes authentic faith. This was beautifully answered by Hitchens, of all people, when he alluded that it is important to understand what the Religion we espouse specifically requires, and to be honest about one’s commitment to stay the course that leads to faithful observance of both the letter and the spirit of its central doctrines; particularly the ones it is universally understood were meant to be taken quite literary. Such a commitment does not ignore the fact that concerning the actual demands of a particular belief system – imbued with the element of transcendence or not - our resolution to be faithful on a fairly consistent basis is usually found wanting. The feeble attempts by our frail frames to meet such demands are often met with lifelong, intermittent periods of triumph and relapse. Notwithstanding, a true pledge to fidelity always begins at the embryonic stage, from which, given enough time and the opportunity to translate doctrine into practice, our confidence gradually increases alongside an ever greater faithfulness.


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Miguel A. Guanipa -- Bio and Archives

Miguel Guanipa is a freelance journalist.


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