Sometimes they are right even when they are wrong...

It is always instructive and often amusing to read the thoughts of atheists/agnostics when they are writing about people of faith. They typically have such a skewed idea of why we believe that the embarrass themselves when they try to determine motivations. I read an little blurb on a blog called Secular Right written by Heather MacDonald. She is responding to uber-hysterical professional atheist Christopher Hitchens, one of the people who have learned that there is a vast, fanatical pool of people who will buy books slandering religious faith. In her post, Has Christopher Hitchens Been Duped? she writes the following:

Christopher Hitchens accuses Rick Warren of bigotry for believing that Jews will not go to heaven (thanks to Wally for the link). Hitchens’ condemnation strikes me as unduly harsh. I don’t think it’s fair to label a theological position as bigotry simply because it does not conform to secular principles.

But here’s another possibility: Do modern Christians still believe with the same fervor as in the past all those unyielding doctrines of eternal damnation for the unbaptised and unconverted? They sure don’t act as if they do. If they really were convinced that their friends, co-workers, neighbors, and in-laws were going to hell because they possessed the wrong or no religious belief, I would think that the knowledge would be unbearable. Christians surely see that most of their wrong-believing personal acquaintances are just as moral and deserving as themselves. How, then, do they live with the knowledge that their friends and loved ones face an eternity of torment? I would expect a frenzy of proselytizing, by word or by sword.

In previous centuries, when religion had the upper hand, religious differences meant more. But ours is a world dominated by the secular values of tolerance and equality. Either believers live with an extraordinary degree of cognitive dissonance between the inclusive values of their society and the dictates of their religion, or they unconsciously mitigate those bloody-minded dictates as atavistic vestiges from a more primitive time.

I wonder which it is.

On the one hand, that demonstrates a typical misunderstanding of Christianity. Christians don't believe they are more moral or deserving than their neighbors. That is kind of the point. Christians are not saved because they are more moral or deserving, we are saved in spite of that. That is why we call it grace.

On the other hand, she does have a point. If we believe what we say we believe, that those lost without Christ end up in eternal hell, why don’t we expend more energy witnessing than we do? It is an unintended rebuke, but a real rebuke nonetheless.