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Book Review: “The Rage Against God” by Peter Hitchens
“In the names of reason, science, and liberty they [have] proved, rather effectively, that good societies need God to survive and that when you have murdered him, starved him, silenced him, denied him to the children, and erased his festivals and memory, you have a gap that cannot indefinitely be filled by any human, nor anything made by human hands…. [Yet] A new and intolerant utopianism seeks to drive the remaining traces of Christianity from Europe and North America. This time, it does so mainly in the cause of personal liberation, born in the 1960s cultural revolution, and now inflamed into special rage by any suggestion that the sexual urge…
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Social Gospel or Gospel with Social Ramifications?
Before I became a Christian, I attended churches where I heard the “social gospel.” That is, I learned all about doing good works, but I didn’t actually know how to have peace with God through Christ. I thought good works were the way to such peace. But grace means that works follow salvation, not the other way around. Unfortunately, since becoming a Christian, I have often encountered an equally distorted view at the other extreme. Christians who know how to have peace with God through Christ often view pretty much everyone committed to feeding the poor and clothing the naked as preaching a “social gospel.” Often such believers see…
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Justice is Social
My friend Célestin lost six family members, including his brother, in the Rwandan genocide. One day a man came to Célestin to be baptized wearing a shirt he recognized as having belonged to his deceased brother. When Célestin asked about it, the man said his relative killed the guy who wore it. Célestin wanted to drown this person instead of baptizing him. But he remembered that Jesus died for both of them. Today Célestin and that man he baptized—the brother of his own brother’s murderer—serve together as ministry partners. Célestin went on to write his doctoral dissertation on forgiveness, coauthoring the book Forgiving As We’ve Been Forgiven: Community Practices for Making…
