god is not great by christopher hitchens
Publisher: Twelve
Copyright: 2007
Genre: fiction masquerading as non-fiction 
If any of you have checked the list of the books I have read this year you will notice that I have given Christopher Hitchens’ god is Not Great a 3 (out of 5).
Hitchens is a very well read, a very intelligent, and a very funny individual. I like him and I enjoy his writing.
If I were to summarize Hitchens’ book in one sentence it would be this: Christopher Hitchens has written a book on the non-existence of god that can be witty and quite lucid at times, but fog and pride obscures the rest.
And then I would move on from this to add: Hitchens’ arbiter is his own faith in humanism, reason, the scientific method, and the pursuit of truth (though without ever being able to come to any certainty of truth). These are his dogmas and those ideas which he rests his faith in. But perhaps it would be better to say that he begins with a disbelief in God to come to these other ideas. You see? We are all dogmatic. We cannot escape it. We are thinking, living, and fire-breathing humans. (I would go farther than this to say that existence itself insists on the existence of Truth and therefore dogma, beliefs, must follow inevitably).
And then: Hitchens believes in the use of Ockham’s razor (the simplest explanation is usually the best), but he doesn’t use it. Instead of coming to Christ, he goes to the never-ending quest for truth, and a truth that cannot be grasped. How is that simple?
And more: Hitchens trots out many postmodern arguments which he himself does not agree with, and uses them to poke holes in the water bucket. Fortunately for us, the water bucket is made of steel and Hitchens has brought a feather when he should have brought a diamond-studded drill. And let’s be clear: there are no diamond-studded drills. There’s only Jesus.
And more: He complains that the commandments exact impossible demands. BUT THAT’S THE POINT! That’s why we need Jesus! Though God demands (rightly and necessarily) the impossible from us, He also supplies us with that which we could not give of ourselves. And Hitchens continually misconstrues and misunderstands the truths of God. He is both a bad theologian AND a bad literary critic. He creates contradictions where there are none and instead of using Ockham’s razor, which he ardently professes to love, goes out of his way to misunderstand and obfuscate the meaning of scripture as well as scripture’s origin(s).
And: Hitchens’ continually proclaims the tried and false arguments made by those who would dissemble the truth of the existence of the triune God. His best argument is this: that people believe in god(s) because of wish fulfillment. But this is the old Freudian trick. Swords have two sides and so this argument manifests its impotence to prove its point. There is no proving of either side… until Jesus Christ returns and then every knee shall bow, whether it wishes to or not. Faith is only as strong as the object of that faith (as one of my professors in college explained so aptly). If Jesus Christ is our foundation; the true Jesus Christ and not just some effeminate, moralistic, do-gooder; then we have a sure and certain faith. Christ is THE ROCK, THE CORNERSTONE: The God of the universe.
But: Hitchens makes some great insights and jokes throughout the book, for example: he tells of the time he visited a new-age camp in India and of the sign that read above the entrance, “Shoes and minds must be left at the gate.” He eviscerates those religions, like Buddhism, that say evil does not exist. He rightly critiques our pro-abortion policies (the harsher ones at least) as being inhuman. But most of all he blasts every religion or worldview that seeks to destroy the use of our minds. He mocks the life of emotionalism lived without the mind of thought.
Unfortunately: For all his insights and wittiness Hitchens falls far too short. He elevates human institutions and human striving and human ideals to the throne of god, such that Hitchens himself is his own god. He destroys the only hope he has in Jesus Christ. This is a good book to read for those who want to understand the thought processes of a certain segment within our world, but it is ultimately not a hope-filled book nor a true one.
quote: paradise lost by john milton
When violence was ceas’d, and war on earth,
All would have then gone well, peace would have crown’d,
With length of happy days, the race of man:
But I was far deceiv’d; for now I see
Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.
How comes it thus? unfold, celestial guide,
And whether here the race of man will end.
Note on the quote: Adam and Eve having already fallen from their state of perfect grace, Adam is met by Michael, the Archangel of Archangels, and is given visions of the future of man. These visions being full of evil and futility and much vanity, Adam cries out in shame and sorrow over his sins and rightly sees the predicament of mankind.
Illustration by Gustave Doré, The Heavenly Hosts, c. 1866. (Wikipedia)
reformed rap friday: my clothes, my hair by the ambassador
Because we’re ALL clowns parading in our dressing gowns.
We see the outside.
But God sees the inside.
quote: the great divorce by c.s. lewis
The ghosts of men are in the breach between hell and heaven and the bright spirits are those that have come to bring some home to heaven, while others decide to stay home in hell (Lewis’ theology on hell was not all that great). Here is one conversation between the ghost of a man trying to decide on heaven or hell and the “Bright Spirit” of a man attempting to persuade him to heaven. It is the second block quote that I find penetrating; John Owen expressed the same idea in his Mortification of Sin (in terms of drifting half-consciously into sin).
The ghost of a man:
I’m far from denying that young men may make mistakes. They may well be influenced by current fashions of thought. But it’s not a question of how the opinions are formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions, sincerely expressed.
The Bright Spirit of a man (“Bright Spirit” is capitalized in the book):
Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.
happy thanksgiving!
Whatever you think about President Obama it does seem that God’s common grace is upon his family. We can thank God for that, for Mr. & Mrs. Obama’s apparent love and concern for their family. It is a good picture of, at least from this viewing angle, what a family should be.
So let’s pray for them, let’s pray that God’s grace would shine on them all the more and that our King and Great Lover (He sent His Son, who is God) might open the eyes of their hearts to see Him on that cross, to bring them to the edge of God’s love in Christ and then to jump in by being reborn of the Spirit. Let’s pray that.
And let’s remember, that just like the turkey, we who deserved to die in everlasting torment have been spared by God’s great love in Jesus Christ and He has sealed us in His Spirit as the assurance of our hope in God, our perfect desire. God has saved us! God exacted the price, but He has also paid the price. He who demanded the impossible from us, He also supplied what was impossible for us to give.
Therefore, there is now no boasting except in our great Saviour Jesus Christ who is the image of the everlasting God, our Sovereign King.
added two new pages to your right :)
1. books i’ve read this year
2. note on my book reviews
Follow the jets:
notes from the tilt-a-whirl by n.d. wilson
This book here looks like a dandy, but this ain’t no endorsement (double negative, yes, but in day-to-day lingo we reject the double and accept only the negative, at least for this grunge-speak mishap)!
I don’t endorse books ’til I read ‘em. I only market ‘em to the wider world.
A review by Tony Reinke at Miscellanies.:
http://spurgeon.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/nd-wilson-notes-from-the-tilt-a-whirl-9780849920073/
And here’s ND Wilson’s website:
how soccer explains the world: an unlikely theory of globalization by franklin foer
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Copyright: 2005
Genre: Non-fiction, Current events
Recommended: Yes, for those who are interested in global affairs and/or soccer
A very interesting read. I liked it.
The author takes us on a journey around the globe looking at soccer and how it interacts or relates to certain regions, peoples, nations, and events. Mr. Foer shows us genocidal soccer fans/owners in Serbia, tackles the “Jewish question” in relation to soccer (specifically in Europe), introduces us to sentimental soccer hooliganism in Britain, explains how soccer has been used by Iranians as a freedom of expression, decries the anti-soccer rhetoric in America as anti-globalization, and provides us glimpses of soccer in other areas of the world as well.
His writing is straight forward and easy to read. He vividly shows how soccer is used and transformed by its participants and by outsiders. He describes some of the visible affects of globalization on soccer and tries to explain how the changes in soccer manifest the changes in the local communities due to globalization.
The one criticism I have for the book is its lack of analysis. The author does provide some analysis, but does not provide the depth of analysis I was hoping for. Perhaps my expectations were unreasonable, but it would have been neat to see the relation between different peoples, nations, societies in the soccer world and how that related to the bigger picture of globalization (he didn’t tie the observations together).
I enjoyed this book. He did not provide as much analysis as I had hoped, but he provided some interesting information and intriguing stories.
word of the week: aver
Aver
to declare or affirm with confidence
Ex. J-Dub avers that the Vikings, however bad our pass defense may be at times, will win the Super Bowl this year.
quote: the cross of Christ by john stott
First, ‘this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us’ (1 John 3:16). Most people would have no difficulty in telling us what they think love is. They may know that whole books have been written with the purpose of distinguishing between different kinds of love [...]. Nevertheless, they would claim that the meaning of love is self-evident. John would disagree with them, however. He dares to say that, apart from Christ and his cross, the world would never have known what true love is. Of course all human beings have experienced some degree and quality of love. But John is saying that only one act of pure love, unsullied by any taint of ulterior motive, has ever been performed in the history of the world, namely the self-giving of God in Christ on the cross for undeserving sinners. That is why, if we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.
Btw, I cannot recommend this book enough. Stott has some issues (his flirtation with annihilationism), but this book is stellar Stott. Buy it, read it, mark it with your pencil.
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