Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, was interviewed by theologically-liberal Unitarian (but I repeat myself) minister Marilyn Sewell.
This was an interesting exchange:
Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?
Hitchens: 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.
She actually goes on to admit, “I don’t know whether or not God exists in the first place.” It’s fascinating, what people will admit when you draw them out. Which is why, when I do discuss faith with people, I’ve finally learned to ask more questions than to talk. If you get someone talking about what they believe, and then ask them, “On what is that belief based?” you can get some very interesting answers. It often boils down to “I just want it to be true.” Which is interesting, because those same people believe Christians are the ones engaging in religion as wish-fulfillment. The difference, I guess, is we’re basing our faith in the person of Jesus Christ as documented in the bible, and they’re basing theirs on… what, exactly? Even they don’t really know.
Hitchens is emphatically NOT a believer, but he clearly understands core Christian theology better than this woman who presumes to teach it. How sad for them both.
Via Randy Alcorn’s blog, Eternal Perspectives.
Added: It occurred to me that I didn’t complete the thought in the post title – why we should never water down the truth of the gospel. The reason why is so that even unbelievers are clear about what they are rejecting. Christopher Hitchens has heard (and rejected) what the bible says about God. Marilyn Sewell’s parishioners, on the other hand, have not heard it at all.
