Mark Upton, Are You Poisonous?

  The other night I watched Charlie Rose interview Christopher Hitchens about his new book god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Without advocating for or against the book (which I have not read yet) I would like to point out that, ironically, the Bible agrees with Hitchens’ premise. Religion is a poison.

           The fall of man occurred because Adam and Eve gave into a religious temptation to “be like God”. And they ate the fruit of the knowledge of “good and evil”. This means that man’s religious efforts to secure divinity or control of God through religious behavior have actually cursed creation, harmed others, and broken our relationship with our Creator. The most obvious example of this fact is the false arrest, torture, and execution of the sinless Son of God by the religious authorities of His day.

 What this means is that any debate with Hitchens and those who are influenced by his teaching must begin with the humble admission that he is right on this point. Religion is poisonous because of our sin.

 To assist us in this endeavor I thought it might help to compile a list of signs that you might be religiously poisonous. I’ve taken these from Jesus' teaching on the Lost Sons in Luke 15. The parable occurs in the context of two different kinds of people listening to Jesus – immoral people who are hopeful he can restore them to right relationship with God and religious people who look down on Him for associating with the immoral.

It’s more commonly known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but I suspect that title was contrived by religious people who missed the point of the story. Both sons in the passage are lost and only the irreligious son returns to relationship with the father. The religious son holds on to his moral high ground by rejecting relationship with both his father and brother.

 

Luke 15: 28-30

^28 The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ^29 But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ^30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

Signs that you might be poisonous:

1. People who rely on grace make you angry.

^28 The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.

2. Your Christian life feels like work.

^29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.

3. You believe your obedience obligates God to give you good things.

Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

4. You think of younger brothers as them.

^30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

5. The stories of younger brothers getting found makes you jealous instead of joyful.

^31 ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ^32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Have you eaten of the knowledge of the tree of good? Have you become religiously poisonous? Are you proving Hitchens right?

Comments

[Vicky]

What a refreshing response to Hitchens! Glad to read this, Mark. It's Christian response, it seems to me, in the truest sense, and I'm now inspired to take this Christlike approach when my atheist friends confront me.

~Vicky

[Mark Upton]

Vicky,

I'm glad it encouraged you. I do find that it's very important when discussing things with my non-Christian friends to always begin by affirming whatever I can in their reasoning. It models humility, feels loving, and seems to be the approach taken by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17.

Mark

[Ben Graber]

Thanks for helpful comments.

In the midst of a time when much of our concern is to present ourselves to a postmodern world as believers in or practitioners of a "nonreligious" spirituality, I think it might be much more helpful to talk about Christ coming to redeem our religiosity, just as we ought to believe that the invading Kingdom should be redeeming our politics, occupations, and family and friend relationships - aren't all of these things, as we currently experience them, poisonous?

On a separate but related note, I didn't know if anybody had posted it on here, but Christianity Today is hosting a short-essay debate between Hitchens and pastor Douglas Wilson (of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho). Here's the address:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html

Two exchanges have been posted; the link to the second is small, found between the introduction and Hitchens' first post.

[Mark Upton]

Ben,
Of course, as the pastor of a church with a Book of Church order I agree with you. I think the key to the discussion is being aware of the fact that our sin nature's inclination to misuse religion as a means of self-justification and pride doesn't disappear when we become Christians. In fact, as the book of Galatians makes so clear, it can actually get worse the longer we've been believers. Somewhere along the way we lose the ability to remember that God gave us the Spirit because of our faith in Christ rather than our faithfulness to Him.
For those interested in following Hitchens there are going to be several of these. Hitchens said on the Charlie Rose Show that he plans to debate believers in every major city on his book tour as a means of promoting his book. There's also a very interesting debate between Sam Harris and Rick Warren in last month's issue of Newsweek.