The well known atheist Christopher Hitchens died Thursday night. Doug Wilson, who debated Hitchens numerous times reflects in a Christianity Today article:
Editor’s Note: Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. A statement from Vanity Fair said that he died Thursday night at cancer center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer. CT asked Douglas Wilson to weigh in on the life and death of the prominent atheist.
Christopher Hitchens was a celebrity intellectual, and, as such, the basic outlines of his life are generally well known. But for those just joining us, Christopher Hitchens was the older of two sons, born to Eric and Yvonne in April 1949. He discovered as a schoolboy that probing questions about the veracity of the Christian faith were part of a discussion that he “liked having.” His younger brother, Peter, followed him in unbelief. But unlike Christopher, Peter publicly returned to the Church of England, the communion where they had both been baptized.
Christopher spent some time in the 1960s as a radical leftist, but of course that was what everybody was doing back then. Somehow Christopher managed to do this and march to a different drummer, doing his radical stint as part of a post–Trotskyite Luxemburgist sect. He graduated from Balliol at Oxford, and soon became established as a writer, the vocation of his life, one in which he excelled. As a writer and thinker, he was greatly influenced by (and wrote about) men like George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson, while as the same time reserving the right to attack any sacred cow of his choosing—and the more sacred, the better. He is widely known for his scathing attack on Mother Teresa, and when Jerry Falwell passed away, he spent a good deal of time on television chortling about it.
Justin Taylor considers what may be said with certainty regarding Steve Jobs:
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.”
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
I once visited with a lady in her home who had polio during the terrible Rockford Polio epidemic in 1945. It was an awful time for Rockford. There were over 380 cases in Winnebago County alone. Over 30 people died that year, most of them children. This lady I visited missed a year of school and was separated many months from her parents. She told me what it was like to lay in her bed at the age of 14 asking God over and over again to allow her to live.
This was not the first I’ve heard of the Rockford polio epidemic. Another lady remembered her parents not allowing her to go to the end of World War II celebration in downtown Rockford because of the threat of polio. Administrators postponed the start of some schools. Here in Stillman Valley, nurses checked the temperature of children on a daily basis at others.
My wife’s father had polio. He survived, but lost the muscles in his stomach from the awful disease.
Even President Roosevelt had polio and was crippled.
The worst of the Rockford polio epidemic was in 1945, over 60 years ago. Yet, people still remember it. I wonder how Northern Illinois would handle another such epidemic today. Are we prepared to deal with something that threatens our children and strikes fear in the hearts of every parent and grandparents?
The second chapter of Hebrews 2 tells us that Christ became humanity to defeat Satan and deliver His people from their fear of death so that we can find mercy and receive grace to help us in our time of need. Those who know Christ, need not fear a polio epidemic, or the bird flu or terrorism.
Thom Rainer (President and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources) reflects on the race of life:
When my son, Art Rainer, began work on the book we co-authored, Simple Life, he spent a good bit of time in a cemetery.
That’s right. A cemetery.
He found a cemetery near his home in Boca Raton, Florida, and simply walked from grave marker to grave marker. Listen to his simple explanation for this strange type of research.
“I came to this cemetery to gain perspective. I could not think of a more inspirational location than to be surrounded by those whose earthly story had come to an end. If they could, what would they tell us? Now that their lives are over, what wisdom would they want to pass on? What were their regrets? Where did they get it right? Though the sands of time in my life’s hourglass are still running for me, with every breath I breathe, I am moving toward my physical closure.
“My body will become like theirs.
“On each grave marker is a dash between two years. The dash is time, and that is where we are, in our dash. And before there is some year placed on the other end, we need to figure this thing out.”
The Dash Hits Home
This past week was tough. My older brother, Sam Rainer, had open heart surgery. The surgery went well. The road to recovery looked great. But two days later he had a stroke.
As I sat next to him in the intensive care unit, I reflected about our family. Our parents died years ago. Our sister died as an infant. In our original family, it’s just the two of us. And there he was with a newly repaired heart dealing with the aftermath of a stroke in the intensive care unit.
I called on one of our older people today at a rehab center which is also a nursing home. Pop music was playing over the sound system and the first song that caught my attention was John Lennon:
Imagine there’s no heaven . . .
It didn’t seem to me like “Imagine there’s no heaven” was a popular thought at the nursing home.
The next song spinning on the nursing home juke box was, “I had the time of my life,” and that one didn’t look like it was going to climb the nursing home charts either.
I understand that people loved I had the Time of My Life in Dirty Dancy. Imagine went platinum for all I know. But, neither song works very well in the nursing home. I didn’t interview the people sitting about in wheel chairs, but my guess is that not a lot of them are dreaming that there’s no heaven. Nobody looked to be having the time of their life. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey were nowhere in sight.
So. I decided to go with the Apostle Paul rather than a meditation on John Lennon. I read aloud to the person I was visiting 2 Cor 4:16-18, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all . . . For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Justin Taylor points to a helpful article considering the ethics of cremation.
David Jones, professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has an excellent article in the latest issue of JETS on the topic of cremation, which I’ve received permission to post. It’s called “To Bury or Burn? Toward an Ethic of Cremation” (PDF).
Here’s the purpose of the essay:
In light of the growing interest in cremation, this brief work will attempt to summarize some of the key historical, Biblical, and theological considerations that have been a part of the moral discussion of cremation within the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Jayber Crow is the barber in Wendell Berry’s recommended fictional community of Port William. As such he witnesses how life and circumstances sometimes transform people . . .And, in that sense, there is a parallel between Jayber Crow’s job of being a barber and mine as a pastor.
But you could not be where I was with experiencing many such transformations. One of your customers, one of your neighbors (let us say), is a man know to be more or less a fool, a big talker, and one day he comes into your shop and you have heard and you see that he is dying even as he is standing there looking at you, and you can see his his eyes that (whether he admits it or not) he knows it, and all of a sudden everything is changed. You seem no longer to be standing together in the center of time. Now you are on time’s edge, looking offing into eternity. And this man, your foolish neighbor, your friend and brother, has shed somehow the laughter that followed him through the world, and has assumed the dignity and the strangeness of a traveler departing forever. Jayber Crow, page 129.
Click here to go to the Texas Department of Justice website – -
Or, read the last words of three others who were executed in Luke 23:39-42.
I wonder what my last words will be.
“Teach us to number our days (Psalm 90:12).
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Clare Cameron selected some of the “last words” for a recent article for the New York Times:
Last week, reports of executions — one postponed in Ohio, one carried out in Texas — punctuated the news more frequently than usual. These reports prompted me to reflect on an archive of executed prisoners’ last words I found on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Web site while researching parole terms. The archive’s earliest entry dates from Dec. 7, 1982; the most recent was added after Stephen Moody was executed on Wednesday by lethal injection for murder.Go ahead?
Nothing I can say can change the past.
I done lost my voice.
I would like to say goodbye.
My heart goes is going ba bump ba bump ba bump.
Is the mike on?
I don’t have anything to say. I am just sorry about what I did.
I am nervous and it is hard to put my thoughts together. Sometimes you don’t know what to say.
I received this question recently from one of our flock.
I was reviewing the details of my will and have specified that I wish to be cremated. I have no real strong feelings; I guess just an engineer’s approach to simple and efficient. I did google Dr. Dobson (Focus on the Family) and found:
“Dr. Dobson’s personal feeling is that cremation isn’t an issue of moral significance. Whether through cremation or prolonged decay in the earth, our physical bodies will return to ash.
Although as Christians we believe in bodily resurrection from the dead, the Apostle Paul indicates in I Corinthians 15:42-44, & 49 that our bodies will be somehow different at the time of Christ’s return: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body . . . And just as we have borne the likeness of earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”
In short, Dr. Dobson believes the spiritual bodies we receive at the resurrection will not be dependent upon the state of our bodies here on earth.
Just wondering what Dr. Brauns thought.
Thankful you are my Pastor and a friend.
Respectfully recognizing that there are differences amongst Bible believing Christians on this issue, my answer is two-fold:
I partially agree with Dr. Dobson. In no way is the resurrection of believers limited by what happens physically after death. A Christian obliterated by an explosion, for instance, will just as surely share in the resurrection. If you have a Christian loved one who chose cremation, you need not fear that he or she will not be resurrected.
But, unlike Dr. Dobson, I counsel against cremation. It is not consistent with how burial was handled biblically (recall, for example, the specific instructions given by Jacob in Genesis 49:29-32). More important, it does not square with a biblical view of humanity (anthropology). We are physical beings. Not that Dr. Dobson said this, but when people state that the body is just a shell for the soul they reflects Greek philosophy, not a biblical worldview. We will be resurrected physically.
I encourage you to read Russell Moore’s article in Christianity Today, “The Emptied Tomb and the Emptied Urn.” Here is a splendid and hopeful excerpt from Moore’s article:
I still oppose cremation. There’s a reason Christians throughout the centuries have committed the bodies of the faithful to the ground, dramatically picturing our trust in the reclamation of these very same bodies when the roll is called up yonder. But I’m careful now to explain that, whatever is the case, cremation isn’t forever. Neither is amputation or mastectomies or the horrifying tattoo marks of totalitarian regimes sending prisoners to their executions.
A pastor friend of mine took a position as a hospice chaplain six months ago. Recently, he wrote six lessons God has taught him in those first six months.
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Here are six things I am learning about the spiritual and physiological aspects of death and dying: 1) Say it while you still can.
Some of our patients are not yet on their “death beds,” but others are. Rarely have I seen such people live out their final days as the movies portray. Most people in this situation are quite motionless and less verbal than I imagined. Their words (for those who can still speak) are . . . few . . . and . . . far . . . between, and thoughts are often incomplete and interrupted by brief periods of sleep.
Although it is possible to hear some final words from a patient before he/she takes a last breath, normality seems to be disconnected words, from a body reserving most of its energy for the few vital organs still working. This may last a few hours, a few days, or a few months.
Fortunately, it seems that such people can understand what others are saying, even when sedated. 2) The skilled nursing home option is an a-moral, not immoral choice.
Before chaplaincy, I found it easy to assume that most nursing facilities were bad and that most families who send their loved ones to such places were worse. Boy was I wrong!
Providing home care for the dying is like raising a 90+ pound infant. It is a dirty, isolated and monotonous job that may breed exhaustion, depression and false guilt. Some have nicknamed it the “36 hour workday.”
Through the chaplaincy, the Lord is teaching me empathy for such people. He is also teaching me to evaluate a nursing facility by its personnel, not its decor. My favorite facility is an old building with an administrator and staff who treat their patients like family and grieve deeply when their patients decline and die.
Dying people need capable caregivers. Sometimes such people are blood relatives, and other times they are paid caregivers, who treat their patients with respect and compassion. Those in skilled nursing facilities are trained to deal with a broad host of issues, while also having 12-16 hours daily to rest. Home caregivers learn as they go, and are always on the clock. Loved ones must ask themselves which type of caregiver is better for the patient, and for themselves. 3) Desperation alone will not soften a hard heart.
Those who are staring death in the face are more receptive to the gospel, right? Not always.
There’s a story in the New Testament about two men facing imminent death. One mocked faith in Christ, while the other repented and believed. These men were not on their death-beds; they were on crosses.
Many people avoid death-related topics while they are healthy, presuming that they’ll ponder such things on their death-beds, but to believe that desperation will change the heart is a false and dangerous assumption.
Although I’m only six months in, I have observed a common trend: dying people tend to meditate most on what was important to them before their decline. If Jesus Christ and an eternity with him was far from their minds when they had a clean bill of health, the death-bed alone won’t change that.
I rejoice that I have had several opportunities to share the gospel with patients, but I’ve also seen people on the edge of death, who have no desire to ponder what awaits them on the other side. Then at their funerals, their families talk about what their loved ones are doing in Heaven, even though such people had no interest in discussing Heaven.
Now, one might assume that I’m a pushy proselytizer, but quite the contrary. Hospice is not the Church, and hospice chaplains are to respect the rights of their patients to believe differently than they. So in such situations, I usually ask a non-threatening question like, “Do you think much about what’s on the other side?” Sometimes the answer is, “no,” especially for those who never attended church.
Jesus said in John 3:5-8: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Sometimes the Spirit “blows” across my chaplaincy conversations, and sometimes He does not.
And so I pray not just for desperation, but also for Spiritual intervention. 4) Dysfunction is par for the course.
One of the benefits of hospice chaplaincy is getting to know families, and one of the most comforting things to discover is that my family is not the only imperfect one.
The more I get to know families, the more I discover different degrees of tragedy and/or conflict within. Weeping with the weeping and helping families seek peacemaking is a big part of the chaplain’s task. 5) They forget my name, but not the Liturgy.
Several of my patients suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s, and most of them forget who I am between visits. If they were churched, however, they have keen recollections of hymns and Scripture.
So I do a lot of singing and Scripture-reading to people who can barely utter a sentence, but who will never forget, “Amazing Grace,” Christmas Hymns, The Lord’s Prayer, or Psalm 23. It really is astounding to see how worship repetitions cling to people’s minds, when so many other things have disappeared.
I used to preach that meaningful repetition was an important part of Christian worship. Now I see one reason why. 6) I can still do the verb, though am no Longer the noun.
My good friends often ask me if I miss pastoring and preaching.
I do, but not as much as I would have thought. I miss the people, and I do miss the preaching, but hospice chaplaincy gives me some unique opportunities to shepherd people, many of whom have become disconnected from their churches because of their condition.
Preaching one hour a week was a great privilege, but so is many hours a week showing love and compassion to dying people and their loved ones.
Although I miss the pulpit, I rejoice that Christ is producing in me a heart to come alongside people and love them in a unique way, without the administrative and responsibility pressures (Heb. 13:17) one finds in pastoring a church.
“. . . Chris Brauns has done a magnificent job in helping us understand the true nature of biblical forgiveness. Every Christian will profit from reading and applying this book.” Jerry Bridges.
“ . . . Unpacking Forgiveness is an engaging, convicting but emphatically encouraging treatment of this hugely important (and sometimes mindbogglingly challenging) part of life. Dr. Brauns writes from the standpoint of a faithful, wise, experienced and caring pastor . . .” Ligon Duncan, First Pres, Jackson, MS
