Years ago I had the. . . privilege? Distinction? Experience? Of sitting until the early hours of the morning with Christopher Hitchens—debating Christianity. Apparently, I
didn’t do a very good job because his mega best –seller “God is Not Great” has done even better in the marketplace than the raft of atheist best-sellers, such as Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion,” which preceded it.

What intrigues me about “Great” is how much Hitchens gets right about the modern world and the effect of religion upon it – while still arriving at the wrong place in the end. But he takes us on a journey with words designed – as Hitchens, a brilliant contrarian and writer for Vanity Fair – always designs to them, to both elegantly and yet crudely vivisect his adversary.

Where Hitches fails is, ironically, in the same way – though of course with different content – that modern evangelicalism itself falls short. (Being a modern evangelical I can say such things.)

The essence of “Great” comes down to the fact that Hitchens doesn’t, well, like the idea of God. It’s all about Hitchens. And so I’m reminded of what my Catholic friends rightly, I think, argue about so many of us evangelicals: “you people are so focused on your personal relationship with God you forget it’s not all about you!”

Hitchens claims all kinds of true things with a sort of school boy “so THERE” bravado: Religion has destroyed lives and led to terrible wickedness; all sorts of people claiming to be acting on behalf of God have done evil things; twisted (what should be) the beauty of sexual relations; people can live very ethical lives apart from religion; secularism doesn’t necessarily lead to totalitarianism, in fact sometimes religious fanaticism does; events once thought to be supernatural in origin (the bubonic plague, for instance) have now been shown to have natural causes, people age you know! – and so on.

One wants to retort – “and your point is. . . what, exactly?”

(Some see in the wickedness and perversion of religion by man as a terrible proof of just how much man needs redemption. But that’s another critique.)

True straw men, as in attacking a 17th century religious leader who opposed the smallpox vaccine as interfering with God’s design and claiming that his thinking is relevant to today’s religious debates, are relatively rare, but given Hitchen’s genius they are a surprise to find at all.

And, so in “Great” we are given a treatise of how religion and men wielding it have mistreated the world, and particularly Hitchens. (He had quite the arguments with some of his school teachers as a youngster. One teacher referred to how useful religion would be to the boys when they grew up and started losing loved ones. The fact that a teacher would see Christianity in only such utilitarian terms clearly “shows” how silly it is and on it goes.)

And again Hitchens refers to the dearth of scientists and physicists who believe in God. So, again and again, one is left asking – “and your point is what, exactly?”

Because, of course, none of this has any relevance to whether or not there is a God, or to what that God require might require of us. In other words, objective truth stands whatever our feelings about it one way or another. But Hitchens does not offer a cogent apologia for atheism as, say, C.S. Lewis offers a cogent apologia for Christianity in “Mere Christianity.” Instead, Hitchens comes across as really, really irritated that religion has a hold on man long after it “should” have been discarded.

Ironically, the fact that he believes his feelings and personal experience to be fully relevant to whether or not God Himself rules the universe is, well, typical of man-centered evangelicalism present today. Hitchen’s greatest flaw in “Great” (besides essentially lumping all of the worlds religions into one) is that he makes God into his own image, a caricature which can be discarded.

Ironically, that’s easier for Hitchens’ to do precisely because we have an “all about me” culture, aided and abetted by a “what can God do for me and how do I want to feel about God” Christian world view (vs. – “how I can honor God and what does He require of me?”) This leaves openings for books like Hitchens’ in that he naturally supposes his personal experience, feelings and preferences are enough to rule on whether God is in His heaven.

Hitchens pens a fast paced, often amusing, but utterly condescending and scornful screed against religion. But disappointingly, perhaps especially for us Christians, he does not treat his subject with the intellectual honesty we are so used

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Betsy Hart, a Scripps-Howard syndicated columnist, writes this review exclusively for The Chicago Daily Observer where she serves on the editorial board. Betsy hosts ‘It Takes a Parent’ on AM1160 WYLL Thursdays at 2:00.

Read More of Hitchens’ Book: Making God in His Own Image off-site...