Some of the Epis­co­palians and Methodists are happy to pro­vide same sex wed­ding cer­e­monies, all the while the folks over at http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com are ask­ing, “If God exists, why doesn’t he restore a sev­ered limb?” They ask that ques­tion because their scope is too lim­ited to rec­og­nize even the air we breathe is mirac­u­lous. As is the jour­ney from birth until death. As is a doctor’s abil­ity to re-attach a sev­ered limb, a mir­a­cle of syn­ergy, God work­ing with man, whether man real­izes it or not. Hence, your men­tioned 12 minute atten­tion span. They want to see it, touch it, right now, or it does not exist. It really boils down to whether one strives to exist in the eter­nal realm or live solely for the moment.

Hello, I just stum­bled across your blog.

As a fel­low Ortho­dox, I also get quite dis­cour­aged and depressed by lis­ten­ing to peo­ple like Hitchens. I keep try­ing to think of good deci­sive argu­ments that I’d use in an argu­ment with an athe­ist, but I don’t think we’ll ever change the minds of peo­ple like Hitchens. But I’m also encour­aged by remem­ber­ing how many mil­lions of peo­ple around the world are devout Chris­tians, and read­ing these blogs also lets me know I’m not alone!

You wrote (of one pos­si­ble out­come of the clash between Chris­tian­ity and the athe­ists), “Or to be court-ordered to per­form church wed­dings for gay cou­ples or else lose our tax-free status?”

I agree that this is, indeed, very likely to hap­pen; and if not with regard to the refusal by the Church to per­form “mar­riages” that we can­not rec­og­nize as such, it may well be related to another out­come you men­tioned: law­suits result­ing from hav­ing the truth of the Gospel being called “hate speech.”

What can we do? We need to be pre­pared for these types of out­comes. We need to be ready for the increased costs that will come from the tax­a­tion of church prop­erty; and we must give some thought as to how we will con­tinue to meet for wor­ship, instruc­tion, and fel­low­ship when we have lost our church build­ings to set­tle such law­suits. We must also, each one of us, be pre­pared, as the Apos­tle Peter writes, “to give a defense to every­one who asks you a rea­son for the hope that is in you.) (1 Pet. 3:15) Finally, we must be pre­pared to suf­fer, even if only these forms of incon­ve­nience, for the sake of the Gospel and for our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dif­fi­cult times are com­ing! Let us resolve to remain on the path to which God has called us, and do our utmost to be trans­formed into the like­ness of Christ, and show Him forth to all the world. By doing so — by endur­ing the per­se­cu­tions with­out com­plaint or reproach — we have the oppor­tu­nity to bear wit­ness to our Lord, and so, in this way, show those young peo­ple with whom you are rightly con­cerned the true enlight­en­ment, as opposed to those who are only worldly-wise.

Father, Ken, and Peter:
Well, I was kind of hop­ing some­one would tell me I was just being melo­dra­matic, but it sounds like you all see the same thing I do. And also the need to col­lect our wits BEFORE we encounter these guys. There is a very nat­ural ret­i­cence among peace-loving Chris­tians to get into dis­cus­sions with hos­tile peo­ple. And also, the sheer neg­a­tive force of the casual blas­phemy and (par­don the expres­sion) crap that these guys deal in can knock you clean off your feet.

I don’t give the truth much of a chance in these encoun­ters — it takes dis­cern­ment and a heart at least *some­what* recep­tive to God. But I’ll bet there are surprises.

And Father, I think you hit all the high­est points spot on: Expect and plan for the dif­fi­cul­ties; pre­pare your defense; stay resolved … even be grateful.

Hitchens et al aren’t inter­ested in a con­ver­sa­tion. There is no need come up with com­pletely com­pelling argu­ments. Defend­ing Chris­tian­ity to the (philo­soph­i­cally) deaf will do no good.

Inter­net dis­cus­sions are worse than in-person dis­cus­sions. They go absolutely no where. If read­ing their screeds and the yes-men who sur­round them depresses you, it isn’t nec­es­sary to read them.

If the rise of athe­ist fun­da­men­tal­ism mean that reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions lose their tax free sta­tus, well, so what? That isn’t exactly persecution.

I sin­cerely doubt that any­one will attempt to force churches to per­form mar­riages they don’t want to per­form. Obama even recently said, in his address to Notre Dame: “Let’s honor the con­science of those who dis­agree with abor­tion, and draft a sen­si­ble con­science clause.” These do not sound like the words of some­one who wants to force his will.

Sure, the athe­ist fun­da­men­tal­ists are noisy, but they are a minor­ity. Most athe­ists, while they may look down their noses at believ­ers, aren’t inter­ested in rid­ding the world of reli­gion. Given that ~75% of Amer­i­cans claim to be Chris­t­ian and fewer than 20% are are­li­gious, I sin­cerely doubt the sim­ple preach­ing of the Gospel will come under legal assault. I’ve posted a few thoughts that may be relevent on my weblog.

Mark:
The thing that makes it hard to keep the num­bers in per­spec­tive is that these guys are def­i­nitely over-represented in new media. And so they build up a dandy echo cham­ber and just loooove how it sounds. I had kind of for­got­ten that, but over the course of the day it had started to occur to me, so I’m kind some­one else voiced it first.

Can’t agree with you about the tax-free sta­tus being unim­por­tant, though. I think there are a lot of churches that would fold if that hap­pened. And a lot of state and city plan­ners would actu­ally be kind of glad if they did, because they’d rather see the land go to some­thing that brings in revenue.

You’re right that that’s not like get­ting shot or any­thing. But I’d still be very sad to see it hap­pen. And I do think our cul­ture would suffer.

Hitchens and Dawkins are buf­foons and fringe dwellers, even if their books are best sell­ers. Media num­bers and rabid com­ments on any blog or inter­net media are sta­tis­ti­cally a VERY thin slice of the pop­u­la­tion and real­ity (even on Ortho­dox lists and blogs). And in the end…who cares, really. The world is the world and the Church is the Church. Hitchen’s assess­ment of my faith is mean­ing­less to me even if he gets a mil­lion hits on his blog. If peo­ple who buy his stuff ever meet a real Chris­t­ian, he can be undone in a rela­tion­ship. The prob­lem is that a lot of Chris­tians look like his par­o­dies. Oh well. It just puts the bur­den on me to not look like that. Per­son­ally, I’m not concerned.

Grace said:

“There is a very nat­ural ret­i­cence among peace-loving Chris­tians to get into dis­cus­sions with hos­tile people.”

Hitchens is a drunk and Hawkins is a blowhard, both of them love to mar­vel at their own intel­li­gence. On an every­day level with every­day peo­ple, I find _most_ athe­ists to be cor­dial and respect­ful. I also find them to be very will­ing to co-exist. A lit­tle mutual com­mon cour­tesy has led to many use­ful discussions.

Unfor­tu­nately, it’s not the every­day peo­ple who set the stereotypes.

s-p & Ken:
Okay, so Hitchens isn’t get­ting invited to our potluck any­time soon.

I think the points you make about not tak­ing them to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the rank-and-file is well taken. Like every­one with a horse in the race, I get a lit­tle pan­icky when I hear spokes­men talk to thun­der­ous applause about some­thing that rep­re­sents a cul­tural dis­as­ter IMHO.

Heck, even had an athe­ist com­menter that said Hitchens was a jerk. But more about that in the next comment.

To my athe­ist com­menter, whose name I for­get:
I ended up delet­ing your com­ment, but I wanted to explain why a lit­tle bit, in case you’re still out there.

I didn’t delete it because I’m only inter­ested in mono­logu­ing. But I didn’t feel you were adding any­thing to the dis­cus­sion, and frankly you didn’t meet my stan­dards of civil­ity. That may sound disin­gen­u­ous, since I know I strike an irrev­er­ent tone some­times. But as a first-timer with a dis­sent­ing opin­ion, you need to meet a higher stan­dard (as I would if I went onto an atheist’s blog). You have to demon­strate that you’ve got some­thing to say, not just that you want to be contentious.

And by the way, I think you weren’t seri­ous, but just to be clear, the “Rats!” in the title is just an expres­sion, like “Darn!” and refers to the bad mood I men­tion. I’m not call­ing athe­ists rats. As an arti­cle of my faith, ALL peo­ple are made in the image of God (whether they believe in him or not).

On the other hand, yes, I am imply­ing that athe­ism is a kind of viral dis­ease. It is — it’s destruc­tive and leaves a lot of mis­ery in its wake. And I can say that as a for­mer atheist.

I tend to agree with Ken and S-P… if the mea­sure of our faith is that we are not seen as the Fathers were seen by the unbe­liev­ers of their day, “See how they love”… then we are damned, Christ is not risen, and we are dead in our sins. Their ani­mos­ity matches our pom­pos­ity? It hurts. But maybe it is the truth.

We live in age that… well.. I had to come to the Ortho­dox Church to under­stand what piety was. What we have thought con­sti­tuted a good chris­t­ian when we were else­where was often lit­tle more than the rit­ual ances­tor wor­ship of pagan Rome… sprin­kle a lit­tle incense and you’re done. It’s a rit­ual greet­ing… a dec­la­ra­tion of “live and let live”. Ortho­doxy is not like this… but few have seen it. And yet we are told as Amer­i­cans to blend in, to go along and git along… and so we do rather than stand up and be counted.

St. Jerome said some­thing about Chris­tian­ity and per­se­cu­tion go hand in hand… in all places and all eras. Either we per­se­cute our­selves with asceti­cism, or we truly exhibit our faith in all its glory… and are per­se­cuted by oth­ers. I’m not much at either I guess… so no doubt this feeds the doubters, the athe­ists, and the agres­sive anti-christians. And yet as a rea­son­ably decent stu­dent of his­tory, I’m not con­vinced that our age is any more or less faith­ful than ear­lier ages.

Unbe­liev­ers may today be more com­fort­able in their unbe­lief… but maybe all they have are the so-called “com­mand­ing heights”. My bet is that they sure don’t have the heart of the peo­ple… and that will be their undoing.