Christopher Hitchens Dies
I’m sad to report that after years of living with cancer, Christopher Hitchens has died at age 62. I have not personal encounters or recollections to report, but I must admit that, while disagreeing with him on many things, including his stand on the war in Iraq, I appreciated his gift for writing, the one way in which I did encounter him.
Most particularly I appreciated the honest and dignified way in which he faced living with cancer. Cancer is a difficult thing to live with, and he showed grace and good humor through it all. I do want to link to one post from someone who does have personal recollections-by Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
And as Ed noted the inevitability of deathbed conversion stories, a Christian habit I deplore, I must call attention to Russell D. Moore’s article Christopher Hitchens Might Be in Heaven, which is not a deathbed conversion story, but lays the groundwork for such stories. I have no doubt that God’s grace is sufficient for any moment, but at the same time it seems to me that such stories at times like this sound more like an attempt to win points against an opponent who can no longer respond than they do like a genuine witness to the faith.
If I am right that there is a God and an afterlife (and thus Hitchens was wrong), I would personally hope as did C. S. Lewis regarding J. S. Mill (God in the Dock, “Man or Rabbit”, 110), that I might encounter him there, and that this would happen without any contrived deathbed story. I’m not a universalist, but I am a hopeful person.
