Some people, a friend observed, remarking on the way some Christians think Christopher Hitchens’ illness will bring him to Christianity, ”expect severe illness — or any other adversity, for that matter — somehow to work a radical change in someone’s religious convictions, or lack thereof.” This sometimes happens, “once in a while spectacularly, but rarely,” he wrote. But usually
adversity simply brings out and intensifies character and beliefs already developed, rather than altering them at all.
It reminds me of certain people from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation who would decry the decline in moral standards and then say, “What this country needs is another Great Depression.” They had a similarly romanticized notion that suffering automatically builds positive moral character. Well, it doesn’t — it simply brings into starker relief what is already there.
I suspect one cause is the desire to find something outside us that will change our lives, something that will pick us up and drop us at the finish line, so we don’t have to keep running slowly and steadily for a long time to win the race. If you have to suffer, you want to feel that at least you’re getting something out of it, and that your suffering is making you a better person without your having to work at it.
After 9/11 there was much talk of the changes the attack would bring to America and Americans. Some Christians predicted a religious revival as people suddenly realized how fleeting life is and how success cannot protect us from harm, others a new national unity, an end to partisan politics, a renewal of national purpose, etc. Didn’t happen. As with nations, so with individuals.
September 10th, 2010 | 8:26 am
Speaking from experience, this has certainly been the case. As one otherwise healthy atheist friend lay in the hospital emergency room waiting to be seen while having a heart attack at age 43, she contemplated her end and greeted it peacefully. She survived. Today she allows and listens to my own forays into things theological, but has little patience for the idea that she “must” acquire anything extra beyond what she has in order to have a more meaningful existence. She sees religion as other people’s business, and largely superfluous. If she is to be convinced, it will have to come from the Holy Spirit, perhaps through some long slow process of conversion I am not aware is happening. Otherwise, she could care less.
Another atheist (and quite hedonistic but no less lovable) friend became ill with diabetes in his twenties. He greeted it with a similar attitude. “Well, okay then.” In either case, there was no need for God to step in and make sense of it.
That was not true for me, who fell ill with with pneumonia six months after my daughter was born and found myself in the hospital. That, and my best friend was serving a tour in Iraq at the time. These things all served to strip away a few illusions, return me to the Psalms, and find me clinging to the promises of my Redeemer.
Go figure. Am I weak while they are strong? Are they deluded or am I? My mother once said that we are not better because we are Christians, but we are better off. Perhaps that is all there is to it, if that much. For one thing, there is grace enough for me to continue to love these two friends despite what seems to me to be missing for their fullest selves – a relationship with the One who created them. But then maybe that’s just me.
September 10th, 2010 | 8:47 am
We all stand alone before God or Nature. Hitchens will work it out for himself, and so will we all.
September 10th, 2010 | 9:28 am
Then there’s always the old saying that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
September 10th, 2010 | 9:43 am
I think there is a genetic component to religious affinity. Some of us are wired more “religiously” than others, just as some are more introspective, less artistic, etc. It does not deny the genuiness of the religious experience, just underscores its variety and intensity. Perhaps the purpose of this relativity is to teach us not to judge with haste.
September 10th, 2010 | 10:09 am
And the Shire falls to Saruman’s petty brigands, not out of some essential weakness within hobbits, but from the soporific effect of lives sheltered–to that point–from real, personal adversity.
The growth in virtue (or openness to God’s Truth) from suffering is not “automatic,” but then again, such growth never is, regardless of the circumstances. Nor is it precluded from happening in other ways, but it’s far more likely that we grow stronger when tested, rather than when we are at ease.
September 10th, 2010 | 11:56 am
Whether suffering is edifying depends on the status of the sufferer before God. For those who are believers and called according to His purpose, all things work together for good. For those who are not, suffering may be the path to God or it may be the path even further away from God.
September 11th, 2010 | 5:52 pm
No doubt your friend is right that adversity is not some magical transformer of character, but then I’ve never met anyone who claimed that it was. What I have heard, in Scripture and elsewhere, is that unmitigated prosperity tends to corrupt character, and so adversity can be an antidote.
September 11th, 2010 | 6:18 pm
but then I’ve never met anyone who claimed that it was
Then you haven’t been listening. People say some version of this all the time, though usually about someone else’s suffering.
September 12th, 2010 | 8:30 pm
I am not as generous as Hitchens with the talkers who expected a conversion. He merely chuckled and thanked them for thinking of him. The lesson here is that he found humor and compassion for others in the moment of his confrontation with mortality. I hope my state of non-belief can evolve as far as his in my remaining time. Hitchens is a person of great depth and warmth. Study him and learn from him as long as you can. He seems determined to share himself right to the end, much to the good of the rest of us.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact