Response to Christopher Hitchens By Anna DeWeese

Posted on September 2nd, 2010 | Filed under InterViews

A response to this interview with Christopher Hitchens.

Death – possibly the one aspect of humanity that people have been trying to fight, avoid, halt and otherwise disrupt longer than any other aspect of the human condition. The very idea of dying is scary for many, as it seems for all of our efforts there is nothing we can do to stop it. Religions have certainly dealt with the death question at great length and breadth; and some see the very existence of religions as a mass coping mechanism for realizing our existence as finite, limited, mortal beings. Throughout periods of Christian history deathbed confessions of faith were quite common – one could live without fear of eternal repercussions of one’s actions, so long as your final act was one of repentance in order to save your immortal soul.

Faith and belief are often chided as irrational and immature methods of dealing with the fact of death, yet even Hitchens admits that there are terrifying encounters that arise when one is faced with her/his mortality. I have often heard “there are no atheists in foxholes” and tend to believe that this statement contains a lot of truth. But I do not go along with Hitchens that such statements are merely acts of desperate individuals. Experiences, good and bad, life affirming and life threatening, are instances for people to make a choice – to continue living as one has, or to change. Faith is also a choice, one that recognizes the limits of human knowledge and allows that something greater than humanity is at work in the universe. Here, Hitchens and I actually agree although we do not use the same language. My faith in God is not a sign of strength in my own knowledge, but rather one of vulnerability and openness. Choosing to believe in God and the possibility of an afterlife is not an easier option, however. This choice, for me, includes a huge amount of responsibility – to live my life in a way that I do not waste the wealth of experiences and relationships that are available to me, and to give back as much as I receive, so that we may all enjoy the lives we have been given.