• Richard Dawkins The
God Delusion has sold 8.5 million copies, spending a year on the New York
Times Best Seller List.
• Christopher
Hitchens’ God Is Not Great became a number-one New York Times Best
Seller.
• Bill Maher’s film
Religulous was the highest-grossing documentary of 2008.
New Atheism is hot right now … and
lucrative. It lumps every religion together. Further, the “atheist” rarely
looks seriously at the harm done by secular forces in this world, such as
communism, fascism, and other ideologies. They do not call for the abandonment
of politics or political ideology because of their misuse, but they are sure
are willing to do so with religion.
Newsweek named Rabbi David Wolpe’s “#1
Pulpit Rabbi in America.” Wolpe’s book Why Faith Matters is his response
to the new atheism movement. Quite honestly, here is a book I wish I had
written. He is not bombastic with his opponents. He has debated some of them
and has a good relationship with them. However, he thinks their discussion of
religion has completely missed the positive benefits of religion. The book is
decidedly not a “philosophical” defense of “religion.” Rather, he writes about
how God, or belief in God, changes the lives of people. He cites the apologetic
power of religion’s gifts to society: interdependent community, a sense of
social responsibility, a commitment to charity, believing in God.
One way to think of this approach is
as an apologetic of virtue. The word “apologetic” does not refer to the need to
apologize. Theologians can provide an “apologetic” for the Christian faith,
meaning a defense of the faith. A “virtue apologetic” suggests that the
strongest argument for Christianity is other Christians. Christians as
individuals and gathered into communities are to be signs of the redemption God
is bringing to this world in Christ. We are often a weak sign. Our light
flickers and dims due to our mistakes, sins, and copying of the values of the
culture. Yet, we as individuals and communities of faith have the power to be
(rather than make) a strong argument for the Christian faith.
The virtue apologetic crystallized
for Wolpe early in his ministry career. In a story of inadequacy relatable to
many clergy, he tells of being called to the hospital bedside of an elderly
woman to offer final prayers for the dying. He took her comatose hand but felt
like a fraud. Who was he to shepherd a soul to the edge of the next world?
Dutifully, he proceeded to pray familiar words anyway, letting their power
carry him. Talking to his wife about it afterward, Wolpe confessed his feelings
of inadequacy. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re unworthy. Anyone would be
unworthy doing such a thing. That’s okay, though. It’s not you doing it. It’s
being done through you.” Wolpe writes, “That was a pivotal moment for me.
Suddenly it became clear to me that we bring light into this world not as a
source but as a prism — it comes through us. As electricity requires a conduit,
so spirit moves through human beings to touch others in crucial moments. As
soon as I stepped out of my own way, the prayer felt real. I could believe in blessing
when I felt that it did not depend on me.”
Novelist Edith Wharton, in her poem
“Vesalius In Zante,” put the same idea this way:
So knowledge come, no matter how it comes!
No matter whence the light falls, so it fall!
Truth's way, not mine--that I, whose service failed
In action, yet may make amends in praise.
Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word,
Not yours, or mine, but Truth's, as you receive it!
You miss a point I saw? See others, then!
Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own!
Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide,
And you may yet uncover other stars.
For thus I read the meaning of this end:
There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.
I let my wick burn out--there yet remains
To spread an answering surface to the flame
That others kindle.
Turn me in my bed.
The window darkens as the hours swing round;
But yonder, look, the other casement glows!
Let me face westward as my sun goes down.
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