Christopher Hitchens is well known on television and for his polemic against religion, God is Not Great. Lesser known is his brother, Peter Hitchens, who has authored a response to his brother, The Rage Against God, how atheism led me to faith. Peter Hitchens is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. He currently writes for the Mail on Sunday, where he is a columnist and occasional foreign correspondent, reporting most recently from Iran, North Korea, Burma, the Congo, and China. A former revolutionary (Trotskyite), he attributes his return to faith largely to his experience of socialism in practice, which he witnessed during his many years reporting in Eastern Europe and his nearly three years as a resident correspondent in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The book is largely autobiographical, surveying his rebellion against the establishment in England during his teenage years. He describes the decline of Christianity in Europe and the turn to multiculturalism. He sees a commitment to social welfare at home and liberal anti-colonialism abroad as the politically correct substitute for Christian faith. He maintains that God is the leftists’ chief rival.

“Christian belief, by subjecting all men to divine authority and by asserting in the words ‘my kingdom is not of this world’ that the ideal society does not exist in this life, is the most coherent and potent obstacle to secular utopianism….The concepts of sin, of conscience, of eternal life, and of divine justice under an unalterable law are the ultimate defense against the utopian’s belief that ends justify means and that morality is relative. These concepts are safeguards against the worship of human power…..by refusing to teach the previously accepted canon of literature, history, and philosophy, by attempting to turn Christianity into a museum-piece, and by abandoning the concept of authority – has left advanced societies entirely disarmed against intellectual assaults they could once have repulsed with ease.” (134,135)

He addresses the three failed arguments of atheism:

1. “Are Conflicts Fought in the Name of Religion Conflicts About Religion?” Mostly not. Wars are mostly about gaining power, wealth or land.
2. “Is It Possible to Determine What is Right and What is Wrong without God?” No, because, in order to decide what is good, you have to go beyond what is humanly expedient. To be effectively absolute a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter.
3. “Are Atheist States Not Actually Atheist?” The most compelling section in his book is his description of the way Lenin and his followers tried to stamp out Christianity. Just as faith has often led to cruel violence and intolerant persecution, Godless regimes and movements have given birth to terrible persecutions and massacres. Utopia can only ever be approached across a sea of blood. Atheist states have a consistent tendency to commit mass murders in the name of the greater good.

Finally, he criticizes the claims of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, and his brother in his book, that teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse. “This has the stench of totalitarian slander, paving the road to suppression and persecution….. it is ridiculous to pretend that it is a neutral act to inform an infant that the heavens are empty, that the universe is founded on chaos rather than love, and that his grandparents, on dying, have ceased altogether to exist. I personally think it wrong to tell children such things, because I believe them to be false and wrong and roads to misery of various kinds.” (205,206)

The book is an easy read and well worth the attention. It is a wake up call to the dangers of secular utopianism – trying to create the kingdom of good on earth by state power. It has been tried and failed. Russia is now a gangster society because it destroyed conscience, morality and the fear of God. We do not want to go down that road.

I will be on vacation during the month of August.

My first recollection of life was August 15, 1945. Over the radio we heard that Japan had surrendered. My mother gave me the dinner gong, that was used to summon guests to meals, and told me I could take it out into the street and ring it. I took the gong and its gavel (a wooden hammer), and proudly banged it for a long time outside. I was four years of age. A week or so later I was dressed in some sort of costume, and, with my sister, who was arrayed as Britannia with a helmet, shield and trident, and entered into the Victory Parade that marched along the street. I remembered being scared by the bagpiper.

While I have read many books about World War II, I had never read a comprehensive account of the war against Japan until I picked up a copy of Max Hasting’s, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45.  His accounts of the battles for the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the sea battles of the Pacific are searing. What a price was paid by those who fought in them. How anyone came out of these conflicts with any sense of sanity is a miracle. The conditions in China, the POW and intern camps, and the devastation caused by the kamikaze pilots and our own bombing in Japan are as horrifying as any accounts of the Holocaust in Europe. Hasting’s conclusions are damning:

“Yet the new Japan proved distressingly reluctant to confront the historic guilt of the old. Its spirit of denial contrasted starkly with the penitence of post-war Germany. Though successive Japanese prime ministers expressed formal regret for Japan’s wartime actions, the country refused to pay reparations to victims, or to acknowledge its record in school history texts…Germany has paid almost $6 billion to 1.5 million victims of the Hitler era…By contrast, modern Japan goes to extraordinary lengths to escape any admission of responsibility, far less of liability for compensation, towards its wartime victims….Both the policy of denial and the alternative doctrine of moral equivalency are unconvincing, when Japanese brutality was institutionalized for many years before the Allies commenced their own excesses, if excesses they were…Many Japanese actions, including the torture and beheading of prisoners, reflected a gratuitous pride in the infliction of suffering. Wartime Japan was responsible for almost as many deaths in Asia as was Nazi Germany. Yet only a few modern Japanese acknowledge as much, and incur the disdain or outright hostility of their fellow countrymen for doing so. The nation is guilty of a collective rejection of historical fact. The treatment of subject peoples and prisoners described in this book is wholly unaccepted by most modern Japanese, even where supported by overwhelming evidence. This sustains a chasm between our culture and ours, which cannot be justified or dismissed by mere reference to differences of attitude between East and West….It seems to me that dismay, indeed repugnance, should concentrate upon the refusal of the Japanese people, including their political, educational and corporate leaders, honestly to acknowledge their history. They still seek to excuse, and even to ennoble, the actions of their parents and grandparents, so many of whom forsook humanity in favor of perversion of honor and an aggressive nationalism which should properly be recalled with shame. As long as such a denial persists, it will remain impossible for the world to believe that Japan has come to terms with the horrors which it inflicted upon Asia almost two-thirds of a century ago.” (pp.548-550)

Why this denial? I once asked a Korean pastor why the Gospel has found such a reception in Korea, and yet has had a minimal impact upon Japan. He said that the difference is that the character of the people is different. The Japanese sense of bushido – the Samurai honor code – is so great that they cannot admit their errors. The military at the end of the war wanted to continue fighting despite its futility because they could not face the reality of defeat. It took the intervention of the Emperor to order them to accept surrender. Many took their own lives rather than surrender.

Consciousness of sin is essential to Judaism and Christianity. Without it a person is self-deluded into thinking that he cannot be wrong. The culture of Shintoism, prevalent in Japan, demonstrates this self-delusion. It can also affect anyone who will not recognize their failures, errors, faults, and rebellion against God. “There is no one righteous, not even one…There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:10,23)

The reason many people do not bend the knee to the Savior of the world, and follow him is because they cannot face the facts about themselves. They are self-deluded. Redemption begins with conviction of sin and repentance. There is no other way.