Flourishing Life

Christopher Hitchens was a well-known and outspoken atheist. A Unitarian Universalist minister, Marilyn Sewell, interviewed him and asked, “I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories of the Scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of the atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between conservative and liberal faith?”

Hitchens responded, “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead, and by his sacrifice sins are forgiven, then you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

“Let me go someplace else,” Sewell replied, steering the conversation in a different direction. She wanted no part of that discussion.

This little encounter demonstrates you can speak all the “God-talk” you want, you can call yourself anything you like, but if you don’t trust that Jesus is the Messiah who died on the cross for our sins, rose from the dead, and will come again to usher in the fullness of God’s Kingdom, then you’re not, in the words of an atheist, “in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

The good news is that Jesus is who he says he is. He is Messiah, Savior, and Lord. He calls us to acknowledge this truth with our beliefs and actions.