OHATCHEE, Al. January 6, 2012 — Over a year ago, I attended a debate on atheism between David Berlinski and the late Christopher Hitchens. I frankly didn’t expect to use that adjective to describe Mr. Hitchens by the time this article would be written. It unsettles and adds urgency to everything that comes to mind when I reflect on that September 2010 evening.
Observing the sold-out crowd numbering 1,200, there was no way of knowing how many in the audience already had their minds made up about the subject. But there did seem to be delineation between teams. Quite a few young people were dressed in outfits with slogans that touted their godless persuasion in one way or another. There might have been shirts decorated with Bible verses and intelligent design references, too.
Post-debate comments from the most interested observers over time reveal a trend:
“He brought up stuff I had already read about…so-and-so used the same example I’ve seen him use before…I’ve heard that question a million times…that line of attack is cheesy and predictable…”
Being sort of a debate junkie myself, I can empathize. But when the show is over and everyone returns to their daily lives, what relevance does the duel of ideas have?
“You might be right,” an atheist friend finally said to me after our lively conversation about Christianity and atheism and everything in between. “But I don’t care,” he continued, blasé, “because I don’t really think it’s going to change the way I live my life.”
This naiveté is easy for young wisecrackers in safe, comfortable American homes to possess. We might be insulated by grace, but boasting independence from it is cool.
At that moment it became apparent to me that apart from everyday life, the debate over belief and unbelief is a mere spectator sport. It is a mighty fun game, and a meaningful one too.
But keeping track of the latest scores and strategies in the worldview game does little good for an individual until a personal reality check sets in. As trite as it may sound, ideas have consequences – and if you refuse to believe that spiritual consequences exist, you might at least admit that on cultural and political levels, these ideas could change the way you live your life.
Larry Alex Taunton, "The Grace Effect: How the Power of One Life Can Reverse the Corruption of Unbelief", (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 272 pp. Contains black and white photos and discussion guide.
I think such a reality check is found in Larry Taunton’s The Grace Effect: How the Power of One Life Can Reverse the Corruption of Unbelief, a book that tells of the Taunton family’s journey to adopt a young special needs girl, Sasha, from a grim orphanage in the Ukraine. “Being Americans – no, worse, Americans from the South – we were ill equipped for what was sometimes a kill or be killed atmosphere,” Taunton writes, describing their brush with the former Communist country. “Courtesy will get you no where.”
Intellectual debate is opened in the beginning pages of the book and closed in the ending, with its two extremes contrasted throughout in the life of a child who is born into a graceless, condemning, secularized society and is then introduced to redemption and grace by followers of Christ.
(For those skeptics rolling their eyes already – no, this book does not blame atheists for the world’s problems. It posits that humanity has innate problems, and invites the reader to figure out which worldview best solves them.)
Christopher Hitchens himself appears as a character in this true story. To someone whose earliest memories of Hitchens consist of seeing a scowling, scathing, commentator with a British accent on television, Taunton’s book portrays a softer and humorous side of the famous atheist.
'"HITCH, YOU ARE EVIDENCE OF IT!' I declared. 'You were educated at a university founded by Christians, believe in a science discovered by Christians, and draw many of your moral sensibilities from a Judeo-Christian tradition!'" - Larry Taunton in a scene from "The Grace Effect". (Photo of Christopher Hitchens by Catherine Karnow/CORBIS)
Taunton, executive director of the Birmingham, Alabama-based Fixed Point Foundation, has drawn his underlying thesis from the doctrine of common grace found in 1 Timothy 4:10, which refers to God as “the Savior of all men, especially of believers.” In other words, wherever God’s grace flows through the presence of authentic Christianity, society in general will benefit from its curb on human nature’s dark side.
Although it isn’t a political book, the interface of politics and faith plays a role in the story. One particularly useful and interesting observation Taunton makes might surprise you: America has never really been such a thing as a “Christian nation,” although Christianity has played an important and respected role in its history and its traditional stance on government.
“In the biblical worldview, the state is a temporal institution meant to serve man, an eternal being,” Taunton explains. “In the socialist model, this is reversed: man, a temporal being, serves the eternal state.”
Those interested in the subject of adoption, particularly international adoption, will find this book inspiring and comforting. But it is not another “feel good” mainstream Christian book. Taunton calls it like he sees it (the same way he did in his stirring column about the bias against Tim Tebow), with chapters titled like “The Devil is a Bureaucrat” (my favorite) and “The Orphanage Archipelago”.
The author, Larry Taunton (Fixed Point Foundation).
Taunton, who previously worked as a teacher of European and Russian history, explores what affects the “societal soul” of a country, including a glimpse into the history of the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and the pursuit of secularism.
I’ve already cited The Grace Effect in a college paper (it garnered a high grade last term). My father, a retired Lieutenant Colonel and Russian linguist in the U.S. military who taught Russian at West Point, also read The Grace Effect and thinks it would be a good resource for Russian studies majors.
Now, whether you’re a streetwise skeptic or a comfortably apathetic believer, your response to seeing this book recommended might be similar to my atheist friend’s response to the recommendation of a C.S. Lewis book: Why should I bother?
Because you have already seen and heard every argument there is to offer, of course.
No, you haven’t. Go read it.
Amanda Read is an unconventional scholar, a Southerner without an accent, a Christian who hasn’t been a churchgoer in 17 years and a college student who lives with eight younger siblings. A writer and artist, she blogs at www.amandaread.com and is the author of the historical drama screenplay The Crusading Chemist. Amanda is majoring in history and minoring in political science at Troy University.
Keep up with her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AmandaChristineRead and Twitter:
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