Imperishable Inheritance

I heard this excerpt read in Sun­day School, and I found it provoca­tive enough to share. It was writ­ten by Roy Hat­ter­s­ley a for­mer deputy leader of the U.K.‘s Labour Party. He was also a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and a pro­lific writer. “Despite writ­ing books on John Wes­ley and the Sal­va­tion Army?s William and Cather­ine Booth, Hat­ter­s­ley remains a firm athe­ist. How­ever, in the wake of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, whilst unable to accept the doc­tri­nal claims or eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Chris­tian­ity, he admit­ted that almost all groups engaged in dis­as­ter relief and alle­vi­at­ing human suf­fer­ing were reli­gious in both ori­gin and nature.”

You’ll notice his snide remarks such as that “civilised” peo­ple don’t believe in sin and that he wishes he could pick and choose Chris­tian­ity to his lik­ing. Never-the-less, it is a provoca­tive exam­ple of an hon­est athe­ist. It brings home Jesus’ say­ing: “By this all men will know that you are My dis­ci­ples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Notable by their absence are teams from ratio­nal­ist soci­eties, free thinkers’ clubs and athe­ists’ associations?the sort of peo­ple who not only scoff at religion’s intel­lec­tual absur­dity but also regard it as a pos­i­tive force for evil. […]

Last week a middle-ranking offi­cer of the Sal­va­tion Army, who gave up a well-paid job to devote his life to the poor, attempted to con­vince me that homo­sex­u­al­ity is a mor­tal sin. Late at night, on the streets of one of our great cities, that man offers friend­ship as well as help to the most degraded and (to those of a cen­so­ri­ous turn of mind) degen­er­ate human beings who exist just out­side the bound­aries of our soci­ety. And he does what he believes to be his Chris­t­ian duty with­out the slight­est sug­ges­tion of dis­ap­proval. Yet, for much of his time, he is meet­ing needs that result from con­duct he regards as intrin­si­cally wicked.

Civilised peo­ple do not believe that drug addic­tion and male pros­ti­tu­tion offend against divine ordi­nance. But those who do are the men and women most will­ing to change the fetid ban­dages, replace the sod­den sleep­ing bags and?probably most dif­fi­cult of all?argue, with­out a trace of impa­tience, that the time has come for some seri­ous med­ical treat­ment. Good works, John Wes­ley insisted, are no guar­an­tee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be per­formed by peo­ple who believe that heaven exists. The cor­re­la­tion is so clear that it is impos­si­ble to doubt that faith and char­ity go hand in hand. […]

It ought to be pos­si­ble to live a Chris­t­ian life with­out being a Chris­t­ian or, bet­ter still, to take Chris­tian­ity à la carte…Yet men and women who, like me, can­not accept the mys­ter­ies and the mir­a­cles do not go out with the Sal­va­tion Army at night.

The only pos­si­ble con­clu­sion is that faith comes with a packet of moral imper­a­tives that, while they do not con­di­tion the atti­tude of all believ­ers, influ­ence enough of them to make them morally supe­rior to athe­ists like me. The truth may make us free. But it has not made us as admirable as the aver­age cap­tain in the Sal­va­tion Army.