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None of this would be so depressingly comical were it not for an added feature of these polemics, their authors' frequent insistence that they have taken greater care in reading sacred texts than those who find divine guidance in those texts. Thus Sam Harris, in a recent exchange with Andrew Sullivan: "Read scripture more closely and you do not find reasons for religious moderation; you find reasons to live like a proper religious maniac." Cleverly anticipating a retort, he goes on, "Of course, one can cherry–pick scripture and find reasons to love one's neighbor and turn the other cheek, but the truth is, the pickings are pretty slim." Are they? Does the Bible—does even the Qu'ran, for that matter—expend more words exhorting us to practice maniacal hatred ("to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homosexuals, etc.") than exhorting us to practice justice, mercy, and compassion? It is perfectly obvious that Harris has never taken the trouble to study this question, nor is it likely that he ever will; yet he scruples not to accuse other people of cherry–picking.
Or take the eminent cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker, in a recent article in Time magazine: "When you think about it, the doctrine of a life–to–come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11."
But countless millions of religious believers—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and so on—have treated other people with compassion and generosity precisely because they believed that it pleased God, or comported with an eternal moral law, for them to do so; and in many cases they believed they would be rewarded for their virtue in a life to come. (That's not precisely my theology, but is's an extraordinarily common one among the world's religions.)
So it turns out that it's not believing in "a life–to–come" that "necessarily" devalues anything; instead, what really matters is what kind of life–to–come you believe in, and how you think a person gets to it. If you believe that what you do in this world has eternal consequences, that actions in this world can matter forever, then that intensifies and deepens the value of life here—unless you're among the tiny minority who believe that your eternal reward will come from killing people. At least, that's what you realize when you really think about it, even for five minutes, which apparently Professor Pinker didn't have time to do; he was too busy typing.
How should Christians respond to this kind of thing? My counsel would be: infrequently and briefly. A blog post ought to do it, and even what I've written here may be too long. I have to say that I am somewhat troubled when I see major Christian thinkers like N. T. Wright going to some lengths to respond to The Da Vinci Code and even writing a whole book on the Gospel of Judas. The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, which agitated so many Christians so violently, came and went without having any discernible effect on the cause of the Gospel, and as for the Gospel of Judas … now, what was all that about again? (Sometimes we should be thankful for the short attention span of the American people.)
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