No One Left to Pray To?
19th July 2010
If God occasionally intervenes in the world to shoot down an atheist—to show who’s boss, or simply to vent—it makes sense for Him to target the esophagus.
No matter what Christopher Hitchens’ views or activities might be, the case for a Christian praying for him — as I do — is unimpeachable, starting with Matt. 5:4 and Luke 6:28 and progressing into the rarefied heights of scholastic theology.
Some believers, however, grapple with whether Hitchens’s vituperative contempt for all things religious places him outside the circle of those for whom believers should pray. Jeffrey Goldberg, on his Atlantic.com blog, consults a mutual friend of his and Hitch’s, Rabbi David Wolpe, who debated Hitchens on God’s existence.
“I asked David,” Goldberg writes, “what sort of intercessory praying a believer should do on behalf of a declared nonbeliever, or if one should pray at all, and he wrote back with some very wise words: ‘I would say it is appropriate and even mandatory to do what one can for another who is sick; and if you believe that praying helps, to pray. It is in any case an expression of one’s deep hopes. So yes, I will pray for him, but I will not insult him by asking or implying that he should be grateful for my prayers.”
Exactly correct. And if his chemotherapy turns out not to be effective, he shall (paraphrasing Thomas More) have our prayers to fall back on.