I was struck by these two articles this morning.
They illuminate each other (in my mind at least) in a very convicting way.
The first is Douglas Wilson’s obituary on the occasion of the death of Christopher Hitchens.
The second is Fred Sander’s celebration on the occasion of the birthday of George Whitefield.
As you read both of them, hopefully you will be prompted, as I was, to pray. Pray that our church would grow in love for people, compassion to break for them and boldness to declare the truth of Jesus to them.
Here is Doug Wilson –
I came to know Christopher during the promotion tour for his atheist encyclical, God Is Not Great. True to form, Christopher did not want to write a book attacking God and his minions only to have the release be a wine and cheese party in Manhattan with a bunch of fellow unbelievers, where they could all laugh knowingly about the rubes and cornpones down in the Bible Belt. So he told his publicist that he wanted to debate with any and all comers, and in the course of promoting his book, he did exactly that.
[This led to] a series of debates that Christopher and I held in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, which were filmed for the documentaryCollision. a result of all this, we were thrown together in a number of situations. One time we shared a panel in Dallas, and I told the crowd there that if Christopher and I were not careful, we were in danger of becoming friends. During the time we spent together, he never said an unkind thing to me—except on stage, up in front of everybody. After doing this, he didn’t wink at me, but he might as well have.
So we got on well with each other, because each of us knew where the other one stood. Eugene Genovese, before he became a believer, once commented on the tendency that some have to try to garner respect by giving away portions, big or small, of what they profess to believe. … Respectability depends on not caring too much about respectability. Unbelievers can smell accommodation, and when someone like Christopher meets someone who actually believes all the articles in the Creed, including that part about Jesus coming back from the dead, it delights him. Here is someone actually willing to defend what is being attacked. Militant atheists are often exasperated with opponents whose strategy appears to be “surrender slowly.”
Read the whole thing http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/decemberweb-only/christopher-hitchens-obituary.html
Here is Fred Sanders (actually I think he is mostly quoting JC Ryle)
Today (December 16) is the birthday of George Whitefield (1714 – 1770).
First and foremost, you must remember Whitefield preached a singularly pure gospel. Few men ever gave their hearers so much wheat and so little chaff. He did not get into his pulpit to talk about his party, his cause, his interest, or his office. He was perpetually telling you about your sins, your heart, and Jesus Christ, in the way that the Bible speaks of them.
For another thing, Whitefield’s preaching was singularly lucid and simple. You might not like his doctrine, perhaps, but at any rate you could not fail to understand what he meant. His style was easy, plain, and conversational. He seemed to abhor long and involved sentences. He always saw his mark and went direct at it.
One more feature in Whitefield’s preaching deserves especial notice, and that is the immense amount of pathos and feeling which it always contained. It was no uncommon thing with him to weep profusely in the pulpit. Cornelius Winter goes so far as to say that he hardly ever knew him get through a sermon without tears. There seems to have been nothing whatever of affectation in this. He felt intensely for the souls before him and his feeling found a vent in tears. Of all the ingredients of his preaching, nothing I suspect, was so powerful as this.
Read the whole thing http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2009/12/16/happy-birthday-george-whitefield/