Letter from a Christian Citizen: A Response to "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris
by Douglas Wilson
Powder Springs: American Vision, 2007, 109 pp., hardcover.

Sam Harris gained notoriety over the past few years as one of the leading new atheists, appearing in publications like Time and Wired. In his Letter to a Christian Nation, he sings the praises of atheism while assaulting Christianity. Douglas Wilson has responded with his Letter from a Christian Citizen, a quick read that makes numerous salient points. We'll examine several.

Wilson notes that Harris extols the Jains of India for their non-violence and respect for all living organisms, even to the point of some wearing masks to avoid breathing in insects.

Now would you care to compare the suffering of a breathed-in bug to the suffering of a late term fetus, the victim of a partial birth abortion? And would you care to explain why you call Christians fanatics for opposing such slaughter of unborn children, but point to Jains as moral exemplars for protecting bugs? (33).

Perhaps Harris hasn't considered the inconsistencies of his position. Wilson stresses time and again that Harris, as an atheist, for making "ought" statements. Who is he to tells us how to think if we're all nothing more than molecules in motion?

Wilson gives no ground on God's sovereignty:

You ask, "What was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city?" (52). Well, to give the Biblical answer, during Katrina, God was laying waste to the city...What He did to New Orleans was holy, righteous, just and good (62).

That may be hard for many to accept, but Amos 3:6b says, "When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?"

The problem of evil has troubled many. Some attempted solutions may be worse than the problem:

But in this effeminate age, some professing Christians are now trying (the idea of divine impotence), and they call their explanation the "openess of God." God troubleshoots as we go, but He actually does not do it very well. In this view, God reacts to disasters as they happen, but His reflexes are pretty poor. He runs after disasters, wringing His hands. In this view, God is a lot like FEMA--unprepared, incompetent, disorganized, and two weeks late (63).

Others respond that God has a plan, as Ephesians 1 tells us.

I highly recommend Wilson's book and will be passing it on to an atheist friend to see what he makes of it. Perhaps some worthwhile discussion will ensue.

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