THE RAGE AGAINST GOD
Author PETER HITCHENS
Publisher ZONDERVAN
ISBN 978 0310335094
The author is brother to the lately deceased Christopher Hitchens, a well known and brilliant man, and confirmed atheist. Peter subtitles his book, “how atheism led me to faith.” I suspect that this is something of an overstatement on his part and the book says little as to his personal testimony of the massive shift from his early upbringing as a church going child into his militant, rebellious atheistic way of life during which he became an avid follower of the teachings of Trotsky. That he moved back to the church and to faith in God is clear, how he did so is incomplete as regards to what he writes but all is sufficient to confirm that a seismic change has taken place and at back of it all is God our Saviour. Some critics might be unkind to the author suggesting that he was simply nostalgic for the Christian England he enjoyed (and then kicked against) as a child. Perhaps the sections which might hint at such nostalgia are the weakest sections of the book. Peter Hitchens has been a journalist and foreign correspondent. Such has taken him to many corners of the globe and among the countries he spent a number of years in Russia. Those people moving towards a socialist view of things and to communism should spend a lengthy period in a country that is thoroughly committed to such a form of belief and government. Far from being the utopia promised by Lenin, Marx and Trotsky, such places are more of an autocracy than the other forms of government they have replaced. Always, at bottom, the liberal, socialist mind is filled with antagonism toward God and deepens into cruel atheism, the rage against God is rampant. I think that this is what this author’s book forces us to face. Although a person converted to Christianity is writing, the Christian element is present but not strongly so, whilst the folly, injustice and fundamental antipathy of atheism and its outworking in the various spheres of human life is definitely portrayed. The book is not long, about two hundred pages, it is readable and interesting and the diligent reader will be struck by the stripping down to the bare bones of what Christians call ‘spiritual warfare.’ The readers who have lived distant from strong socialistic government and who have not studied much as to what took place in Russia with the revolution, with Stalin and so on will be stunned by some of the data here and also helped to see the shift towards the same things becoming enshrined in the law of European countries and the democracies of North America. It is a book that warns, one that illuminates and exposes the hidden hatred against God that festers in the hearts of many in the high places of human society today. It alerts us to the direction a godless world is taking and where it is leading unless arrested by God’s grace.
