HItchens is the sort of soul that I pray for. If you’ll all pardon a double negative, he is not “neither hot nor cold.”
I don’t pray for a public, grand reversal. If God seeks to fulfill his life in that way, so be it. It might be great publicity for Christ, but Christ needs no publicity, and those who hate Him will not be swayed by Hitchens. In fact, the opportunity for Christians to gloat might be a turnoff. Or, he could become a great, zealous promoter of Christianity, or the notion that he found eternal peace at the very last moment might inspire someone great. But Christ doesn’t need to do things that way; if he does or not, it’s part of a greater plan than we can fathom.
I pray for him because we are commanded to love our enemies, and if I can actually be concerned more for his own soul than what it can do for whatever cause of mine, no matter how just, it will do my own soul well. And if I can pray for him for his own sake, not my own soul’s, then we both shall be better yet.
I wrote a novelle (Turnabout) about a devout and outspoken atheist Physicist who had a near death experience and came back to the present a firm believer in God and redemption. Perhaps I should write a sequel and have a brash, vitriolic atheist writer as the one turned about.
“I pray for him because we are commanded to love our enemies, and if I can actually be concerned more for his own soul than what it can do for whatever cause of mine, no matter how just, it will do my own soul well. And if I can pray for him for his own sake, not my own soul’s, then we both shall be better yet.”
Beautiful prose there...thanks!