# Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with cancer, and is lauding prayer groups..



## jjraby (Aug 4, 2010)

What do you guys make of this?

Christopher Hitchens: I taunted the Reaper - PATRICK GAVIN | POLITICO CLICK

I offer prayers that the Holy Spirit will use this time to finally grab his heart. But i find it interesting that after all his attacks of God, His supporters are forming prayer groups and he is praises them. It is always a funny thing that there are no atheist in foxholes.


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## JennyG (Aug 4, 2010)

It's an interesting and even admirable piece of writing. But maybe we should wait and see what he has to say about the prayer groups. All he's said so far is
_But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time..._which leaves it fairly open!


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## Montanablue (Aug 4, 2010)

I do hope that God uses this experience to call him to Him. Every time I read something by him, I'm struck by what a sad man he is.


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## py3ak (Aug 4, 2010)

jjraby said:


> It is always a funny thing that there are no atheist in foxholes.


 
In his memoir he specifically attacks that statement, based on his time in Bosnia where though he was sometimes in deadly peril he was never tempted to pray.


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## Semper Fidelis (Aug 4, 2010)

If we learn anything from the Book of Job it is that human suffering is not a place to gloat about the sin of another in the midst of it.

A member of my extended family, hostile to the Christian religion, recently faced the specter of death. My son was on the phone one day and mentioned to her how sad he was that she was sick and was praying for her.

It moved her greatly. None of the other children or families had reached out to her and simply demonstrated compassion for her suffering.

Our society hates the place of mourning and suffering. We remove ourselves from it. Christianity has a historical answer to the problem in Christ but we have no precise philosophical answers as to why a particular person is suffering and we are not.

I still have hope that the confidence in Christ that was expressed by my seven year old son will continue to strike this family member of mine as something quite different from the hollowness of the world. The world wants the suffering to be brave and to pretend as if death is not an enemy to be feared. The world does not want to be reminded of the Curse that we all find ourselves under. Christ will defeat this enemy but it is still an enemy and terrible enough for Him to shudder at the tomb of a friend and become overwhelmed with grief over it.

We suffer as those who have hope and we show compassion as those who have hope beyond the grave.

I pray the same for Christopher Hitchens.


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## TimV (Aug 4, 2010)

He has all the marks of greatness except bravery. He defended David Irving as a historian after the Lipstadt trial but started sucking up after he was criticized. He was against American imperialism until it threatened to cut him off from some sugar daddies and then he switched sides to the neos. With a stiffer back he would have had a legacy. A masterful writer, hopefully he's thinking about a different legacy now.


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## Elizabeth (Aug 6, 2010)

Oh dear..how sad. 

CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

---------- Post added at 02:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:18 PM ----------

I am sorry! I don't think I did that quite right, but at cnn.com, one can view a video of Hitchens discussing God and his cancer. The video is with Anderson Cooper. Just breaks your heart.


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## SolaScriptura (Aug 6, 2010)

jjraby said:


> It is always a funny thing that there are no atheist in foxholes.


 
Unfortunately, I can assure you that there _are_...


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## rsethib (Aug 6, 2010)

Montanablue said:


> Every time I read something by him, I'm struck by what a sad man he is.


 
Word. He just doesn't seem like a very happy human being. I don't know if I'm off or not, but talking to him is what I image talking to Nitzsche would have been like. May God have mercy on his soul.


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