What's So Great About Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza's new movie is released this weekend!  Check out this link:  2016.

There is a well written Preface in Dinesh D'Souza's book What's So Great About Christianity entitled “A Challenge to Believers – and Unbelievers” that I feel is a great introduction to the book as a whole, and introduces the concept of what the book is all about; in effect, not only the battle we should be facing, but also what really is so great about Christianity.

     Dinesh’s fight is my fight, and that’s probably one reason why I hold him, and this book, in such a high regard.  One could take on many fights in the modern landscape, against other philosophies and religions, injustices, social movements, cultures and subcultures, or even other Christians and other forms of Christianity, from the different denominations, offshoots, or cults born out of the belief to conservative or liberal leanings of other Christians, and to be sure, Dinesh does not leave any of these off the agenda.  But where his fight originates, and my fight always tends to manifest, is with the secular evolutionists.

Dinesh D'Souza

     Mark 12:30 tells us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  Although I see many Christians, including myself, not loving God with all they are, with ALL our heart and soul and mind and strength – but only with some of it – I also see many Christians having difficulty just in loving God with their minds in particular.  They may have the heart and soul part of it down, either all or partly, and are touched and cry when they see injustice, and they sing at church and stand and wave their hands, and they give to charity, and support little boys and girls in faraway, impoverished lands with their donations, and they might go on mission trips – yet I must ask how many of them read the bible every day or study the Word on not just an emotional level and for the help it will give them in their own personal lives, but for their own knowledge and wisdom about God and His Kingdom as well.

     In the preface to this book, D’Souza relays a quote from biologist Stephen J. Gould, a confirmed atheist, who states that “secular society relies on reason and decides matters of fact, while religious people rely on faith and decide questions about values.”  (from Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, New York: Ballantine Books, 1999).  That sums up in a nutshell the contemptible view that modern science has for religion in general and Christianity in particular; in essence, he is saying, “leave the thinking about the real world to the big boys, you poor, deluded masses.”  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought Bill Maher helped him write that book.  And then D’Souza surprised me by saying that, yes, the poor deluded masses not only oblige Gould, but are delighted to do so, as D’Souza elaborates:  “Many Christians seized upon this distinction with relief.  This way they could stay in their subculture and be nice to everyone.”

Image from  http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/the-bell-curve/ 

     Today’s Christians, you see, live in a secular society, and that wasn’t always the case, and many, if not most Christians, separate the two parts – secular and religious – almost as if they were living a bi-polar lifestyle.  There is their Christian life, and then there is their secular life, and rarely do the two meet.  In their secular lives, their Christianity is usually hidden.  Seldom do they engage the culture at large with their Christian concerns.  I might debate my faith from time to time on the internet on string posts or Facebook, or even occasionally out in the real world, but not always.  Should I say something to some of my friends or extended family when they post liberal views demonizing the conservative right on Facebook?  I haven't.  And as D’Souza mentioned in the quote above, there are some Christians that seized on the modern division between science and religion with “relief’ so “they could stay in their subculture and be nice to everyone,” completely removing themselves from the world.  From time to time, I have stated how I am somewhat glad to be “living in a bubble”, because I don’t want to be tainted by the world.  However, the Bible teaches that we should be in the world, but not of it, meaning that we are not to remove ourselves from the world, but to be engaged in things to such a point that the light of Christ is seen in us and allowed to change the world through us.  Yet many Christians, myself included for the most part, are afraid of the confrontation, and tend to have a “live and let live” mode of operandi.  We “agree to leave the secular world alone if the secular world agrees to leave [us] alone.”

     Part of the reason I like Dinesh and this book so much is that, through it, and through his debates, he paves the road I often wish I would take on more occasions.  Through Dinesh, and hopefully through my own writings and thoughts, I see clearly that Gould’s statement - “secular society relies on reason and decides matters of fact, while religious people rely on faith and decide questions about values” - although it is full of wishful thinking on Gould’s part, is not completely correct.  Today’s scientists are deeply embroiled in the politics of science, blatantly distorting “matters of fact” or twisting reason to sell their science and gain the accolades of their peers, and while many Christians may in fact rely only on faith and decide only questions of value, it was not always so, and was not designed to be so.  Before the last century, many, if not most, of the scientists and philosophers throughout the last two millennia in the west have been men of deep religious faith, marrying the two concepts together.  When they studied this world, they, in their minds, were studying God’s design.  That is not so much the case anymore in the scientific world, and most Christians have allowed it, stepping back and keeping their religion a separate thing of only personal faith and values, and running away from or being silent to the attacks against them.  But there are some out there in the scientific world (unpopular there to say the least) who question some of these deliberate scientific distortions and political games, and likewise, there are some Christians, like Dinesh, that question the idea of separating the two and staying personal with their quiet religious faith and values.

     Dinesh loves the Lord his God with all his mind, not just his heart and soul, and he encourages us to do the same, making him something of a modern day C.S. Lewis in my view.  In his book, he competently argues for his faith against others with sharp minds of their own and who do not believe as he believes.  The reaction of most Christians to such opposition is usually either one of fear or indifference, but D’Souza bravely takes on the battle, and says that we, as men of God, should do likewise.  He says that, as a Christian, “you must first know what you believe.  You must also know why you believe it.  And you must be able to communicate these reasons to those who don’t share your belief.”

     But this clash is not an easy one.  No longer is the opposition content with just staying on their side of the fence and leaving us alone (and if Dinesh is any indication, or my feelings on this matter, neither are at least a few of the Christians content to just stay on our side in our “hushed little belief.”)  Dinesh explains in this introduction to his book that even this modern division between the religious and the scientific - where scientists have their faithless science and Christians have their faith in Christ, and never the two shall meet – isn’t enough for a new Atheist movement led by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens with books like The God Delusion, The End of Faith, and God is Not Great, men who are against the concept of religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Their contention is that scientific atheists have their worldview – there is no God, everything evolved by chance, there are no miracles or angels, and Jesus was just a man – and that Christians have their world view – God exists and created everything, miracles do happen, there are angels, and Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Messiah – and that both worldviews cannot be true.  They are right in this – both views cannot be true, but in their intellectual arrogance, they don’t even question whether or not they are correct; they simply know they are, and they explain as much in their books.  In this new movement, they see Christians as deluded, and the smart Christians that aren’t just the brainwashed masses are an enemy with a deceptive agenda, one that must be called out and stopped.

Image from  http://colliedoscope.blogspot.com/2010/09/excuse-me-i-have-interest-here-in-logic.html 

     Dinesh then explains how we are ill prepared for this atheistic attack, as ministers are, and should be, concerned with their own congregations, which are full of people who believe like they do, that Jesus is the Christ.  They, and most Christians for that matter, are not prepared to take on the bullies who call their God a murderous fiction, and the Bible a book for fools.  Dinesh wants us to follow his example, and take on these secular atheists whose main goal is to eradicate religion, and especially Christianity, because they see Christianity as the single most problematic perpetrator of evils upon the earth (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you ask me, since they cannot actually agree that evil itself really exists).

     Dinesh’s struggle I see as my personal struggle as well.  As I started to say at the beginning of this journal entry, there are a lot of directions one could take in their choice to believe, and many different struggles one can choose.  It seems that I am geared towards this one in particular:  The intelligent debate for my faith against secular atheists.  It’s something I have continued to grapple with for my entire existence as a Christian.  I find Dinesh D’Souza an extremely appropriate role model for this fight for my God in the face of blatant aggression and condemnation coming from the secular atheists against “simple minded” Christians.  Dinesh shows me, and them, that they’ve got another thing coming if they think all Christians are just simple minded sheep, or that we will take such a role for them.  Some Christians are as they say, but I’m happy to say some, like Dinesh, are not.  And despite my penchant for entertaining my brain into slumber for them, I’m happy to say I hold the same views as Dinesh, and the biggest compliment I can give him is that I would like to be much more like him in my intellectual Christian life.  It would make me more confident in my struggles against the atheists.

An intellectual debate against atheists is just another day at the office for D'Souza