Did God harden Dawkins’ heart?
In Where God’s Love Isn’t, I quoted parts of Jeremiah 7, where the Children of Israel were adopting other gods, while living otherwise normal lives. Here is part of the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? declares the LORD. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched. — Jer. 7:16-20
What shocked me the most is that God Jeremiah not to pray for them. I thought I was supposed to pray for everyone, but He not to pray for them. Interesting, huh? and shocking. Shouldn’t I always pray for a lost sheep? Well, yes. But, I think God was referring people who were no longer sheep. God goes on in verses 27 to 29:
So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.
‘Cut off your hair and cast it away;
raise a lamentation on the bare heights,
for the LORD has rejected and forsaken
the generation of his wrath.’
Now, I am a firm believer in prayer. I have been so amazed by God’s answers that I have even tried using that to witness to atheists, that they should try it. When they do however, they are generally sarcastic in tone, but not always. Sometimes they are sincere, but put requirements on God to act in an manner contrary to how He generally works. I do not want to get diverted by going into details. My point is that I have observed the biblical truth that people who are closed to God seek Him in a way that keeps them closed; they are not really seeking Him, because what they really seek is to put Him in a jar.
We all have a jar we want God to fit in. I have mine, and God is too big for it. So, my jar is empty, but my life is full of God. The difference between me and a sincere atheist is that they refuse to look for God outside their jar… when it often turns out that He is standing right behind them. And so it was with the pharaoh in Egypt. God visited the pharaoah in his own house, and even when he finally acknowledged God, he still rejected Him, and this is where I see a connection with the Children of Israel in Jeremiah 7… the ones God told Jeremiah not to pray for. Why do you suppose that is? Well, this morning, I saw a detail that I had never noticed before.
In Exodus 4 it reads:
21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’”
Notice the sequence: 1) God hardens pharaoh’s heart, 2) Moses speaks to him, 3) God plans to kill pharaoh’s first born son.
Now, there is no doubt that pharaoh was already going to reject God no matter what God did, but that is not the point. The point is what pharaoh said later, in response to Moses’ visit to him:
6 The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, 7 “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8 But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ 9 Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.”
Notice the end of verse 9: “lying words”. As a consequence of his hard heart, pharaoh called Moses’ words lies.
Is it possible that the more zealous atheists, such as Dawkins, have had their hearts hardened by God? Is it possible that the their accusations against Christians and religion are a recoil effect against having God harden their hearts? I am seriously considering that. It makes me believe that the more militant atheists, the ones campaigning against God (the God in whom they don’t believe), are atheists by choice, but militant because of God. In that case, we have two reasons not to pray for them. One is that they are not simply “lost”, but they provoke God, like the Children of Israel described in Jeremiah 7. they The other is because are serving some purpose of God in these end times (a purpose they would surely resent, as did pharaoh when he finally realized it). This does not make it sinful to pray for them of course, and God sees our hearts when we pray. Also, God is not necessarily telling us not to pray for them. It is quite possible the examples in scripture are isolated events, rather than general guidelines for us to apply, though personally I take them as clues to God’s general attitude about such things.
Personally, I see no need to pray for people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. As much as I want them to be Christians, and to have a loving relationship with God, they truly appear to have hearts hardened by God. They’re examples are so out there, and so extreme, that I believe they are serving a purpose of God in these end times. I suspect that I will in fact still pray for them on occasion, out of compassion or sadness for them (no offense meant, on the off chance they ever read this)… but I see no obligation to pray for them if they fit the descriptions of pharaoh and Jeremiah 7.
I realize there are arguments to be made that Christ die for the sins of all men, and so we are to pray for all men, but every extreme position taken in scripture has another scripture showing us how to temper it. The challenge is to live a life of absolutes, but not extremes, a subtle difference I think is lost on most people. Understanding God is a balancing act, to be sure.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
This is a very interesting post. So many aspects of the Old Testament confuse me. But thanks for sharing this.
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Ah, great thoughts. I completely agree, though I had never considered the angle of prayer in-depth. I guess there’s a difference between a lost sheep and a runaway sheep. ;-p