The Atlantic:  The Greatest Contribution of Christianity, by Peter Wehner (Senior Fellow, Trinity Forum):

Nearly 15 years ago, I had the chance to ask Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s most prominent critics of religion, a simple question: “What do you think is the greatest contribution of Christianity, either writ large in terms of society or writ small in terms of individual lives?”

To which Hitchens, an atheist who grew up as a nominal Christian, replied, “The greatest contribution of Christianity in my life is the reminder of the complete ephemerality of human power, and indeed of human existence—the transience of all states, empires, heroes, grandiose claims, and so forth. That’s always with me. And I daresay I could have got that from Einstein—I would have—and from Darwin, too. But the way I got it and the way it’s implanted in me is certainly by Christianity.”

Hitch was onto something. Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus, and Easter, which celebrates his resurrection, are very good occasions to reflect on faith, human power, and its ephemerality. …

For Christians, the incarnation and (especially) the events on the cross mean that God doesn’t just have sympathy for those who suffer; he enters into suffering. He is not a distant God. He has entered into the human drama, and he didn’t escape without wounds.

I have taken comfort during my own times of grief and pain in believing that God can empathize with my experience. It’s reassuring to believe that heartbreak and suffering, even tears, aren’t alien concepts to Jesus. This doesn’t repair what is shattered; it doesn’t reclaim what is lost. But it does make the loss more tolerable. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s a sense of feeling known, a kind of solidarity in suffering.

That, of course, doesn’t answer why an all-good and all-powerful God would allow suffering to exist rather than eradicate it. Christianity doesn’t provide an explanation; what it does is place pain into a larger narrative, one in which the crucifixion of Jesus gives way to his resurrection. Death gives way to life. Fractured lives are repaired. Restorative justice happens.

“Good Friday may occupy the throne for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumph of Easter,” Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1956. “Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but one day that same Christ will arise and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”

The powerlessness of God, as understood through the prism of the New Testament, shouldn’t be confused with a lack of influence in this world. Quite the opposite, in fact. The movement started by Jesus and a handful of his followers had, within three centuries, changed the world. This wasn’t because the adherents of that movement gained control of the kingdoms of this world; it wasn’t because they rallied around leaders who would exact vengeance, even leaders who claimed to do so in the name of Christianity.

They changed the world because they sought to serve rather than to be served. Because they were known for their mercy, their forbearance, their kindness, and their grace. Because they were peacekeepers and justice seekers. And because they cared for those whom Jesus called “the least of these.” What you have done for them, he said, you have done for me. When Christians have lost sight of that, as they very often have, they’ve gotten into trouble.

My friend Christopher Hitchens was right about this: Human power is ephemeral; all states, empires, and grandiose claims are transitory. But love is not. The story goes on. And all things will be made new again.

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