Dangerous Ideas

Deathly Silence

An anonymous commentator called our attention to a piece from the Briefing at Matthias Media, commenting upon the "Festival of Dangerous Ideas" held recently at the Sydney Opera House. 

We had a talkfest here in Sydney recently called ‘The Festival of Dangerous Ideas’, at which participants could experience the frisson of discussing daring and explosive concepts with a soy latte in hand. Most of the ideas were in fact rather conventionally dangerous in a green-left sort of way, although gay activist Dan Savage received special marks for his dangerous idea that abortion should be made mandatory for 30 years to make a dent in the worldwide population problem. (The audience, having escaped the womb safely themselves, felt confident to clap.)


However, at one point in one of the debates, something remarkable happened. In a moment of real courage, Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) suggested that the most dangerous idea in the world was that “Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead”.¹

The audience lapsed into a deathly silence. It was as if someone had just praised Margaret Thatcher

The audience cheered, thinking that Hitchens was channelling his late brother in a religion-poisons-everything sort of way. But when asked why Jesus’ resurrection was dangerous, Hitchens said this:

Because it alters the whole of human behaviour and all our responsibilities. It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and, therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject it, it alters us all as well. It is incredibly dangerous. It’s why so many people turn against it.²

The audience lapsed into a deathly silence. It was as if someone had just praised Margaret Thatcher.

The whole incident (and festival) was sobering and encouraging at the same time. It showed very graphically just how despised and marginal the Christian gospel is, and how far gone our public intellectual conversation is from a biblical world view. But it also showed, just fleetingly, how daring and explosive the Christian gospel is; how shocking, how confronting, how dangerous.

It’s the kind of message that comes with a manifesto.

1. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Q&A: From the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Monday 4th November, 2013, accessed 24/12/2013, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3868791.htm ↩
2. Ibid. ↩

H/T: Anonymous.