I had my own Chambers type moment when God laid his finger upon my forehead.
I started going to church to appease my girlfriend....(now wife of 32 years)
The pastor explained that darkness has no power over the light by this example:
Imagine siting in a huge stadium in complete and total darkness, darkness so dark you cannot see your hand in front of your face....Now someone lights a match across the stadium...a single match stick...hundreds of feet away
No matter how dark it is, one single light from a match can shatter the darkness and overwhelm it...
If a single match which has almost no power to illuminate, how much more does the Light of the world have power over darkness (evil)
That really blew me away
I do believe Mark Judge was on the mark when he wrote that Hitchens' Vanity Fair essay was "powerful," but it was in no way comforting nor hopeful for this life nor for any other. It was rather fatalistically depressing.
What does a title reveal? Vanity Fair's teaser title was, "Christopher Hitchens Takes on Nietzsche: Am I Really Stronger?," and his title at the top of the page was, "Trial of the Will." Neither title implied anything beyond the psychological and the physical.
Hitchens' mentioned God three times. Twice in the sense of good or bad random fortune. Once used as a "gotcha" done to him by a Christian radio enterviewer.
The remainder was a powerful elaboration on why the illness which has not yet killed him has not made him stronger.
At the end, Hitchens wrote: "So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don't live up to their apparent billing."
See what you might think: Trial of the Will.