The following excerpt comes from Ravi Zacharias’s newly released book Jesus Among Secular Gods coauthored with Vince Vitale.

It was years ago when I was speaking at an openly and avowedly atheistic institution that I was fascinated by a questioner who asked what on earth I meant by the term God. The city was Moscow; the setting was the Lenin Military Academy. The atmosphere was tense. Never had I been asked before to define the term in a public gathering. And because I was in a country so historically entrenched in atheism, I suspected the question was both hostile and intentional. I asked the questioner if he was an atheist, to which he replied that he was. I asked him what he was denying. That conversation didn’t go very far. So I tried to explain to him what we meant when we spoke of God.

It is fascinating to talk to a strident atheist and try to get beneath the anger or hostility. God is a trigger word for some that concentrates all his or her stored animosity into a projectile of words. But as the layers of their thinking and experience are unpacked, the meaning of atheism to each one becomes narrower and narrower, each term dying the death of a thousand qualifications. Oftentimes, the description is more visceral and is discussed with pent-up anger rather than in a sensible, respectful discussion. More than once I have been amazed at the anger expressed by members of the atheist groups at one or other of the Ivy League schools in the United States to which I have been invited to speak, anger that I was even invited and that I had the temerity to address them.

In theory, the academy has always been a place where dissent serves a valuable purpose in helping thinking students to weigh out ideas and make intelligent choices. And, dare I say, had I been a Muslim speaker, there would have been no such dissent as I faced. Evidently, being able to instill fear in people has a lot to do with how much freedom of speech you are granted. But alas! For some, at least, civil discourse is impossible. To her credit, at the end of a lecture, one senior officer in one club stood up and thanked me, a veiled apology for the resistance vented before the event. I did appreciate that courtesy.

This unfettered anger on the part of some is quite puzzling to me. I was raised in India where I was not a Hindu and, in fact, never once gave it any serious consideration. For that matter, I’m not sure if I even really believed in God. I was a nominal Christian but never gave that much thought, either. Most of my friends were either Hindu or Muslim or Sikh, with a few others of different faiths. I never recall feeling any anger or hostility toward those who believed differently than me, no matter how ludicrous their beliefs may have seemed to me. Nor do I remember ever being on the receiving end of such anger and hostility because I did not have the same belief.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Examining Religions →

The following essay from Vince Vitale is an excerpt from his newly released Jesus Among Secular Gods coauthored with Ravi Zacharias.

Suppose there was a machine (maybe before long there will be!) that would give you any experience you desired. You could choose to experience winning Olympic gold, or falling in love, or making a great scientific discovery, and then the neurons in your brain would be stimulated such that you would experience a perfect simulation of actually doing these things. In reality, you would be floating in a tank of goo with electrodes hooked up to your brain. Given the choice, should you preprogram your experiences and plug into this machine for the rest of your life?(1)

I join philosopher Robert Nozick, who first devised this thought experiment in the 1970s, in thinking that we should not plug into this “experience machine.” And this suggests the falsity of hedonism, a view dating back over two millennia to the Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus. If all that mattered were pleasure (in other words, if hedonism were true), then we should plug into the experience machine and we should encourage everyone we know to plug in as well.

We rightly care about more than just happiness or pleasure. We want to not only feel loved; we want to actually be loved. We want to not only dream of accomplishing our dreams; we want to actually accomplish them. We want to not only feel inside as if we have made a difference in life; we want to actually make a difference. Hedonism is not the desire of our hearts; it is all that is left when every other “ism” has failed us.

A recent academic book suggested that, on hedonistic assumptions, because some animals can feel pleasure like human persons but cannot suffer in some of the worst ways as human persons, those animals could be understood to be more valuable than humans.(2) If the acquisition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is the measure of all, these animals score well on pleasure with fewer deductions for the complex psychological pains such as anxiety and disappointment to which the human psyche is vulnerable. This same assumption led utilitarian Jeremy Bentham to the view that “the game of push-pin [a children’s game] is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry.”(3) The problem here is not with the logic leading to the conclusions but with the underlying assumption of pleasure as the sole determiner of value.

Pleasure and happiness are good things, but they are not the only good things. We should care not only about feeling good on the inside but also about truth and about the impact that our lives have outside of ourselves. As C.S. Lewis put it, if happiness were all he was after, a good bottle of port would do the trick.(4)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – “Whatever Makes You Happy” →

Around the world, the sentiment is the same even though there are many different ways to convey the message: from the Dutch “Gelukkig Nieuwjaar” to the Greek “Kali Chronia,” from the Spanish “Feliz año Nuevo” to the Swahili “Mwaka Mzuri” or the Urdu “Naya Saal Mubarik,” the citizens of the world wish for a “Happy New Year!” Regardless the time zone, the stroke of midnight ushers in a celebration that encircles the globe. Fireworks fill the skies with explosive colors carrying hopes and dreams for the coming New Year. A new year brings the chance of fresh possibility and promise, of goals and aspirations, and of renewal and growth. It is the chance to start again and, of course, it is hoped that the year will be filled with happiness.

Despite the revelry and festive mood, the advent of each New Year will inevitably usher in its share of sorrow and sadness. Each year brings its share of natural disasters or calamity. Each year brings some nations closer to war or perpetuates ongoing conflict. For some, economic fortunes will be lost. And for others, the New Year will bring personal loss or suffering. While no one likes to think of these things, they too will come to surprise the unsuspecting.

So what is it that we wish for, and what is it that we want when we say, “Happy New Year”? Far deeper than a simple saying, these words house cherished imaginations of possibility and promise. And those cherished imaginations vary depending on the way in which one defines happiness. Some define happiness as a year in which everything goes their way. Others hope for simpler pleasures, and still others simply hope it will be a year of stepping up to the plate, finding a job, or surviving another day despite the aching hunger or aching loneliness.

Like most, my own thoughts for the substance of a happy New Year tend to revolve around achieving certain goals, seeing dreams fulfilled, or feeling deeply connected to a sense of purpose. One of my yearly rituals is to go through the previous year’s calendar to transfer birthdays, anniversaries and other recurring events into my new calendar. As I did so this year, I reviewed the events of the previous year. While this past year was filled with joys and wonderful celebrations, there were losses that filled the pages as well. I wondered aloud what it will mean for me to have a ‘happy New Year’ and what it will mean for others?

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – New Year Wishes →