One author famously wrote: “The way to the future runs through the past.”(1) In our contemporary ears, this may not ring true. We seem to live with a suffocating sense of immediacy, where demands and events come at as fast and furious pace, and where the “past” for many of us means two days ago.

Within such a sense of time, the historical emphasis of the church may seem obsolete, irrational even. Growing up in Scotland in a home that was not focused on religious or spiritual things, I had little sense of time holding much weight beyond the moment or any sort of transcendent continuity. Time simply came and went. There were, of course, special times loosely connected to an earlier age, such as Christmas and Easter. But these came to primarily symbolize time off from school, special food, and presents. If they were tied to any bigger or wider story or meaning, my attitude was: Who cares?

After moving to Austria, I recall a very different scenario. I had by then become a Christian and we were living in a predominantly catholic country. What the church calls holy week was taken much more seriously there, and the sense of reverence, of something special, of consecrated time, all made an impact on me. Holy week was mentioned on the national news; preparations for the Easter service in the Stephansdom were highlighted. Something was in the air. This was also seen in people’s behavior. I was struck that events so long in the past, centered on the ancient Jesus of Nazareth and his death, were seen to have lasting and important impact on modern life in a modern nation.

Here in America, there is less of a national focus on holy week itself, which begins this Sunday. We, of course, know of holy week and many churches walk toward the vast and important events of Gethsemane, the upper room, and Golgotha. But outside the church, even inside some churches, it is simply one more thing in a list of occurrences. For some, holy week carries no more or even less weight than Valentine’s Day. For others, it may be simply a routine that has lost its import due to a trite familiarity. So what do you think of when you think of holy week?

The gospel is unflinching in its declaration that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, that God was on a mission and it culminated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to accomplish the Father’s work of restoration and his face was set like a flint to see that work all accomplished. In each of the gospel narratives, the passion of Christ, his wrestling in Gethsemane, his trial and torture, are a major portion of the narratives themselves. The gospel is simply not the gospel without this focused portion of history—the death of Christ and all that surrounded it. It was a significant death, a voluntary death, a purpose-filled death. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. If this is true, if this really happened, if indeed normal time was interrupted by an invasion of the healing, forgiving, loving, and self-giving God, then time itself was altered, history changed, life redirected.

Surely, surely, if such is the case, then some serious and dedicated time and space should indeed be given to it all. This is, I think, the meaning of holy week. It is inherently holy, because it centers us on the actions of God for us. In a fast-paced, moment-central world, this is the countercultural message of the church for the world. Holy week reminds us that the crucifixion of Jesus took place in real space and time, and therefore all of time—past, present, and future—is both important and impacted. And thus, our acts of remembrance, worship, penitence, and hope are also holy moments, moments which invite an eternal God to overshadow the immediacy of life and other lesser stories of time. Great things are indeed available: the love of God, the sacrificial death of Christ for the world, the forgiveness of sins, and the offer of new life.

The events the church remembers next week actually happened. They took place in a real city, in real time, with real people, and mercifully, real results. The crucifixion is not a story designed to make us feel good or guilty and guide the morals of culture and society. It was God’s redemptive initiative to heal the broken heart, strike the heart of evil, conquer death and sorrow, and open a way to a new kind of life and the restoration of all things. Holy week invites us to respond to who God is and what God has done, to celebrate the mercy, grace, and love of Christ in the gift of so great a salvation, to discover life in the cross for the glory of God.

It could be just another week for us, governed by speed, demand, shopping, news, politics, and entertainment. Or paying attention and setting our faces like flint toward the cross, it could be time touched and fulfilled by the Holy One in our very midst.

Stuart McAllister is global support specialist at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 20.

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“[W]e are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.”(1)

The author of this comment did not have the dashed hopes of a person weary of contemporary political promises or the daunting purposelessness of life. His was not the disappointment of a child after his once-adored video game lost its thrill or the dispirited outlook of a millenial overwhelmed with options and fearful of missing out on something vital. No, long before video games existed, long before Generation Y was disillusioned with Generation X or X with the Baby Boomers before them, disillusionment reigned nonetheless. A social commentator in the late 1920s made this comment about his own disillusioned culture, words which in fact came more than a decade after a group of literary notables identified themselves as the “Lost Generation,” so-named because of their own general feeling of disillusionment.  In other words, disillusionment is epidemic.

As humans who tell and hear and live by stories, the possibility of taking in a story that is bigger than reality is quite likely. (Advertisers, in fact, count on it regularly.) Subsequently, disillusionment is a quality that follows humanity and its stories around. Yet despite its common occurrence, disillusionment is a crushing blow, and the collateral damage of shattered expectations quite painful. With good reason, we speak of it in terms of the discomfort and disruption that it fosters; we frame the crushing of certain hope and images in terms of loss and difficulty. The disillusioned do not speak of their losses lightly, no more than victims of burglary move quickly past the feeling of loss and violation.

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Cognitive dissonance, the study of psychology tells us, is the internal tension that results when our experience doesn’t match our beliefs and values. It is that sense of unease when we encounter something that contradicts what we have held to be true. We often experience this tension in as we learn new ideas. Cognitive dissonance can also be felt acutely within the realm of faith commitments. Can one be free if God is sovereign? How can suffering and evil coexist with a loving and good God? How can scientific knowledge be reconciled with supernatural events?

Now, those who have never experienced (or noticed) cognitive dissonance might be quick to offer all kinds of explanations for those who don’t find it quite as easy to reconcile the gaps between beliefs and experience: We have drifted away from our moral center. We have not studied enough or prayed enough. We have not understood right teaching. And surely there are times when all of these explanations may contribute to dissonance.

But the Bible itself often challenges an easy dismissal of one’s cognitive dissonance. The gospels depiction of John the Baptist offers a compelling example. The gospel writers placed John in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. Here was a man filled with all the intensity and moral outrage of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Malachi—zealous prophets from the days of ancient Israel prone to weeping and crying out with zeal and tenacity. John, who was the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth, preached a hell-fire and brimstone message of repentance. Those who truly repented of their sins would come to him to be baptized, washed in the river Jordan as a sign of their cleansing from sin. He stood against the immorality and hypocrisy of those who were religious and political leaders. John was resolute in his ministry as the forerunner to the Messiah. Even as his own disciples came undone and complained that the crowds who once clamored to see him were now flocking to his cousin Jesus, John stood clear in his calling: “You yourselves bear me witness, that I have said, ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but ‘I have been sent before him.’”(1)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Comfortable Assumptions →