In the 1930s, a vine native to Japan was introduced throughout the United States as a highly effective means for controlling erosion. Forty years later, the USDA officially declared this miracle-vine a weed. While visitors to the South are immediately taken by scenic glimpses of kudzu-blanketed landscapes, natives keep their doors shut to keep the creeping plant from taking over their houses. Growing better in the South than it does even in its native environment, kudzu can grow as much as a foot per day, climbing trees, barns, telephone poles—and anything else that gets in its way. And while these vines actually do help prevent erosion, they also destroy entire forests, wrapping themselves around every inch, smothering every tree from needed sunlight.

The chronicles of southern kudzu came to mind at a similar story in recent headlines. The article describes an isolated farm village in the mountains of northern Mexico that has been about the work of recruiting cats. Attempting to counter a frightening population of rats for a town of 3,000 (health officials estimate as many as 500,000 rats in this small village), some believe importing cats is the most logical solution. But as “cat donations” begin to accumulate steadily, others are less sure it is a foolproof plan. Stray cats that haven’t been sterilized may only create more problems. Their plague of rats, some warn, may quickly be replaced by a plague of cats.

Does it ever feel like life is a similar testing ground of creative or destructive gardening, trial and error, cause and effect? What do you do when the attitude you attempted to import to control false hope somehow becomes a growing spirit of sarcasm? Or the vow you made to silence your critical words seems to evolve into a mounting plague of unvoiced frustration? Sometimes it feels like we are only bouncing between extremes, pulling weeds only to transplant them, working on the leak in one corner only to find we’ve sprung a leak in another.

Christianity can introduce a life that is not much different than problem-solving with cats and kudzu. Like the vines brought in to counter one problem, we, too, can easily end up introducing another. Fighting to counter our inattentiveness to this or that virtue, we might battle laziness and lethargy or struggle to correct our time and routine, only to find that as victory seems to loom in the garden the battle is now against a quickly creeping sense of self-righteousness. The plague of the weeds of apathy is easily replaced by an infestation of arrogance.

Jesus, who regularly countered apathy with active commands, seemed also to know well our capacity for self-righteousness, warning hearers to be on guard against the “yeast of the Pharisees.” It is all too often the weed that creeps in and takes over while we believed we were planting better fruit (and very well may have been). He also warned that our adversary is like an enemy who comes and sows weeds among the wheat while everyone is sleeping. And often, this mystery gardener may well be ourselves. Jesus who spoke thoroughly of seeds and sowing was well aware that tending the weeds of materialism or immorality or fear may simply leave us open to the planting of idolatry of a different varietal.

With these teachings in mind, C.S. Lewis once commented that errors often come in pairs. Our adversary, he writes, “always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking about which is the worse. […] He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”(1) It is a struggle that calls us to be faithfully self-aware, lest we oscillate from one weed to another. “But do not let us be fooled” writes Lewis. “We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through both errors.”

And at this, the goal of course is Christ—nothing less, nothing added—not Christian truth, not Christian charity, but Christ himself. The goal is Christ, who walks at our side even as we find ourselves struggling to hike through the weeds we have created, the idol varietals we have simply exchanged, the plague where there was once a pest. “But you are of Christ,” the apostle Paul reminds, “and Christ is of God.” Wherever we find ourselves, this is our hope: that even in our oscillating we are being tilled and cultivated by the Spirit into the image of the one who created us. God is at work; God is the first and most able Gardner, and to this hope the Christian clings, lost in wonder, love, and praise. For after the first few steps of the Christian life and well into the journey of new creation, we realize that creeping vines and mounting plagues can be uprooted and transformed to beauty only in his able hands.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2002), 100.

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Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhard Nobel was once largely known as a maker and inventor of explosives. In 1866 Nobel invented dynamite, which earned him both fame and the majority of his wealth. At one point in his life he held more than 350 patents, operated labs in 20 countries, and had more than 90 factories manufacturing explosives and ammunition. Yet today he is most often remembered as the name behind the Nobel Prize, the most highly regarded of international awards for efforts in peace, chemistry, physics, literature, and economics.

In 1888 a bizarre incident occurred, which seemed to have afforded Alfred Nobel an unlikely opportunity for reflection. Many believe it was this event that ultimately led to his establishment of the Nobel Prize and subsequent change in his reputation. Alfred’s brother Ludvig died while staying in Cannes, France, but the French newspapers mistakenly confused the two brothers, reporting the death of the inventor of explosives. One paper’s headline read brusquely: “Le marchand de la mort est mort”—the merchant of death is dead.

I can’t imagine reading the headlines of my life written at the hands of my harshest critic, but I do remember laboring over an assignment in middle school in which I was required to write my own obituary. Some of the class was given the task of writing it as if they died well into their eighties; others had to write as if they died that year. The assignment was meant to incite reflection, and in most of us it did—particularly those of us who were designated early deaths. As in the case with Alfred Nobel, my premature obituary suggested headlines I did not want to live with; that I was the one writing them made this all the more sobering.

In a very real sense, I am still (as is each of us) the writer of my own obituary. But I am no longer thinking about the words and headlines in the way I was thinking about them in middle school. As I struggled to find the words, it seemed I had so little material with which to work—no graduations, no family, no accomplishments worth mentioning, no humanitarian contributions, no overarching purpose for my life. I was imagining all the things I had not done and feeling quite insignificant about the things I had. At that point in time, it seemed clear that a few more years were necessary in order to make a meaningful headline.

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For most of us, the study of doctrine is best left to academics and theologians.  Terms used in doctrinal formulations like supralapsarian, infralapsarian, incompatiblism, predestination, or compatibalism either leave us tongue-tied, confused, or totally disinterested. If we wonder at all, we wonder what doctrine has to do with our day-to-day lives, especially as we struggle with terms we don’t understand and principles we find hard to practice.  If we’re honest, reading and studying theology is something most of us would like to avoid, just as we’d like to avoid a root canal.

Historically, of course, the formation of Christian doctrine served to tell the story of the gospel.  Doctrines are composed of the central tenets of belief, so an understanding of doctrine shapes what Christians think about our faith.  But how many Christians have really taken the time to think through the implication(s) or application(s) of doctrine to the living out of our lives?  In other words, is a belief something we only think in our heads?  Or is a belief something we demonstrate in our lives?  More important, if what we think in our heads has no bearing over the ways in which we live in this world, do we truly believe?

I was forced to think about these questions, as I studied the doctrine of the Incarnation. By its very nature, the doctrine of the Incarnation is application-oriented since it deals with the belief that in Jesus Christ the whole fullness of God dwelt bodily.  The more I thought about the Incarnation,the more I realized that doctrine needs to be similarly incarnational.  Doctrine must be “enfleshed” in our very beings, just as our skin encases our bones and organs.

Another way of thinking about incarnational doctrine is to think about eating.  Food sustains our very being and fuels us for living. In the same way, as we digest ideas, they should emerge as a part of ourvery being, just as food nourishes and sustains us by being incorporated into our cells, tissue, and organs.  Infact, being intentional about the implications of the Incarnation can help our understanding of the true nature of doctrine—as lived belief.

Of course the preeminent example of incarnation is in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. But incarnational doctrine begins all the way back in the Old Testament.  God comes to be with his people in their wilderness wanderings as a pillar of fire and a cloud.  God “dwells” among the people in the Ark of the Covenant, and then in the Tabernacle.  Later, the Temple became the incarnational focal point of God’s presence with God’s people.

Other vivid and concrete images of incarnation occur in the lives of the Hebrew prophets.  In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet is told “Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll and go, speak to the house of Israel” (cf. Ezekiel 2:9-3:3). This scroll is not just any scroll.  It is the book of the Law,the Scriptures, the teachings and the doctrines of belief that guided the nation in its worship of God.  Ronald Rolheiser suggests a profound incarnational application for this image: “The idea is that they should digest the word and turn it into their own flesh so that people will be able to see the word of God in a living body rather than on a dead parchment….We have to digest something and turn it, physically, into the flesh of our own bodies so it becomes part of what we look like.  If we would do this with the word of God, others would not have to [only] read the Bible to see what God is like,they would need only to look at our faces and our lives to see God.”(1)

Could it be that we could so imbibe and ingest doctrine a the beautiful teachings that come from God’s word into our lives, that they would radiate from our faces?  That the way we lived, spoke, acted—even our very countenance—would give witness to the truth of God’s word?  This is incarnation application.  We incarnate God’s word, God’s truth and love, as our lives bear witness to Him.  Doctrine is lived out, and our beliefs are enfleshed in our deeds and our actions, and even in our words.  As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the word of God wherever you go, even use words, if necessary.”(2)

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality (New York: DoubledayBooks, 1999), 102.

(2) Ibid., 82.

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On a routine trip through well-worn streets, I found myself pulled out of the fragmented consciousness of a mind captive to the day’s worries with the jarring lyrics of a song. Up until that point, the song itself was much like the familiar patterns of scenery, an external factor impervious to the siege of my own fears; I was seeing but not seeing, hearing but not really hearing. But then I suddenly took in the artist’s abrupt words: “Hoping to God on high is like clinging to straws while drowning.”(1)

The simile cleared everything else from my mind and set me thinking about the descriptive words of a friend just hours earlier. Encouraging me in the midst of a difficult place, she simply reminded me that I was not alone. She was intending to assure me of her friendship and support, but I also knew she was assuring me of the presence of God. “The LORD is near to all who call on him,” declares the psalmist; and I needed to hear it.

There are many who take comfort in the thought that God is among us, comforting our fears, quieting our cries of distress, standing near those who call, moving in lives and history that we might discover the God who is there. Knowing that Christ is near in struggle and darkness is one of the only reasons I don’t completely surrender to my fears and stop moving forward. Knowing that there is a kingdom of grace, beauty, and mystery is the hope I remember when I fear death, my console when I fear uncertainty, the picture that somehow makes sense of a strand of DNA and quiets my fear of being uncared for and alone.  I can relate to the resolution of the psalmist in a world of many and distant gods: “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge.”

But what good is it if there is a throne but it is empty, a kingdom without a king, or worse, a god who is close but like straw? Who is it who is near us?  If god is an impersonal force, or a tyrant, or a distant, semi-interested being, the kingdom is no refuge. If the hope we cling to is like straw that cannot save us from drowning, we have good reason to live in fear, “huddled,” as the musician later describes, “afraid if we dance we might die.”

The lyrics that brought my distraction to a grinding halt forced me to think graphically about the hope to which the Christian really clings, the promise that is so often on the mouth of God in Scripture:  Do not be afraid, for I am with you.(2) If God on high is merely straw and fairytale, then emptiness is inevitable, fear is certain, and hope is futile, for we are ultimately alone. We all cling futilely to fantasy and drown in delusion. Could there really be one both graceful and near enough to answer the cry of a lonely heart, the fears of an entire nation, the uncertainties of the world around?

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Not Alone →

There is a covered bridge in Georgia that extends over a scenic rushing stream. A well-worn trail leads its visitors to a succession of small cascading waterfalls over a series of massive rocks. Sitting atop one of these rocks, my husband turned to me and asked, “Do you ever think of the springs in France when you see a bottle of Evian for sale?”

My answer caught me more off guard than his question. No, I really hadn’t ever thought of the springs, or the production, or for that matter, the importing that goes into the twenty-some kinds of bottled water we see on our grocery store shelves. In fact, I don’t usually think about the origins of anything I consume.

Sociologists call this growing trend of perspective (or lack there of) commodification, the progression of thought whereby the commodities we consume are seen in abstraction from their origins. For instance, when most of us think of chocolate, we rarely see it as having a context beyond our consumption of it. The land where it came from, the conditions of its production, and the community or laborers who produce it are realities disassociated with the commodity. In a world dominated by consumption, commodification is becoming more and more of an unconscious worldview, and one which is shaping habits of interpretation across the board.

Author and cultural observer Vincent Miller writes of how such a manner of seeing and interpreting is also making us more comfortable with engaging religion as commodity, lifting certain portions of a religious tradition from its context and historical background for the sake of one’s individual use or interest.(1) Thus just as chocolate or bottled water is easily and unconsciously viewed as detached and even different from its origin and context, parts and pieces of religious traditions are increasingly being seen as goods from which we can pick and choose, commodities disassociated from the historical realities and contexts from which they arise. Such habits of interpretation might explain the current fascination with diverse and isolated spiritual practices; it could also explain the man on television who recently expressed his desire to design a tattoo portraying his version of the Crucifixion. Jesus, the cross, and the resurrection become commodities isolatable from first century Palestine, detachable from the context of the Old Testament, or optionally a part of the Christian story at all. When consuming religion, we prefer à la carte.

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Master photographer Edward Steichen once remarked that the mission of photography is to explain human to human and each to him or herself. It was a mission he found at once both complicated and naïve, but worth fumbling toward. “Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper,” notes Steichen. “The photographer begins with the finished product.”

It is a thought befitting of a scene from 2001, when the who’s who of the country’s finest photographers volunteered their time for such a mission. What they discovered is that when the “finished products” are the faces of children in foster care systems across the country, photography can offer can explain human to human in a way that offers the chance of new life.

Diane Granito is the founder of the Heart Gallery, a unique program that uses photography to help find homes for older foster children, sibling groups, and other children who are traditionally difficult to place with families.(1) The program started in New Mexico in 2001 at the suggestion of a local photographer. Space was then donated by a prominent gallery in the city, where more than a thousand people came opening night. The photos on exhibit were the end result of the photographers’ attempts to coax out the unique personalities in hundreds of children—a great contrast to the typical photos attached to a child’s file. “They look like mug shots,” said one of the photographers of the typical case photos. “This is an opportunity to just portray them as kids in their environments,” said another involved. “We’re treating this as a living, breathing project.”

Since its inception, the Santa Fe project has inspired 120 more Heart Galleries across the United States. In some places, the adoption rate after an exhibit is more than double the nationwide rate of adoption from foster care. Such photography earns a description worthy of its roots: photography in Greek means “to write in light.”

Those who work to find foster children adoptive families are used to rubbing up against the public perception that most foster children have serious emotional and behavioral problems. Sometimes, though not always, it is an accurate perception. And a picture offered in a different light does not change the child it portrays. But an image of a troubled child at play does offer the accurate light of hope.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Human to Human →

Professor and theologian James Loder was on vacation with his family when they noticed a motorist off to the side of the road waving for help. In his book The Transforming Moment, he describes kneeling at the front fender of this broken-down car, his head bent to examine the flat tire, when he was startled by the abrupt sound of screeching brakes. A motorist who had fallen asleep at the wheel was jarred awake seconds before his vehicle crashed into the disabled car alongside the road—and the man who knelt beside it. Loder was immediately pinned between two vehicles. The car he knelt to repair was now on his chest, his own vehicle underneath him.

Years after both the incident and the rehabilitation it required, Loder was compelled to describe the impact of that moment so marked by pain and tragedy, which was unexpectedly, something much more. Loder describes the incident: “At the hospital, it was not the medical staff, grateful as I was for them, but the crucifixes—in the lobby and in the patients’ rooms—that provided a total account of my condition. In that cruciform image of Christ, the combination of physical pain and the assurance of a life greater than death gave objective expression and meaning to the sense of promise and transcendence that lived within the midst of my suffering.”(1)

For the Christian, the crucifixion is the center of the whole, the event that gives voice to a broken, dark, and dying world, and the paradoxical suggestion of life somehow within it. The Christian marks steeples and graves in memory of the crucifixion. The death of Christ is the occasion that makes way for the last to be first, the guilty to be pardoned, the creature united again to its creator. The cross of Christ is the mysterious sign that stands in the center of the history of the world and changes everything. “I have been crucified with Christ,” said one of his transformed followers. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Through Still Deeper Darkness →

As one who spends a fair bit of time sitting in airports, I have the opportunity to people watch. There are the elite travelers who emerge from airline lounges with their power suits and designer cases, and then there are those who are traveling for leisure, souvenirs and gifts in tow. I love seeing the variety of clothing styles depending on what region I am in, and listening in on conversations betrays regional dialects and phrases. Business deals are made or broken, discussions over the day’s events all done in the parlance of the place.

More often than not, my attention is drawn to those who sit alone, as I do. In the smaller, regional airports I see the elderly gentleman in the wheelchair, alone. I look at the gate agent as she texts on her phone after yet another flight delay, hoping to hide from the ire of the passengers who needed to arrive at their destination hours ago. There is the single mother trying to corral her children, the slouched, sad looking twenty-something with a melancholic and listless gaze. There we all sit waiting. Wondering. Is there anything more than this?

The inherent routine, mundane tasks and waiting for whatever is next on the agenda can fill the days with a deepening ennui and a longing for something greater—something like a sense of finding and fulfilling one’s potential. As one who sits anonymously in airports watching and waiting, what does “potential” even mean? In a world of social media where status is measured by the number of friends or followers, likes or shares there is often a feeling that one’s life just doesn’t measure up. And in a celebrity culture, where success is measured by beauty, wealth, or status how can one ever feel she has reached her potential? If the exceptional is the guide for achievement, how will those of us who live somewhere between the average and the ordinary ever feel we’ve arrived?

Most of us occupy an existence often filled with the mundane or the banal. Never ending housework, constant bills, and running endless errands do not make one feel substantial. These are the daily details that make up often dulling routines. Indeed, for artists and bus drivers, homemakers and neurosurgeons, astronauts and cashiers repetitive motion is more the norm than moments of great challenge or extraordinary success. With endless quotidian tasks, is it any wonder that reaching one’s potential serves as an ideal to free us from the constraints of such ordinary lives?

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Ordinary Greatness →

Science fiction novelist Kurt Vonnegut once said of one of his most recurrent characters, “Trout was the only character I ever created who had enough imagination to suspect that he might be the creation of another human being. He had spoken of this possibility several times to his parakeet. He had said, for instance, ‘Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I’m a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.”(1) In this scene from the book Breakfast of Champions, Kilgore Trout’s haunting suspicion is unveiled before him. Sitting content at a bar, Kilgore is suddenly overwhelmed by someone or something that has entered the room. Beginning to sweat, he becomes uncomfortably aware of a presence disturbingly greater than himself.

The author himself, Kurt Vonnegut, has stepped beyond the role of narrator and into the book itself, and the effect is as bizarre for Kilgore as it is for the readers. When the author of the book steps into the novel, fiction is lost within a new reality. Kilgore senses the world as he knows it collapsing. In fact, this was the author’s intent. Vonnegut has placed himself in Kilgore’s world for no other reason than to explain the meaninglessness of Kilgore’s life. He came to explain to Kilgore face to face that the very tiresome life he has led was, in fact, all due to the pen and whims of an author who made it all up for his own sake. In this twisted ending, no doubt illustrative of Vonnegut’s own humanism, Kilgore is forced to conclude that apart from the imagination of the author he does not actually exist. Ironically, he also must come to terms with the fact that it is because of the author that his very existence has been ridiculous.

The testifying voices of the gospel tell a story that is perhaps as fantastic as Vonnegut’s tale, though one with consequences in stark contrast. The Gospel of John, too, begins with a story that is interrupted by the presence of the author: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people… And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth… From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”(2) The word became one of us and moved into the neighborhood. But in this story, the presence of the author is not our demise but our inherent good.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Into the Story →

Wendell Berry has written a poem that haunts me frequently. As a creative writer, the act of paying attention is both a spiritual and professional discipline. But far too often my aspirations for paying quality attention to everything dissolves into something more like attention deficit disorder. As it turns out, it is quite possible to see and not really see, to hear and not really hear. And this is all the more ironic when my very attempts to capture what I am seeing and hearing are the thing that prevent me from truly being present. Berry’s poem is about a man on holiday, who, trying to seize the sights and sounds of his vacation by video camera, manages to miss the entire thing.

…he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.(1)

I sometimes wonder if one of the most quoted sayings of Jesus is not often employed with a similar irony. “Consider the lilies,” Jesus said, “how they grow; they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field…will he not much more clothe you? Therefore, do not worry.“(2) Typically, Jesus is quoted here as giving a helpful word against worry. And he is. But worry is not the only command he articulates. Consider the lilies, he said. We hear the first instruction peripherally, hurriedly, as mere set up for the final instruction of the saying. And in so doing, we miss something great, perhaps even something vital, both in the means and in the end. With our rationalistic sensibilities, we gloss over consideration of the lilies; ironically, in an attempt to consider the real work Jesus is asking us to do.

But what if considering the lilies is the work, the antidote to anxious, preoccupied lives? What if attending to this short-lived beauty, to the fleeting details of a distracted world is a command Jesus wants us to take seriously in and of itself?

It is with such a conviction that artist Makoto Fujimura not only paints, but elsewhere comments on Mary and her costly pouring of perfume on the feet of Jesus. The anger of Judas and the disgust of the others are all given in rational terms, the cacophony of their reaction attempting to drown out her quiet act of attention: That bottle would have cost over a year’s wages. The poor could have used that money. This sinful woman clings to a holy man’s feet. Does he not see who it is who touches him? Their response to her and her act of beauty exposes their own inattention to a world beyond the one they see—to their own peril. As Fujimura writes, “Pragmatism, legalism, and greed cannot comprehend the power of ephemeral beauty. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness; the opposite of beauty is legalism. Legalism is hard determinism that slowly strangles the soul. Legalism injures by giving pragmatic answers to our suffering.”(3) The corollary, of course, is that beauty can offer healing; that paying attention, even to fleeting glimpses of the mere suggestion of new creation, is deeply restorative.

When Jesus asks the world to consider the lilies, to consider beauty in the midst of all the ashes around us, his request is full of promise, for he is both the Source of beauty and its Subject. His own history is one that takes so seriously the goodness of the created world that he joins us within it, taking even our profound wounds upon himself, and presenting in his body the hope of a creation made new. Paying attention to the ephemeral, being willing like Mary to risk and to recognize beauty, is in and of itself restorative because it is paying attention to him. Here, both the anxiety-addicted and the attention-overloaded can find solace in a different sort of kingdom: one in which there is room for the paradox of a fleeting world with eternity in its heart.

But perhaps Jesus also instructs the world to consider the lilies because it is the very characteristic of God’s concern for us. The daily liturgy of lilies comes with unceasing care and attention for all who will see it, the gift of a God who revels in the creation of yet another flower, the details of another sunset, the discovery of even one lost soul. Consider the lilies; how they grow. They neither toil, nor spin.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Wendell Berry, “The Vacation,” Selected Poems, (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1998), 157.

(2) Matthew 6:28-31.

(3) Makoto Fujimura, “The Beautiful Tears,” Tabletalk, September, 2010.

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Actuarial science is the discipline that applies statistical methods to assess risk of disability, morbidity, mortality, fertility, and other life-contingencies. Generally, actuaries are employed by insurance companies or risk management firms to calculate the “risks” associated with insuring individuals against life’s catastrophes. Actuarial science offers accurate and razor-sharp predictive power in order to prevent capital loss for those very companies.

There are always exceptions, of course, that confound even actuaries. These “outlier” events come unannounced. So rare are these exceptions that a theory was developed to explain their occurrence. The Black Swan Theory developed by Nassim Nicolas Taleb suggests that surprise events have major and long-lasting impact.(1) The 2001 terrorist attacks; the Pacific tsunami in 2004; the stock-market crash of 1987; not even a seasoned actuary could have predicted these events with any level of confidence.

The result of the unexpected can be a deep and pervading fear. In my own life, for example, I have come to fear airplane travel—particularly, I fear the worst possible scenarios regarding airplane travel—despite the fact that the odds are much higher for my getting in a car accident when I go to the grocery store. When I swim in the ocean, I fear a shark-attack more than I fear the more likely event of drowning. These are the “black swan” events that haunt me. They are rare and infrequent outliers but their impact on me is as significant as the potential sighting of a real black swan in my front yard, an unlikely but extraordinary occurrence, indeed.

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A mother bowed before Jesus with a request. Her sons were under the tutelage of the rabbi who was stirring the city with words of another kingdom, and she wanted to assure them a place. Kneeling, she uttered, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”(1)

This exchange I remember well, and I confess, often with an air of superiority. What a silly concern. The overzealous mother, and the sons who seemed to be standing in the wing as she asked, were rightly told they didn’t quite get it. Jesus’s response seemed to be aimed at both mother and sons alike: “You don’t know what you are asking,” he essentially says to them. Christ had come to be a servant, humbling himself as a sacrifice. For a people who didn’t understand, he came to show the way. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” Jesus asked them. “We can,” they answered, still having no idea what was coming, much less what they had just agreed they could drink. The right and left seats were the least of their worries.

Author Donald Miller remembers the moment he realized that the right and left seats beside Jesus were also the least of his own worries. He wittily explains how he never pictured himself as bothering with the seats of honor or the politics of the kingdom and considered himself the better for it. He admits he just wasn’t all that interested. The seats of honor could be given to someone else. He was happy to be off somewhere on a remote and rolling hillside, exploring, or fishing, maybe even napping. Miller eventually realized this might not be the best way to follow or participate.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Right and Left →

French philosopher Michel de Montaigne once said, “There are triumphant defeats that rival victories.” His words fit awkwardly into the battles that fill our days with sweat or worry. Whether battling disease or bidding in an auction, defeat is far from our goal. It is a word that, presumably for most of us, carries with it tender recollections of loss and disappointment. Past defeats always with us, even the smallest of victories can offer a hopeful sweetness. And perhaps this is so, at least at first, even in those victories of which we should not be proud.

With his mother on his side, Jacob won the battle of wits over his brother and father. Posing as Esau before his blind and aging father, equipped with animal skin and stew, Jacob convinced his father of his status as the first born and lawful heir of the blessing. Shortly thereafter, a defeated Esau returned to find his younger brother promised all that was rightfully his own. Jacob won the battle, but then he was forced to live on the run.

The battles we win at the expense of honesty or at the expense of others have a way of staying with us. Years after the fight for firstborn, Jacob seemed to still be living in fear of that victorious scheme and the brother he defeated with lies. When word came that Esau (and the four hundred men with him) were quickly approaching, Jacob suddenly stood at an impasse with no where else to run. Genesis 32 reports that in the silence of the night before Jacob would face the brother he cheated, he found himself in a battle once more: “So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.”(1)

Along the road to surrendering to God, for some of us a battle is unavoidable. In fact, there may be some truth in the notion that surrender is a fight that begins again every day as if nothing had yet been done. For Jacob, the battle over his life and will took place in that moment when he found himself completely alone. With no one else to come to his aid, no possessions to bribe or barter with, stripped of all his usual tools of combat, Jacob wrestled with his attacker and only to find he was wrestling with God—and losing.

Physically broken, the socket of his hip now dislocated, Jacob nonetheless continued in a battle with words: “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” he told his assailant. Yet this time it was Jacob who was outwitted. “What is your name?” asked the one he wrestled with, a question hastening back to the very lie that sealed Jacob’s deceptive victories of the past. This time, he answered correctly, and though limping, Jacob walked away blessed.

In the presence of the one who can move the mountains of shortfall and estrangement, we have reason to surrender as often as it is necessary. For we surrender to a fortress far mightier than our best days of battle. In the words of a fellow wrestler:

Did we in our own strength confide,

our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side,

the Man of God’s own choosing:

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His Name,

from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

However often God must win, it is our most difficult but always most triumphant loss. For in this great surrendering we find, as Frederick Buechner says, “the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.”(2)

Carrying the scars of a fresh wound, the humbled Jacob limped toward the brother he betrayed, on his way to becoming the father of a great nation. We, too, can be humbled by the God who refuses to leave despite the words we shout in protest and despite our constant refusal to surrender. We can be awed by the one who says, “Follow me!” and expects us to trust that he will neither leave us nor forsake us. And we can marvel at the kindness of a God who, carrying in his own body the scars of defeat, invites us to the very nearness that is our victory.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Genesis 32:24.

(2) Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat (New York: Harper Collins, 1985), 18.

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In Daniel Goleman’s excellent book Emotional Intelligence he writes about the last moments of Gary and Mary Jean Chauncey battling the swirling waters of the river into which the Amtrak train they were on had plummeted. With every bit of energy they had, both fought desperately to save the life of their young daughter Andrea, who had cerebral palsy and was bound to a wheelchair. Somehow they managed to push her out into the arms of rescuers, but sadly, they themselves drowned.

Some would like to explain such heroism as evolution’s imprint, that we humans behave this way by virtue of evolutionary design for the survival of our progeny. One is hard-pressed not to ask, “Why did the healthier preserve the weaker and not themselves?” But even the author was unable to explain it all in mere Darwinistic terms. He added that “only love” could explain such an act.

In another story, you may recall the chess victory of the computer “Deep Blue” over the world champion Gary Kasparov, which caused many to compare the similarities of machines and humans. Yale professor David Gelertner disagreed. He explained:

“The idea that Deep Blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing, and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win at chess, but not because it wants to. It isn’t happy when it wins or sad when it loses. What are its [post]-match plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town?”

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In spite of the proverbial certainty of death and taxes, the human psyche has always dreamed of discovering loopholes in whatever mechanisms fix the limits. Yet though it might be possible to cheat on one’s taxes, “cheating death” remains a phrase of wishful-thinking applied to incidences of short-lived victories against our own mortality. Eventually, death honors its ignominious appointment with all of us, calling the bluff of the temptation to believe that we are the masters of our own destiny. But despite the universal, empirical verification of its indiscriminate efficiency, we continue to be constantly surprised whenever death strikes. Only a painfully troubled life can be so thoroughly desensitized against its ugliness as to not experience the throbbing agony of the void it creates within us whenever the earthly journey of a loved one comes to an end.

Such a peculiar reaction to an otherwise commonplace occurrence points strongly to the fact that this world is not our home. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 explains, God has put eternity in our hearts, and therefore the mysterious notion that we are not meant to die is no mere pipe dream: it sounds a clarion call to the eternal destiny of our souls. If the biblical record is accurate, there is no shame or arrogance in pitching our hopes for the future as high as our imaginations will allow. Actually, the danger is that our expectations may be too low, for “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Far from being the accidental byproducts of a mindless collocation of atoms, we are indestructible beings whose spiritual radars, amidst much static noise, are attuned to our hearts’ true home.

Trouble begins, however, when we try to squeeze that eternal existence into our earthly lives in a manner that altogether denies our finite natures. We do so whenever we desensitize ourselves against the finality of death through repeated exposure to stage-managed destruction of human life through the media. Or we zealously seek ultimate fulfillment in such traitorous idols as pleasure, material wealth, professional success, power, and other means, without taking into account the fleeting nature of human existence. Or we broach the subject of death only when we have to, and even then we feel the need to couch it in palatable euphemisms. With some of our leading intellectuals assuring us that we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and we therefore have no need for God, the only thing missing from our lives seems to be the tune of “Forever Young” playing in the cosmic background. A visitor from outer space would probably conclude that only the very unlucky ones die, while the rest of us are guaranteed endless thrill-rides through space aboard this green planet.

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The average cell phone user would likely now claim that life without one would be more than inconvenient. Upon its invention, in more ways than one, we became untethered. There are entire generations that cannot remember getting tangled up in phone cords while trying to make dinner or reach for the passing toddler, while finishing that conversation with the loquacious relative. The thought of dashing home from work in order to make that important phone call now seems ridiculous. We make it on the way, sitting in traffic, driving to the next appointment, making a stop at the grocery store, or all three. For those who remember that phones used to have cords, it is with great appreciation that we are no longer operating with a five-foot radius. Yet, this is not to say that we don’t feel a tethering of a different sort. Owning a cell phone can foster the attitude that its owner is always available, always working, always obtainable. While there is no cord to which we are confined, the phone itself is the tether.

It is worth considering that these kinds of shifting dilemmas are not all that uncommon. Just as the pendulum swings in one direction offering some kind of correction, so we often find that the other side introduces a new set of problems or the same problem in a new form. Major and minor movements of history possess a similar, corrective rhythm, swinging from one extreme to another and finding trouble with both. The pendulum swings from one direction, often to an opposite error, or at best, to a new set of challenges.

Within and without the walls of religious institutions, people of faith, too, are continually responding to what we perceive needs correction. When the need to get away from dead, religious worship initiated certain shifts, it was an observation wisely discerned. But what this meant for many was unfortunately a shifting away from history, shared liturgies, and our own past—in many cases contributing to a different set of problems. While breaking away from the “religiosity” of religious history, many now find themselves tethered in a sense to all things contemporary and individual, unable to draw on the riches of the very history from which we have isolated ourselves. While the intent may have been good, and in the case of the church, the shifts did separate us from certain problems within church history, it also seems to have separated us from all of history. As a result, many Christians now seem more divorced from history than ever, having swung so far in one direction that we can no longer see from whence we have come. Coupled with our culture’s general devaluing of anything that is “outdated,” the risk of seeing the church’s identity more in terms of today’s form than its enduring essence seems both high and hazardous.

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As a Christian writer and speaker, I am often asked what the most frequent questions are regarding the Christian faith. Of course, I am frequently asked questions of an intellectual or historic nature: Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist? Is his resurrection from the dead a historical event? How is one to understand the Bible as the Word of God? For some, the questions never go beyond intellectual curiosity or pursuit. For others, these questions need to be answered for constructing a sound apologetic.

Probe a bit deeper, however, and it isn’t difficult to discover that many questions come from the deepest places of the heart. They come because of personal experience with suffering of one form or another. Is there a God? If so, does that God care about me, know me? If so, why does God seemingly allow so much suffering? When the fervent prayers of righteous men and women do not prevent the cancer from spreading, or the child from dying, or the plane from crashing, or the marriage from failing, these more existential questions come like water bursting through the dam.

The kinds of questions I receive are not unique to my contemporary context. They have been asked for millennia. The technical term for the theist’s response to the issue of suffering is called theodicy. Theodicy is the word given in the seventeenth century by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the great intellectual thinkers of the Enlightenment period.(1) Theodicy attempts to explain how and why there can be suffering in the world if God is all-powerful and loving. In trying to solve this problem, some thinkers have denied the omnipotence of God; God is all-loving, but not able to do anything about suffering. Others dispense of the notion that God is all-loving, at least in any conventional understanding. But neither of these alternatives provides a satisfactory answer.

Intellectual wrangling over this problem, aside, the experience of suffering in light of both the goodness and power of God has caused many to doubt God, and others to walk away from faith altogether. If God does not prevent suffering, and if God does not care about the sufferer, then for some, the only alternative appears to be that God cannot exist in any meaningful way.

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Psychologists use the term “cognitive dissonance” to describe the bothered, sometimes pained, state of mind that occurs when new evidence conflicts with a current belief or outlook. When such dissonance occurs, resolution is arrived at by discarding the new evidence, discarding the belief itself, or ideally, evaluating what is known to be true and integrating the new information.

If we closely examine the lives of certain biblical characters such dissonance is often and clearly evident. Abraham was devastated by the God he loved who asked him to trust, even as he led his young son to be sacrificed. Saul spent three days in blindness and without food trying to comprehend the presence of the Christ he once persecuted. Mary wept at the empty tomb, pleading with the gardener to show her the body of her friend and teacher. The instances where God’s plans conflicted with the understanding of God’s people are scattered liberally throughout Scripture.

Even so, it is perhaps safe to say that Job suffered from the most significant case of cognitive dissonance known among humanity. Job’s understanding of a gracious and just God who rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous was shattered by new evidence. Grieving the loss of the God he loved, yet unable to discard the relationship, the question of divine justice tortured his mind. “As water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil,” he cried, “so you destroy man’s hope.”(1) And yet, against the counsel of his wife, Job was unwilling to discard his belief and allow his hope to be washed away.

Job is the hopeful symbol of a steadfast mind amidst the ashes of our own questions. Why am I so troubled and afflicted? Why would a good God permit suffering? Why does God stand far off in times of trouble? Why is God so absent? The dung heap of life’s most plaguing questions is resistant to decomposition.

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I was on hold the other day trying to schedule an appointment for a haircut. As I waited for the receptionist, I half-listened to the obligatory recordings. The announcer asked me to consider scheduling a make-over with my upcoming appointment and to make sure I leave with the products that will keep up my new look. (Apparently, when you have a captive audience of customers “muzak” is hardly strategic.) But then I was caught off guard by a question: “What do the local communities of Chad, Africa, mean to you?” The answer he offered was as immediate as my inability to think of one: “Chad is a leading producer of organic acacia gum, the vital ingredient in a new line of products exclusively produced for and available at our salon.”

In a culture dominated by consumption, the commodification of everything around us is more and more of an unconscious worldview. Thus, when we think of Chad, we can think of our favorite shampoo and its connection with our hair salon. The land where it came from, the conditions of its production, and the community or laborers who produce it are realities wholly disassociated with the commodity itself. Like soap and luggage, the nation of Chad can become just one of the many commodities within our consumer mindset.

As I put down the phone, I couldn’t help but wonder about Amos’s description of those who are “at ease in Zion.” How at ease do you have to be to begin to see the world in commodities?

In fact, at the time of Amos’s words, Israel itself was at one of its most opulent junctures. They had expanded their territory in more than one direction. Their winter palaces were adorned with ivory and their feasts were lacking nothing. They could be heard singing songs to the sound of the harp and seen anointing themselves with the finest of oils. It was in such affluence that the shepherd Amos proclaimed indomitably: “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria.”(1)

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Winston Churchill was responsible for some of the most striking and memorable speeches ever delivered. The strong rhetoric he often deployed during the Second World War was of course partly out of necessity, as the country desperately needed inspiration, at a time when the conflict was very much in the balance. One of the most famous messages he ever gave was in 1940, as he sought to prepare the British citizens for the looming Battle of Britain. During it, he stressed that the very future of Christian civilization was at stake and that the country needed to be ready to face the ‘fury and might’ of an enemy that wanted to sink the world into the ‘abyss of a new dark age.’ Whether or not they would succeed was uncertain, but he reiterated that if they succeeded it would be judged by history as ‘their finest hour.’

The power of the message lay not only in the evocative and inspirational tone, but in the strong moral language that connected the listener to a higher cause. In other words, it specifically challenged people on a personal level, like the famous war-time ‘your country needs you’ posters.

What is interesting from a Christian perspective is that the speech is doing precisely what the gospel message is doing, albeit in a different way. The power doesn’t come from inspirational or moral language, but it comes from connecting us to the higher cause: God himself.

Yet, if we are brutally honest, many of us feel a sense of inadequacy, when it comes to living up to this higher calling. We have personal failings that continually let us (and others) down, our lives don’t seem to be as successful as those around us, we feel ashamed by things in our past, and we harbor guilt for not doing more to help others. Such insecurities are only natural in a world that puts so much emphasis on what we achieve, but the gospel message is radically different because it applies to everyone equally, irrespective of who we are or what we have done. In fact, Christ’s unconditional love for us was so great that he even took the punishment we deserved for our wrong doing, so that we could be in a relationship with him. It’s very easy to forget just how profound this is, but he is offering us a new life.(1) Furthermore, Jesus doesn’t just leave us to fend for ourselves unaided, but he offers us assistance, through his spirit, so that we can be changed.(2) This doesn’t necessarily mean that we will all have a sudden transformation in our lives—although this certainly does happen—or that we will never do wrong again and things will be easy thereafter, but it makes all the difference to have God walking beside us through thick and thin, as well as to know that we can be secure in our identity in him.

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