Most of us, if we’re honest, live by the clock. The alarm sounds and we are off, watching the minutes slip by. Time-sensitive deadlines drive our days. We have appointments and meetings, we eat at a certain time, and the day ends by a certain time. Bound to our timepieces, it often seems our every moment is synchronized and controlled.
In contrast to the “objective” measures of time marking seconds, minutes, and hours, there is also a “subjective” experience of time being “fast or slow.” Those of us who are growing older describe our experience of time as passing by more and more quickly. We feel our vacation time as ephemeral, while our work week plods slowly by—and yet both are marked by the same objective measurements of time. How is it that our subjective experience of time is so different from what our watches and clocks objectively mark out for us, second by second, hour by hour?
This question of our subjective experience of time is one that the ancient philosophers and early Christian leaders pondered. Their philosophical and theological musings bequeathed to us many perplexities regarding the human experience of time. Saint Augustine, for example, wrestled with the fleeting character of our human temporal experience. No sooner do we apprehend the present than it has receded into the past. He wrote, “We cannot rightly say what time is, except by reason of its impending state of not-being.”(1)
Regardless of our perceptual and philosophical difficulties with understanding the nature of time, what seems most crucial for our lives is the significance of events that happen in time, moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day. Seeking to reclaim this emphasis, theologians have tried to understand the nature of time by what takes place in time—a narrative of unfolding events.(2) These theological discussions involve God’s engagement with time. Is God a wholly atemporal being, outside of time and history? Or is God genuinely engaged with time and revealed through an unfolding story of historical disclosure?
The biblical writers give witness to a God who progressively unfolds saving acts within history. The divine plan of salvation that Christians believe culminates in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ is called salvation history. God did not, for example, reveal every aspect of salvation to Abraham or to Moses. Instead, the biblical writers give witness to the God who works within and through the temporal events of history to reveal the plan of redemption. We see this unfolding in God’s commissioning of Moses prior to the Exodus: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai) but by my name ‘the Lord (Yahweh)’ I did not make myself known.”(2) Within the long ministry of the prophets, a God is revealed who gradually discloses what will take place. Isaiah presents the God who “proclaims to you new things from this time; even hidden things which you have not known. They are created now, and not long ago: and before today you have not heard them” (Isaiah 48:6-7).
For Christians, God’s decisive revelatory action in time is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While there are many glimpses, sign-markers, and hints pointing towards a messianic redeemer in the Old Testament, ultimately God chose to enter a particular time as a human being to live life among the time-bound.
The significance of those time-bound events continues into our time, and indeed into eternity. And through the unfolding of time, humans can grow in their understanding of who God is and what God has done through Jesus, the Messiah. Indeed, as Jesus spoke with his disciples, he suggests that there would be more to learn and more to reveal through the work of the Holy Spirit: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears he will speak; and he will disclose to you what is to come” (italics mine; John 16:12-13).
The witness of Scripture suggests that the events of our lives reveal this ongoing work of the Spirit. Sometimes, we apprehend the significance of those events in the present time. Other times, it is only through the lens of hindsight as events recede into times past that we understand God’s action. While time might move slowly for some or quickly for others, while minutes and seconds and hours are filled with appointments, meetings, and all the events that make up our time-bound existence, we would do well to look around to see how the Spirit of God is working through what might appear to be ordinary events in the march of time. Indeed, those who follow Jesus ought never to forget that God entered time to enact the new creation in Christ’s resurrection. As we grow in our understanding of that timeless act, the events of our temporal lives act as sign-markers for eternity. And while we often see the significance of our time-bound events “through a mirror darkly,” the day will come when “all things are subjected to Him…that God may be all in all.”(4)
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) Augustine, Confessions, XI, 14.
(2) Colin Gunton, cited in John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 120.
(3) Exodus 6:2-3, Italics mine.
(4) 1 Corinthians 15:28.
Category Archives: Ravi Zacharias
Charles Stanley – God Is in Control
1 Corinthians 13:12
It is 100 percent true that God is good and that He’s in control. These facts, however, do not prevent bad things from happening. Though it’s within the Lord’s power to give everyone a perfect existence, that wouldn’t be in our best interest. Trials and suffering often drive people to the Father. And for those of us who are already His followers, God uses harsh circumstances to mature our faith and conform us to the image of His Son. To be made perfect and pleasing to our Father is indeed beneficial.
In His omniscience and wisdom, God will allow disaster and evil to touch our lives so we can grow from the experience. Growth, whether in compassion, trust, or knowledge, is good. If we could peek behind the scenes of our life, we’d see the Lord sovereignly working toward His ultimate purpose for us.
Romans 8:28 affirms this: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” On occasion, we see immediate positive results from trials. But other times, we must wait months or years (or until we reach heaven) to fully understand what God was doing in those difficult circumstances.
Suffering and evil are inevitable parts of a fallen world. But we have assurance that God is in control of the universe, including the tiny corner we occupy. When He permits bad things to happen, we can be sure that He will continue to provide comfort and guidance as He shapes us into the people He wants us to be.
Bible in One Year: Jeremiah 28-30
Ravi Zachrious -The Business of Reputation
While many industries confess to struggling during times of economic downturn, the identity management industry, a trade emerging from the realities of the Internet Age, is one that seems to gain business steadily regardless. As one company notes in its mission statement, they began with the realization that “the line dividing people’s ‘online’ lives from their ‘offline’ personal and professional lives was eroding, and quickly.”(1) While the notion of anonymity or the felt safety of a social network lures users into online disinhibition, reputations are forged in a very public domain. And, as many have discovered, this can come back to haunt them—long after posted pictures are distant memories. In a survey taken in 2006, one in ten hiring managers admitted rejecting candidates because of things they discovered about them on the Internet. With the increasing popularity of social networks, personal video sites, and blogs, today that ratio is now one in two. Hence the need for identity managers—who scour the Internet with an individual’s reputation in mind and scrub websites of image-damaging material—grows almost as quickly as a high-school student’s Facebook page.
With the boom of the reputation business in mind, I wonder how identity managers might have attempted to deal with the social repute of Jesus. Among officials, politicians, and soldiers, his reputation as a political nightmare and agitator of the people preceded him. Among the religious leaders, his reputation was securely forged by the scandal and outrage of his messianic claims. Beyond these reputations, the most common accusations of his personal depravity had to do with the company he kept, the Sabbath he broke, the food and drink he enjoyed. In two different gospels, Jesus remarks on his reputation as a glutton. “[T]he Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’”(2) In fact, if you were to remove the accounts of his meals or conversations with members of society’s worst, or his parables that incorporated these untouchables, there would be very little left of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. According to etiquette books and accepted social norms, both from the first century and the twenty-first, the reputation of Jesus leaves much to be desired.
Ironically, the reputation of those Jesus left behind does not resemble his reputation much at all. Writing in 1949 with both humor and lament, Dorothy Sayers describes the differences: “For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian churches have labored, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the communion table, founded total abstinence societies in the name of him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatergoing….[F]eeling that the original commandment ‘thou shalt not work’ was rather half hearted, [they] have added to it a new commandment, ‘thou shalt not play.”(3) Her observations have a ring of both comedy and tragedy. The impression Christians often give the world is that Christianity comes with an oddly restricted understanding of words such as “virtue,” “morality,” “faithfulness,” and “goodness.” Curiously, this reputation is far more similar to the law-abiding religion of which Jesus had nothing nice to say. “Woe to you, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 23:23).
When the apostle Paul described the kind of fruit that will flourish in the life of one who follows Jesus, he was not giving the church a checklist or a rigid code like the religious law from which he himself was freed.(4) He was describing the kinds of reputations that emerge precisely when following this friend of tax-collectors and sinners, the drunkard, the Sabbath-breaker: the vicariously human Son of God. This is no mere niceness, an unfeeling, unthinking social obligation to keep the status quo. Jesus loved the broken, discarded people around him to a social fault. He was patient and kind, joyful and peaceful in ways that made the world completely uncomfortable. He was also radical and intense and unsettling in ways that made the religious leaders and others in power completely uncomfortable. His disruptive qualities of goodness and faithfulness were not badges that made it seem permissible to exclude others for their lack of virtue. His unfathomable love for God and self-control did not lead him to condemn the world around him or to isolate himself in disgust of their immorality; rather, it moved him to walk to his death for the sake of all.
There are no doubt pockets of the world where the reputation of the church lines up with that of its founder and their presence offers the world a disruptive, countercultural gift. The prophets and identity managers of the church today pray for more of this. Until then, in a world deciphering questions of reputation like “What does it mean to be socially reputable?” or “What is the best way to distinguish oneself?” perhaps we might ask instead, “Who was this human Christ?”
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) From the website ReputationDefender.com/company accessed Jan 15, 2009.
(2) Luke 7:34, Matthew 11:19.
(3) Dorothy Sayers, “Christian morality” in The Whimsical Christian (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 151-152.
(4) “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).
Our Daily Bread — Baking with Jess
Read: John 6:22-34
Bible in a Year: Psalms 97-99; Romans 16
Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life. —John 6:27
One morning as Lilia prepared for work, her 4-year-old daughter Jess set to work too. The family had purchased a conveyor toaster, and the concept of cycling bread through the small countertop oven fascinated Jess. Minutes later, Lilia discovered a loaf and a half of toast piled on the counter. “I’m a very good baker!” Jess declared.
It’s no miracle that an inquisitive girl could turn bread into toast. But when Jesus transformed a boy’s five loaves and two fish into a meal for thousands, the crowd on the hillside recognized the miraculous nature of the event and wanted to make Him king (see John 6:1-15).
Jesus’ kingdom, of course, is “not of this world” (John 18:36), and so He slipped away. When the crowd found Him the next day, Christ identified a flaw in their motives: “You seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled” (6:26). They mistakenly thought “King” Jesus would give them full stomachs and national freedom. But Jesus counseled them, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (v. 27).
An earthbound view will cause us to treat Jesus as a means to an end. He is, in fact, our Bread of Life. —Tim Gustafson
Lord, our cares and worries can keep us from a genuine relationship with You. May we see You as our very food and not only as our divine problem-solver.
Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. Jesus
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Rabbit, the Relay, and the Refreshment
BY RAVI ZACHARIAS
August 2015 marks 31 years for RZIM. We are in a long distance run for the gospel. And so I look back for a fleeting moment. I am a great lover of track and field. In fact, races of different sorts have a powerful appeal to me. Watching runners, cyclists, swimmers and other competitive sports is quite inspiring. I often think of that arena as I look at our team in RZIM. This is truly a unique team and all forms of athletics teach us how we are to run the race in our time. How do we keep pace and finish well? We have the veterans; we have those in the middle, and we have the young starters. Each brings a strength; each contributes so well.
As an example, I look at the skill Os Guinness brings to this team. When I was in my thirties, his writings had a huge influence on me with his keen understanding of where a thoroughly secularized and pluralized culture was taking us, how we were to respond to the popularization of New Age thinking, and how we were to deal with the growing commercialization of the gospel and the privatization of faith. All his works were seminal in their time. Working alongside him now is an inspiration. I think of John Lennox, brilliant in his academic credentials but even more in his scriptural expositions. The younger ones: McNeil with the RZIM Academy; Ramsden, Orr-Ewing, Qureshi, Hofreiter, Vitale, Njoroge, McAllister, Carattini, Dirckx; the work that Naomi has done with Wellspring that has impacted so many lives … the list goes on and on, about 45 front liners spread across a dozen countries. I wish I could mention all their names here but you can go on our website and meet them all. Why am I thinking of this in terms of athletic prowess?
I have three analogies. The first is that of the rabbit. No, I’m not thinking of the race against the tortoise. I’m thinking of the role of the pace-setter (often called “the rabbit”) in the marathon. The pace-setter takes off with significant speed, and for us amateurs on the track, I don’t think we could run the quarter mile at that pace—leave alone the 26 miles plus. The rabbit’s role is to set the pace for the one who will eventually finish first. It is really a team effort where one can’t do it all the way but can separate the best from the rest at that speed. After setting the pace, the rabbit pulls over and lets the one who can capitalize on the lead forge ahead. Our team has those rabbits. We take the head winds; we set the pace. But someone else will finish the course for us all.
The second analogy is the relay. In the relay, each plays a part and knows when to hand the baton to the next in line so that fresher legs can take over. This is not just a time-laden transfer. This has to do with expertise. Who does what’s best? Apologetics is a diverse specialty. One cannot specialize in all of the disciplines. Here coordination and strategy come into play. We each must run well if the team is to win.
But third comes the refreshment part of it. This is easy to forget. I remember seeing it happen years ago in the grueling long distance bicycle races. The cyclists had a light bag draped over their shoulders carrying bottles of water to keep hydrated along the race. But then there came a moment. At a certain marker, each cyclist arched back, unstrapped the bag, and threw it away. They would then go full throttle to give it all they had, without any encumbrance. What was once a refreshment suddenly became an impediment close to the finishing line. Quite an amazing lesson!
I reflect on these great expressions. The rabbit: Somebody has to take the full brunt of the challenges and yet keep pace. The relay: Someone else has to be ready to pick up the pace and speed on. The refreshment: Recognizing when it is time to relinquish what was once necessary but has become an encumbrance, such as the weight of administration and all that the term entails. Sarah Davis is doing such a fantastic job of giving oversight to the ministry, sparing me all those administrative burdens that once weighed me down. For all of us there is a time to find the lightening of the load so that we might stay focused on the primary call.
The Scriptures teach us all these lessons. RZIM is a unique team with enormously gifted individuals. But we are a team and we run with purpose. There is a hidden inspiration … or not so hidden, really: those that line the path, cheering us on, giving us support, helping us run and finish well toward the ultimate prize of the divine accolade, “Well done!”
There is one more group: our families. Theirs is the biggest sacrifice and I have no doubt that heaven will accord them a special blessing for their role.
We have just completed 31 years and so I pay tribute to this team. A few months ago we bid farewell to our first India National Director who passed away, Prakash Yesudian. A few days ago we bid farewell to our longest serving Chairman, Ron Eastman. They served with sacrifice and inspiration. Ron was also one of the vice presidents of the Marriott corporation, a man of honor. We miss them. It’s been an amazing run around the world. We are not done yet, and we need to run with greater discipline and greater commitment. The baton passes. The race goes on. We face unprecedented opportunities all over the world. Actually in terms of speaking, I am busier now than I have ever been. We press towards the mark while it is day. As long as God gives me strength, I plan to keep running.
Thank you for making this race inspiring and enabling us to keep focused. I think of a beautiful painting I saw years ago in a church, of a little child looking at the hands of Jesus. I asked the pastor what the Spanish words written under the painting meant. He said that the little girl is asking Jesus, “What happened to your hands?” I stared at the picture for several moments and pondered our run. When each of us is finished his or her run, can a child look at our worn feet and ask, “What happened? Why the fatigue, why the callouses?” How wonderful if we could point to those hands of our Lord and say, “It was because of those hands.” Our feet ran for his hands.
This is a beautiful team with whom God has given me the privilege of learning and working. Another year has gone by since we began. The race continues. God is with us.
Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Shine Like the Sun
“And those who are wise – the people of God – shall shine as brightly as the sun’s brilliance, and those who turn many to righteousness will glitter like stars forever” (Daniel 12:3).
Did it ever occur to you that as a child of God you are to radiate in your countenance the beauty and glory of God? Have you ever considered the inconsistency of having a glum expression while professing that the Son of God, the light of the world, dwells within you?
Proverbs 15:13 reminds us that a happy face means a glad heart; a sad face means a breaking heart.
When missionary Adoniram Judson was home on furlough many years ago, he passed through the city of Stonington, Connecticut. A young boy, playing about the wharves at the time of Judson’s arrival, was struck by the missionary’s appearance. He had never before seen such a light on a man’s face.
Curious, he ran up the street to a ministers’s home to ask if he knew who the stranger was. Following the boy back, the minister became so engaged in conversation with Judson that he forgot all about the lad standing nearby.
Many years later that boy – unable to get away from the influence of what he had seen on the man’s face – became the famous preacher, Henry Clay Trumbull. One chapter in his book of memoirs is entitled, “What a Boy Saw in the Face of Adoniram Judson.”
A shining face – radiant with the love and joy of Jesus Christ – had changed a life. Just as flowers thrive when they bend toward the light of the sun, so shining, radiant faces are the result of those who concentrate their gaze upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
May we never underestimate the power of a glowing face that stems from time spent with God. Even as Moses’ countenance shone, may your face and mine reveal time spent alone with God and in His Word.
Bible Reading: Matthew 5:13-16
TODAY’S ACTION POINT: I will spend sufficient time with the Lord each day to insure a radiant countenance for the glory of God and as a witness to those with whom I have contact each day.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – You Shall Eat
A powerful story emerged from the bombing raids of World War II where thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. After experiencing the fright of abandonment, many of these children were rescued and sent to refugee camps where they received food and shelter. Yet even in the presence of good care, they had experienced so much loss that many of them could not sleep at night. They were terrified they would awake to find themselves once again homeless and hungry. Nothing the adults did seemed to reassure them, until someone thought to send a child to bed with a loaf of bread. Holding onto bread, the children were able to sleep. If they woke up frightened in the night, the bread seemed to remind them, “I ate today, and I will eat again tomorrow.”(1)
I love this story and the image it sets boldly in my mind. But I first heard it as a young woman in the throes of an eating disorder, and I just could not relate. For a growing number of lives around the world, the thought of bread is far from a source of comfort. Eating disorders are a rapidly escalating epidemic no longer seen primarily as an American phenomenon as once thought. According to one psychologist, “[R]eports have emerged of an increased incidence of eating disorders in the Middle East, Africa, India, and various countries in southern Asia, including Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and South Korea.”(2) For many individuals, the thought in the night that they will face food again in the morning is terrifying.
There was a time long after recovery in a clinical sense of the word when fear of food was still what centered me. I realized this in my aggrieved reaction to a seminary professor’s pronouncement. “Heaven is a feast,” he said in class, “and God is the one preparing it.” Later he added a similarly troubling thought for me, “The image of the banquet is central to our communing with God.” His words were devastating, largely because I suspected he was right. The table is intricately connected with the faith Christians profess in remembrance of the one they follow. The ministry of Christ and the call of God is resounding and specific: “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find” (Matthew 22:9). I had for so long wanted to understand these ideas figuratively: the kingdom as a vast table at which Christ wants us to sit for the sake of words and talk, nothing more than decorative bowls of plastic fruit in front of us. No need for real food.
However we approach the rich imagery of biblical language, these images of banquet, feast, and table are clearly intended to bring something powerful to mind and body, and the great lengths I went to put these images away should have been something of an indicator for me. The psalmist writes, “The poor will eat and be satisfied… All the rich of the earth will feast and worship!”(3) But in my malnourished imagination of God’s house and kingdom, food was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. To commune over food with people, much less at the table of God, was something that expended everything within me. The table was a symbol of stress and discipline, a daily battle from which I wanted to be released—not invited. Yet how often God invites us to face the one thing we cannot, the very thing that brings us to surrender and live. God prepares a table in the presence of our enemies, and at times the enemy is us.
Though I had convinced myself that food would one day be a problem fully behind me—even if this meant waiting for eternity—God seemed to be shouting an invitation to the table today. My presence was requested at the banquet; I was invited to the feast. It was an invitation that both startled and confused me: “If you listen willing, the good of the land you shall eat” (Isaiah 1:19). It drove away the hope to which I cleaved on bad days and woke up with each morning: God doesn’t care about food; God doesn’t care about my battle with it. But one day it will be no more. Yet this lie Christ graciously purged from my altar. Slowly, cautiously, my eyes were opened to life and land, to bodies and to bread, to healing and to his assurance of real food from a generous creator.
On the night Jesus was betrayed unto death, he took bread and broke it and gave it to those he loved. Holding onto him, like children with bread, we are given peace in uncertainty, mercy in brokenness, something solid when all is lost. In his unsparing hospitality, we are all invited to the table: Come, take and eat.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Dennis Linn, Sleeping with Bread (New York: Paulist, 1995), 1.
(2) Richard Gordon, Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 80.
(3) Psalm 22:26, 29.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – From Disparate Threads
Some years ago, I was visiting a place known for making the best wedding saris in the world. They were the producers of saris rich in gold and silver threads, resplendent with an array of colors. With such intricacy of product, I expected to see some elaborate system of machines that would boggle the mind in production. But this image could not have been farther from the real scene.
Each sari was made individually by a father and son team. The father sat above the son on a platform, surrounded by several spools of thread that he would gather into his fingers. The son had only one task. At a nod from his father, he would move the shuttle from one side to the other and back again. This would then be repeated for hundreds of hours, until a magnificent pattern began to emerge.
The son certainly had the easier task. He was only to move at the father’s nod. But making use of these efforts, the father was working to an intricate end. All along, he had the design in his mind and was bringing the right threads together.
The more I reflect on my own life and study the lives of others, I am fascinated to see the design God has for each one of us individually, if we would only respond. All through our days, little reminders show the threads that God has woven into our lives.
Allow me to share a story from my own experience. As one searching for meaning in the throes of a turbulent adolescence, I found myself on a hospital bed from an attempted suicide. It was there that I was read the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel. My attention was fully captured by the part where Jesus says to his disciples: “Because I live, you shall live also” (John 14:19). I turned my life over to Christ that day, committing my pains, struggles, and pursuits to his able hands.
Almost thirty years to the day after this decision, my wife and I were visiting India and decided to visit my grandmother’s grave. With the help of a gardener we walked through the accumulated weeds and rubble until we found the stone marking her grave. With his bucket of water and a small brush, the gardener cleared off the years of caked-on dirt. To our utter surprise, under her name, a verse gradually appeared. My wife clasped my hand and said, “Look at the verse!” It read: “Because I live, you shall live also.”
A purposeful design emerges when the Father weaves a pattern from what to us may often seem disparate threads. Even today, if you will stop and attend to it, you will see that God is seeking to weave a beautiful tapestry in your life.
Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Friends of the Cause
A popular group on Facebook hosted a collection of people very much opposed to the destruction of an historic fountain in downtown Copenhagen. The name of the group could be translated: “No to the Demolition of the Stork Fountain.” Its members’ outrage filled its Facebook wall. The creator of the group urgently spoke of the need for action, sounding the call to join the cause and get involved. Almost overnight, participation in the cause went viral, members joining and getting the word out to their friends. Click here, forward there, speak out.
Ironically (and more ironic than activism that only requires joining a Facebook group), the cause was completely fictitious. The creator of the page, Anders Colding-Jørgensen, is a professor of Internet psychology who was conducting a social experiment on activism and online behavior. Sadly, had these outraged activists searched just a bit more for information, they would have read on the page itself that it was an experiment and that, in fact, Anders knew of no plans to destroy the fountain. Yet by the end of the experiment, more than 27,000 people had joined the group with a click of outrage and a desire to join the cause.(1)
Anders’ experiment is one example of what cultural commentators call “slacktivism,” online activism that essentially leads to nothing on the part of the participant and no real effect on the cause itself. Slacktivism offers the feeling of doing good without actually having done anything at all. Though not all online causes can be classified as such, they are appealing because they are so easy to join—though we often seem unconcerned with whether they actually accomplish something. It’s simply one more click, one more forwarded email, one more status update; it won’t require writing long letters, standing in lines, or marching the streets. No one will ask you to do anything, and you can feel good about your brief participation. Of course, we may very well be impassioned slacktivists (the social media vitriol over the demolition of the Stork Fountain or the acquittal of Casey Anthony was alarming), but they are really just words. Other social media vitriol, like that after the recent killing of Cecil the Zimbabwean Lion, escalates to worrisome tirades.
It seems religion has often been accused similarly. Isn’t it all just words? Isn’t Christianity all talk, tenants, and tirades? The Theologian is an owl sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, says one critic, and he is hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for anything real. A bumper sticker berates similarly, “Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.”
Even in friendlier circles, I am sometimes left with a similar impression among Christians that believing in Jesus has more to do with saying the right things, knowing the right words, holding the proper principles. Many a church is filled with people who have the feeling of doing good without having really done anything at all. Knowing Christ can seem more a corollary to knowing the right words than the other way around. Is Christianity simply a kingdom of words?
Jesus himself said the kingdom was like a sower who went out to sow seeds—which does not sound like slacktivism! Or, as the apostle Paul writes elsewhere, “The kingdom of God is not in words.” What do they mean? And how does it answer both the skeptic who thinks religion is all talk and the Christian who reduces the kingdom to words and laws? For starters, I think it means that the kingdom isn’t calling for slacktivists, and that nothing we embrace with spirit and truth can be reduced to words or sermons or the ease of outrage. The kingdom Jesus presents is far more alive than this. Far more whole.
One of my favorite stories of Jesus is in the way he responds to Mary and Martha after their brother has died. Martha is full of pain and essentially asks Jesus where he has been. “If you would have come my brother wouldn’t have died.” Jesus gives her an answer to that question. He responds by saying, “I am the resurrection and the life and the one who believes in me will not die. Your brother will rise again.” When Mary approaches Jesus she asks the exact same question. “Jesus where were you? If you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Here are two different people asking the same question, and Jesus intuitively understands that they need different answers. With Martha he gives a rational answer. With Mary, he doesn’t say anything. He simply weeps. He knew she didn’t need words; she needed a more intuitive response. She needed to know that the human Son of God heard and shared her lament.
Jesus comes at us with far more than words to offer, more than a moral system, a set of principles, or fleeting causes. He offers a vicariously human savior, a safe place in the kingdom of God, and the overwhelming hope of new creation. He could have given Mary and Martha a lesson in theology or told them to stop crying or asking questions because he was about to perform a miracle and call their brother out of the grave. But he didn’t rush there. Instead, he heard their questions and he offered the hand of a friend within a safe and inviting kingdom that is more than words. Slacktivists of the world, this is a cause that is worth dropping everything to join.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Monica Hesse, “Facebook Activism: Lots of Clicks, but Little Sticks,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2009.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Fully Alive
The glory of God is the human person fully alive. I first read this quote by Irenaeus of Lyons while still a graduate student. In my early rendering of this evocative statement, I imagined people at play in a field of flowers, the sun shining brightly. Everyone is happy and smiling, laughing even, as they dance and play in the fields of the Lord. As I pictured it in my mind’s eye, the human person fully alive was a person alive to possibility, never-ending opportunities, and always happy. How could it be otherwise with God’s glory as the enlivening force?
One author suggests the same in his commentary on Irenaeus’ statement:
“God’s intentions towards me might be better than I’d thought. His happiness and my happiness are tied together? My coming fully alive is what He’s committed to? That’s the offer of Christianity? Wow! I mean, it would make no small difference if we knew–and I mean really knew–that down-deep-in-your-toes kind of knowing that no one and nothing can talk you out of–if we knew that our lives and God’s glory were bound together. Things would start looking up. It would feel promising…the offer is life.”(1)
Despite my romantic imagination and the author’s exuberant interpretation, I am often perplexed as to just what “fully alive” looks like for many people in our world. How would this read to women in the Congo, for example, whose lives are torn apart by tribal war and violence against their own bodies? What would this mean to an acquaintance of mine who is a young father recently diagnosed with lymphoma? What about those who are depressed? Or who live with profound disabilities?
If feeling alive is only that God is happy when we are happy, then perhaps God is quite sad. Surely God’s glory is much larger than human happiness, isn’t it? Certainly, happiness is a gift and a blessing of the human experience, and for many it is there in abundance. Yet, are those who have reason for sorrow—those who do not find themselves amidst fields of flowers or bounty, those who have to work to find goodness—are they beyond the reflection of God’s glory?
The reality is that Irenaeus’ oft-used and oft-interpreted statement had a specific, apologetic context that was not really about human happiness. Irenaeus lived during a time when gnostic sects were trying to deny the real flesh and blood reality of Jesus. In their alternative view, only the spirit was redeemed, and the body should be ignored at best, or indulged at worst, since nothing regarding the body mattered. As a result, they denied the full humanity of Jesus. He could not have died a physical death on the cross, since he was merely an enlightened spirit, or some form of lesser deity. And he was certainly not one who would enter into the created world to take on the messy nature of life.(2)
When Irenaeus describes the glory of God as the human being fully alive he is correcting this aberrant and heretical notion that Jesus was not fully human. Irenaeus countered that in fact, the glory of God so inhabited this man from Nazareth that he was fully alive to all of what it meant to be human. Jesus experienced hunger, thirst, weariness, frustration, sorrow, and despair—and he experienced the joy and beauty that came from complete dependence on God. To be fully alive, as one sees in the life of Jesus, includes all human experience—the joys as well as the sorrows.
We see that Jesus is fully alive in the Christian tradition of Holy Week. For Christians, that journey includes Good Friday and Holy Saturday just as surely as it includes Easter morning. As Jesus experienced the miraculous new life of resurrection on Easter morning, he first experienced the sorrow of rejection, betrayal, and the physical brutality of crucifixion and death. Jesus lived the depths of the human experience as one of us.
Irenaeus’ continues his thought by saying: “[T]he life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation already brings life to all living beings on the earth, how much more will the manifestation of the Father by the Word bring life to those who see God.”(3) Human beings are fully alive as they find life in this One who in his human life reveals both the eternal God and the vision of God for fully alive human beings. Certainly, our lives include events and seasons that we wish were not part of the fully alive human experience. But perhaps those who seek true life might recognize these appointments with both death and resurrection as an entryway into a deeper understanding of the human experience. And as that door is opened, we can be ushered into the deep and abiding fellowship of the Divine Community—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—not phantom spirits, not distant deities, but intimates to all that it means to be human.
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the writing and speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) John Eldridge, Waking the Dead (Nashville: Thomas-Nelson Publishers, 2003), 12.
(2) Cyril Richardson ed., Early Christian Fathers (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 345.
(3) Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, (IV, 20, 7).
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Collaborative Creativity
They gathered every Thursday around nine in the evening with pipes and pints in hand. At any given meeting there was likely to have been at least one historian, a philosopher, a physician, several poets, and a number of professors. The Inklings, as they called themselves, were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of good narrative and gathered to encourage, challenge, and better one another in their various attempts at creating it. Out of these spirited meetings, in which it is said that “praise for good work was unstinted, but censure for bad work, or even not-so-good work, was often brutally frank,” there arose the final drafts of The Lord of the Rings, Out of the Silent Planet, All Hallows’ Eve, and The Great Divorce to name a few.(1)
Contrary to the many critics who insist these writers had little influence on one another (the Inklings’ themselves said of Tolkien that it was easier to influence a “bandersnatch” than the creator of Middle Earth), Diana Pavlac Gyler avers they would not have been the same writers had they not written within the community of the Inklings. “[E]ach author’s work is embedded in the work of others,” writes Gyler, “and each author’s life is intertwined with the lives of others.”(2) Influence, after all, is far from imitation. While it is true that these authors came to their meetings with determined ideas, their reflective and challenging interactions sharpened thoughts, minds, and lives. J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams, as well as C.S. Lewis, would likely have imagined far different worlds had they not participated in the regular reading and criticism of their works in progress.
This idea of communal creativity is one I resonant with from my own experience of thinking and writing. Even my most original thoughts or imaginative creations are indelibly shaped by a lifetime of encounters with artists, theologians, family, and community. We do not interpret the world alone nor do we live without influencing one another profoundly. In this sense, we might say that creativity in all its forms—even in the simplest acts of living and acting—is inherently an interactive process. What J.R.R. Tolkien notes on the lips of Frodo can indeed be said of our own interacting stories. Peering at the large red book in which Bilbo started to tell the story and Frodo then continued, Sam looks down in wonder, “Why, you have nearly finished it, Mr. Frodo!” he exclaims.
“I have quite finished, Sam,” answers Frodo. “The last pages are for you.”(3)
When the New Testament writers began to speak of creation through the light of all they saw in Jesus Christ, they affirmed the Old Testament understanding of total dependence upon the maker of heaven earth, but they spoke also of Christ’s presence as the Word at the beginning. Likewise, the early church began to see the role and presence of the Spirit in God’s creative work. Creation, they came to understand, and all we see within it, is the work of God in community. All of creation declares the glory of God, the work of the loving interaction between Father, Son, and Spirit—the very first creative community.
As a Christian, I believe this ultimate image of creative collaboration is one that explains our longing for community and connection, our desire to create and work. We are creatures and co-creators alike. The creative collaboration of the Trinity throughout time and creation invites the notion that God has made us for community and relationship, that our stories come together as if a great book with room for more, and that the grace of a good storyteller is working to make the work inherently beautiful. As the Father has invited us to participate in his good work of creation, so Christ has called us to join him in the community of the kingdom among us, each of us works in progress by the Spirit.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) W.H. Lewis, “C.S. Lewis: A Biography” (Unpublished Manuscript, 268-269); Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
(2) Diana Pavlac Gyler, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007).
(3) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 1027.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Bird Still Sings
BY RAVI ZACHARIAS
Years ago I read a powerful essay by my favorite essayist, F.W. Boreham, called “The Candle and The Bird.” With his brilliant sweep of knowledge of God’s working in history, Boreham traces how revivals have spread from continent to continent, how when the brilliant flame of God’s moving in the hearts of people seemed to be dying out in one place there would be a fresh spark igniting a God-breathed revival elsewhere. From Germany through Zinzendorf to England through Wesley and Whitfield to Wales and Scotland, and then to the Evangelical Awakening in America, it is fascinating to see how God has done His work through times and seasons and locations. Boreham distinguishes between extinguishing a candle and chasing away a bird: when you extinguish a candle, the light goes out; when you chase away a bird, it sings its song from another bough. Hence, his title “The Candle and The Bird”—a beautiful metaphor.
In America now it is fashionable to mock the bird of evangelicalism and try to silence it. But the song is being sung on other boughs and historic movements are taking place. In China, Korea, and the Middle East, places where once the gospel’s saving message seemed to be extinguished, churches are packed with hungry hearts, the youth listening to the gospel message with rapt attention. In countries where there was once hostility, crowds fill the auditoriums. In Romania, where to believe in God was once to put one’s life at risk, ten thousand filled the auditorium in which I spoke. From senators and other political leaders there we heard of the dark days of the past and of the shining hope of the future. We prayed in chambers once inhabited by a tyrant and were told this was probably the first time a prayer had been publicly uttered. They have witnessed what Christ-less lives can birth, shattering their countries and their hopes. They can now see that the only possible hope for transforming a heart is Jesus Christ.
But mistakes were made across history and we still have not learned. When the gospel was first taken into places like India and China in the 18th and 19th centuries, it often came on the wings of western political expansionism and the so-called “gunboat diplomacy.” That incongruous combination spelt disaster for both groups. Political imperialism soon lost out, and with it went the missionary effort, seen as being in cahoots with political demagoguery. In a staggering change, now the agents of demagoguery are carrying a different message, basically, “We in America have evicted Christian values and beliefs. We have replaced them with naturalistic assumptions. Mores and the sacred are things of the past. We have silenced those voices … and so must you; if you don’t, you will forfeit all the monetary support we would otherwise give you.” Yes, that is what is happening, and rather than being an influence for good in the world, America is becoming a purveyor of ungodliness.
What those with this monetary “gun-to-the-head” attitude don’t realize is that other countries have seen through this hollowness, and what was once a respected nation is now viewed as a valueless paper machine sinking because it has lost its faith and values. They know it. They say it. They remind us of the emptiness of freedom without responsibility. We are too blind to admit that our gradual collapse has come walking in lockstep with our irreligious handmaiden, toward our disintegration. Jesus cautioned us about such scandalous blindness.
But there is good news. The very nations that evicted “gunboat” missions are now receiving the message of Jesus without the gunboat. Those giving heed to the gunboat of naturalism will accept the gunboat’s benefits but reject the naturalism it insists on because they have already been there and know why they were sinking and in need of assistance. I have had sheiks and mullahs tell me, “Please don’t stop coming; we need you here. We need Christians here.” Those were the very words to me a few years ago from the now assassinated Chief of Intelligence in Syria. He knew the healing balm of Jesus Christ was needed and as we left him, the church leader with me expressed his amazement at hearing such an admission. It just could not be made in public.
The church in China is the fastest growing church in the world. One professor in China told a Christian colleague, a friend of mine, “Stop criticizing Marxism…. It left the souls of the people empty, which is why they are listening to you now.” I can just hear a generation from now someone telling the next generation of preachers in America, “Stop criticizing naturalism. It has left the souls of people empty, which is why they are listening to you now.”
Ironically, in a powerful piece published some years ago in his very popular column in England, self-proclaimed atheist Matthew Parris said that after he had revisited Malawi where he had grown up, he was convinced against his ideological commitment to atheism that what Africa needs is not more aid but the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone changes hearts. He admitted to speaking with a schizoid struggle, yet he strongly believed that the only hope for Africa was the Evangel: the gospel of Jesus Christ. He ended his article in The Times of December 27, 2008, “Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.” That, from an atheist is profoundly powerful.
The bird is singing from different boughs … it is not silent. In a twist, down the road our rabid atheism here may one day awaken society to what it has squandered. Yes, it can happen that the bird will start singing again in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and throughout this land. You would be amazed at the letters we get expressing the disillusionment of people from within their own worldview without values and without God. One professor in California told me that when he was young, he was a radical activist for all the causes that challenged our shared meanings of the past. Now in his veteran years he deeply regrets that wrongheaded life of his youth.
The bird still sings its songs. We hear it and see it as we travel—and I would be remiss if I did not say “many thanks to all our supporters” who make it possible for our team to get to these places.
The words of Arthur Hugh Clough say it well:
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
The mockery will not have the last laugh. You see, dancing on the grave of an extinguished Christianity is farcical at best. Because the grave is empty. And the one who knows the way out of the grave sits in the heavens and laughs.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Longing Rendered
The places in literature that most often slow my mind to a reflective halt are usually intensely visual. Among them, perhaps surprisingly to some, are images from ancient scriptures that offer some of the most beautiful depictions. The resounding cry of Isaiah 64:1, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,” seems to leave a trail of the most desperate, sorrowing, hopeful faces in its wake, men and women longing in agreement. Fitting with Isaiah’s vision for a world that revolves around God as good and worthy king, his cry was a fervent prayer for the severe presence of a God he knew could come nearer.
Like the God for which he longed, the prophet’s words are intense, stirring, and intentional. Isaiah’s use of words—in fact, the entire genre of prophetic literature—cries out with poetic vision. As Abraham Heschel comments, “Prophecy is the product of a poetic imagination. Prophecy is poetry, and in poetry everything is possible, e.g. for the trees to celebrate a birthday and for God to speak to man.”(1) And that is to say, God gives us something of the divine character in the prophet’s powerful interplay of word, metaphor, and image. As messenger, the prophet yields the words of God, and the poetic nature of prophetic speech reveals a God who speaks in couplets, a God who uses simile and metaphor, rhythm and sound, alliteration, repetition, and rhetorical questions. Any reading of prophetic speech requires that one engage these poetic structures. A quick scan of Isaiah 64:1 reveals a depth of interacting words and key patterns, and a metaphor that moves us like the mountains Isaiah describes:
If only you would cleave the heavens!
(If only) you would come down,
From facing you, mountains would quake!
These few stanzas make use of repeated words and paired images to convey an intensity about human longing for the transcendence of God. The cry is not merely for God’s presence, but a presence that will tear open the heavens and cause mountains—even Mount Zion and the children of God—to tremble. Set in the opening line, the Hebrew word qarata is as illustrative in tone as it is meaning. The guttural sound and sharp stop in its pronunciation contribute to the severity of the word itself, which means to tear, to rend, to sever, or to split an object into two or more parts. “Oh that you would rend the heavens…” “If only you would cleave open the heavens and come down…”
Significantly, this Hebrew word is most often found in the Old Testament referring to the rending of garments out of grief or desperation. Ezra describes falling in prayer “with my garments and my mantle torn, and on my knees, I spread out my hands to the Lord my God” (Ezra 9:5). The same word is used of David after hearing that Absalom had killed all of his sons: “The king rose, tore his garments, and lay on the ground; and all his servants who were standing by tore their garments also” (2 Samuel 13:31). The images of grief and shredded garments would likely have come to the minds of those who first heard the cry of Isaiah to God: If only you would tear the heavens in two and see what is happening in your holy cities… If only you would sever this distance that sits between us like a heavy garment…
But this act of rending is also used in the Old Testament figuratively, usually in terms of removing someone from power or formally tearing away their authority, as when Samuel told Saul that the kingdom had been rendered from him and given to his neighbors. Here, in the context of Isaiah’s prayer, the word seems to take on both figurative and literal qualities. Oh that you would rend the heavens like a garment and come down here, tear away our perception of authority and show us something real, your own power. The cry is clearly making use of metaphor and yet it is a desperate plea for God’s presence in power, tangibly and substantially—”so that the nations might tremble at your presence,” Isaiah cries.
Even so, whether uttered metaphorically or literally, the cry for God to tear open the heavens and come down is a cry no mind conceived, nor ear perceived how thoroughly God would answer. For those who read this passage in light of Christ, fully taking in the poignant image of the heavens tearing like a garment brings to mind the tearing of the temple curtain when Jesus took his last breath. “Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. And at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split” (Matthew 27:50-51). The incarnation, the death, and resurrection of Christ was God’s bold answer to an ancient longing—the longing and the answer both intensely visual and unapologetically real, even as God’s longing seems to meet our own: “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”(3) The vicariously human Son is himself God’s response to the great metaphor of a God who rends the heavens like a garment, a God so present that he comes down to be among us, causing the earth to quake at his own breath.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper, 2001), 469.
(2) See 1 Samuel 15:28.
(3) See Matthew 23:36-38.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Implementing Easter
The dominating time-piece is nothing if not thought-provoking. British inventor John Taylor’s “Chronophage” (literally ‘time eater’ from the Greek chronos and phageo) keeps watch outside Cambridge’s Taylor Library of Corpus Christi College.(1) A foreboding metal grasshopper with an ominous chomping mouth appears to devour each minute with eerie pleasure and constancy. The toll of the hour is marked by the clanging of a chain into a tiny wooden coffin, which then slams shut—”the sound of mortality,” says Taylor.(2) The pendulum also speeds up sporadically, then slows to a near halt, only to race ahead again as if somehow calculating the notion that time sometimes flies, sometimes stands still. The invention, according to Taylor, is meant to challenge our tendency to view time itself as we might view a clock. “Clocks are boring. They just tell the time, and people treat them as boring objects,” he added. “This clock actually interacts with you”—indeed, striking viewers with the idea that time is nothing to take for granted.(3)
The Christian worldview is one that recognizes at the deepest level that something about humanity is not temporal. Easter, in fact, is the celebration that this is not just a suspicion, but a reality. Christians believe in eternal dwellings, a day when tears will be no more, and in one who is preparing a house of rooms and welcome.(4) And yet, we also very much live with the distinct experience of these promises within time. Christ is not merely the one who will be with us in all eternity, the one who will dry our eyes at time’s end. Christians believe he is also alive and among us today, welcoming a kingdom that is both present and approaching. “Remember, I am with you always,” ends one of account of the life of Jesus, “even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). For the Christian, all of time is filled with the hope of resurrection, even as it is filled with Christ himself.
Why then, I wonder, are there moments when time seems so oppressive, the hope of eternity a distant glimmer, the presence of a resurrected Christ beside the daily pendulum an inapplicable promise? If the Christian life is about moving closer and closer to the glory of the resurrected Christ, why is there not more light and less darkness, a more vibrant Church and less grumbling, greater outreach and less greed, followers who look more like Jesus and less like the world around them? The expectation in the life of a Christian is that there will be a dramatic difference, or at least steady progression, of lives transformed by Christ. But instead we often find little difference—or we find the opposite of progression, so that both inside and outside of the church people are left wondering: Where is transformation as all this time marches onward?
John Taylor’s menacing grasshopper is an apt image for such a confession. Time marches on oppressively, unapologetically, while the promise of “being transformed into [Christ’s likeness] from one degree of glory to another” seems to remain a distant mirage.(5) Christians begin to doubt. Skeptics point out the obvious fantasy of faith. *But perhaps something in Taylor’s clock also challenges this fearful view of time and transformation. Time is indeed a linear progression, marching onward in precise increments, but our experience of time is far less like this. We are at times startled by its passing, other times painfully aware of its tedious movement. We interact with time knowing that some minutes are fuller than others, but that time is always more than a linear, monotonous experience.
Similarly, when I think of transformation, I often think of dramatic change: an acorn turned into an oak tree, the apostle Paul changed from zealous tormentor to zealous Christian, Lazarus moved from death to life. And I believe there is indeed something quite like this that takes place in the life of one willing to follow resurrected Christ—a creature who actually stops being one thing in order to become something else. It should not be surprising that around the world we find Christians in the most unlikely places, administering aid, speaking hope, exhibiting this change of which the gospel speaks. For clothed in Christ’s perfect nature, the nature of a person is truly changed. Though we stand before God imperfect and discouraged, it is the Son the Father now sees. And this part of Christian transformation is as dramatic as it is complete, allowing us—and the world—to stand assured of God’s work within.
But this is not to say that God is finished working. To the one who has been united with Christ, the daily indwelling of God is a gift! Within the Christian’s experience of time, the message of the gospel is all the more transformational, the vicariously human Christ is our moral influence daily, and through the Holy Spirit we are being further transformed into his image. This kind of transformation is neither the dramatic change often expected, nor the steady linear progression for which we might hope. Like Paul himself, we can find ourselves doing the things we don’t want to do, falling back into mindsets that need to be renewed, imitating a broken world more than we imitate Christ. Transformation at these times seems far less like Lazarus rising from the grave and more like a would-be butterfly refusing to come out of its cocoon.
But even here, Christ is surely near, the eternal urging the world of souls to see the potential in this very moment: “The intermediate hope—” writes N.T. Wright, “the things that happen in the present time to implement Easter and anticipate the final day—are always surprising because, left to ourselves, we lapse into a kind of collusion with entropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present… is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”(6)
That is to say, Easter is being implemented. Whether we make our bed in the depths, whether we fall repeatedly or seem to be moving backward, God is both near and at work, the reality of the resurrection working its way into every ticking minute. In the experience of time before us is the radical promise of both the intermediate hope and transformation and the gift of looking glory full in the face. By the power of the Spirit, God takes the most wretched of creatures and changes it into the likeness of Christ, the most beautiful creature. Whether time is flying or standing still, for the worst of us, even menacing grasshopper types, this is indeed very good news.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Maev Kennedy, “Beware the time-eater: Cambridge University’s Monstrous New Clock,” The Gaurdian, September 18, 2008.
(2) Robert Barr, “Fantastical New Clock Even Tells Time,” MSNBC, September 19, 2008.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Luke 16:9, Revelation 21:4, John 14:2.
(5) 2 Corinthians 3:18.
(6) N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (New York: Harper, 2008), 29-30.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Wandering Aimlessly
Dr. John Ratey is a fan of walking with no purpose. A professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Ratey has done extensive research on exercise, creativity and depression. His research suggests that when we walk without any goal or agenda—when we wander, in other words—our brains are able to pick up more information.(1) In fact, walking aimlessly allows the free flow of thoughts and ideas that don’t occur when we focus on something specific. In addition to inspiring creative thought, Ratey has found that exercise can be therapeutic for depression and ADHD. When patients would walk for even ten minutes a day, these ailments would lift. Dr. Ratey notes, “A bout of exercise is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin.”(2) Who knew that wandering aimlessly could be so good for well-being and creativity?
In a fast-paced and efficiency driven world, these ideas are counter-intuitive. For many, walking without any purpose sounds like a complete waste of time. After all, there is so much to do! Days overflow with so many demands on time and attention. Flooded by obligations, it is no wonder that hypertension, depression, and other stress-related diseases are so prevalent. Living life becomes all about doing, without much thought for being. Exercise, when it is undertaken, is for most just one part of a day’s hoped-for accomplishments. “Bucket lists” are created so that even the living of one’s life is marked by checking off one event or experience after another. As we move at hyper-speed, wandering for the sake of wandering sounds ridiculous.
While it would be unlikely to characterize the earthly ministry of Jesus as time spent wandering aimlessly, our efficiency-driven, goal-oriented world might wonder at his unusual pace and priorities during those short, three years. Some might wonder, for example, at the seemingly wasted hours eating and drinking with a sundry and often sordid cast of characters. Luke’s gospel alone mentions meals around the table (or implies them) ten times, with guests and hosts as diverse as religious leaders and tax collectors, lawyers and well-known sinners. When a highly regarded official begged Jesus to come and heal his daughter, Jesus is willing to be delayed by an unnamed, unknown woman grabbing the hem of his garment in spite of the throngs of people pressing around. In other words, Jesus willingly allows himself to be interrupted by a seemingly unimportant individual, on his way to the synagogue official’s home. Other times, the gospel writers tell of Jesus going off to ‘lonely places’ to pray. Even the way Jesus taught spiritual truths—the telling of parables and stories—suggests a whimsy, a wandering from a style of teaching that was purely didactic. And of course, while one could argue that the tremendous amount of time he spent walking the countryside was simply utilitarian, his willingness toward these disruptions, stories, and ministry along the way demonstrate otherwise.
Why would he have done it this way? From our modern perspective, it can seem like such a waste of time. Didn’t he need to save the world? Weren’t there more important things he should have been doing? Perhaps it is in these examples from his own life where even the casual reader might see a different set of priorities than those that govern most in the modern world. Perhaps Jesus understood the power of a long walk with his disciples, and the need for a story to pull in listeners. Perhaps Jesus understood that looking at the birds of the air and observing the lilies of the field could give life and strength to one’s being, gifts imbued by their Creator. Perhaps Jesus understood for himself the power of abiding in God as a result of his time spent alone in prayer. Perhaps Jesus knew that meaningful accomplishments were not always efficient and output is often a byproduct of input.
Considering Jesus’s way of being in the world—even when he knew his life would be cut short—I have been inspired to think about my own priorities and the manner in which I move through the day. Generally rushed and hurried, I wander from the path of busyness by rest and withdrawal, prayer and stillness. I stop to notice the purple Echinacea plant, rocking in time with the wind. I see the bees gathering pollen on its brown cones and antique violet petals. I allow myself to be distracted by the hummingbirds hovering around the feeder. I wander into my backyard, or through my neighborhood letting thoughts, feelings and prayers rise and fall with my breath and my steps. I allow the precious interruptions of colleagues, family, friends to call me more deeply into the kind of love Jesus demonstrated in his own ministry.
Meanwhile, all the tasks of the day still hound me; like barking dogs, they will not relent at demanding my attention. Their urgency conspires against my attempts to intentionally slow the pace of the day. I hear a persistent chorus singing the minor note that I am wasting my time. I am not immune to the compulsion to view my worth by my productivity, my busyness, or by how many items I’ve crossed off my ‘to do’ list.
And yet, the busyness is not what is useful nor is it what brings meaning, beauty, joy, or wonder to living. Creating space for wandering in the crowded days and weeks of our lives allows our thoughts to roam toward new priorities and paths, toward encounters along the road that surprise and nourish the soul, like the disciples who walked unknowingly with the risen Jesus. Wandering—whether that involves the purposeless walking of Dr. Ratey, being distracted by beauty in the person right in front of us or in the natural world, or the intentional withdrawal into silence, stillness, and prayer—is itself a purposeful work.
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson, “Why Walking Matters” Here and Now (Monday, May 19, 2014).
(2) Ibid.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Surprised by Suffering
Gayle Williams was a 34 year-old foreign aid worker serving among the disabled in a country where humanitarian work is both needed and dangerous. Williams was killed as she walked to work in 2008, targeted by a militant group because they believed she was spreading Christianity.
The targeting of Christians by individuals and terrorist groups throughout the world continues to make headlines. Hostage beheadings recorded for the world to see seem to aim at wielding the maximum amount of terror. At Kenya’s Garissa University, where 147 people were killed in April, students were separated by religion. Muslims were allowed to leave; death was reserved for Christians.
When confronted by the stories of those who live their faith among people who hate them for it, I am confounded, inspired, saddened, and thankful all at once. The death and murders of Gayle Williams, the Garissa students, and so many others startles those at ease in their faith to reflection. The pervasive opposition in the lives of these believers awakens even seasoned believers to their own apathy. How courageous is the believer who follows Christ among those who hurl insults and hostility, how treasured the Bible that must be buried in the backyard for protection, how sacred the faith of one who is willing to die for it?
For those of us who live in far less hostile environments, news of persecution may seem foreign, frightening, and difficult to fathom. Their experiences bring the words of the early church to life in a way that many of us have never considered. When the apostle Paul wrote that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ—neither “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword”—he was referring to struggles that were dangerously real to him and the people to whom he was writing. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”(1) Peter, too, encouraged believers in their troubling situations. He urged them to stand in hope with Christ regardless of their affliction; he reminded them that discomfort and suffering was a sacred part of following the wounded one. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ.”(2)
The apostles’ words do not take away the injustice of brutal murder or the offense of terror. But they do assuage the shock of its occurrence. Jesus told his followers to expect persecution; in fact, he said they would be blessed by it. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad… for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”(3) Peter’s words encourage the suffering not to see their painful trials neither as strange or out of the ordinary, nor as a badge of their own making, but as something that further marks them as believers and unites them in even greater intimacy with their leader. Persecution may be always jarring, unfair, or lamentable, but it is not strange when it happens to those who follow Christ. Perhaps it is stranger when it is not happening.
Mark Twain once said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” For those who live the faith we profess without challenge, trial, or risk, reflection may well be appropriate. Is it possible that we have so shut ourselves up in Christian circles that we have closed ourselves off from the world of need and hence any chance of suffering for Christ? Is it possible that we are so at ease among the majority that we avoid venturing out as the loving minority among those who might hate or hurt us? Certainly we experience hostility and persecution indirectly. But how we are personally interacting with the angry, the lost, and the broken masses Jesus once wept over is another thing entirely. How effectively we live as “the salt of the earth” that Jesus described depends on our place and posture within it. Surely salt that remains content within the shaker has lost its saltiness.
And for those peering into the Christian church, whether critically or curiously, the deaths of Christians around the world, the sufferings of Christian aid workers in places no others will go, and the daily trials of believers who live courageously in dangerous places are stories that speak most clearly of Jesus, the very one who joined humanity in its human lament and mire and longing. They are also stories that depict what can happen when the salt of the kingdom is allowed to season the earth. Gayle Williams is said to have been the hand of Christ among some of the world’s most forgotten. “Remember the words I spoke to you,” said Jesus to his disciples. “‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). And then he was led away like a sheep to the slaughter.(4)
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) 2 Corinthians 4:8-10.
(2) Peter 4:12-13.
(3) Matthew 5:11-12.
(4) Isaiah 53:7.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Prophet and the Newspaper
Eighty-five years ago Karl Barth told his theology students to take their bibles and their newspapers, and read both; adding, “But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”(1) There are so many times when, reading or watching the news, I am grateful for the sighing and crying of the prophets. Isaiah’s ancient plea is among the most-repeated, as I sigh between heart-breaking headlines and breaking news. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake at your presence!” (Isaiah 64:1).
In the thick of stories that recount violence and injustice near and far, Isaiah’s prayer is a response for the speechless, the weary, and the frustrated. How long, O Lord? Where are you in the midst of this? Why is slavery still happening right under our noses in Atlanta? Why is sex-trafficking thriving in Moscow? How is it that poverty and addiction, racism and genocide are ignored, even as we obsess over trending gossip or social media witch hunts? For the church, the words of the prophets become a gift. How long, O Lord, are we going to be reading and seeing and tolerating such disparaging news? O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake at your presence.
Isaiah words articulate the cries for relief and justice within his world and within ours. But Isaiah does not merely cry out at God’s seeming absence and a longing for God to fix all he sees; Isaiah is not merely pointing a finger and waiting for God to act. And holding the prophet’s words in one hand with our newspaper in the other, we, too, hopefully see the significance for both hands. Isaiah cries both for God and the generation of people who have turned from God. The entire chapter is a fervent prayer for a change in the direction that Jerusalem is currently moving—for God’s intervention and forgiveness, for Jerusalem’s repentance and reversal.
“We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity” (64:6-7).
It is unavoidable when looking at injustice—even weeping over injustice—to cry foul at the other team, the other group, the other side. There are also times when looking at injustice that we would put God Himself in the dock, interrogating the one we deem distant and responsible as injustice carries on unhindered. Yet in this incessant finger-pointing, however justifiable it might seem, we fail to see the unjust things we do ourselves, our own inconsistencies, our own ironic ways of persecuting—indeed, our own ways of contributing to the very things we lament. The ancient cry of Isaiah is one that is rightfully weighted with both an awareness of the injustice around him and admittance of his and his people’s own depravity, of their own guilt. Reading the prophet’s words with our daily newspaper in hand, we might well see the importance of adding to our cries for injustice across the world, the lament over our own involvement—and the will to turn this, too, around.
For Isaiah puts before us the hopeful image of a God who would tear open the heavens to come down regardless of a people who continue to run from Him. Here in the midst of seeming impasse he utters an empowering word for God and for humanity:
“Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD,
and do not remember our iniquity forever.
But consider now: we are all your people” (64:8).
If the entirety of chapter 64 is a fervent prayer for a change in direction, the climax of the prayer comes in this verse. The word of utmost importance, which comes as a transition to both the cry for God’s nearness and the admission of living far off, is a Hebrew word that is translated “And now.” The word is meant to be a reminder to all, a commentary on time itself. Now we can continue to fear the future, continue to live in the sin of our past, or we can stand before God today and live as clay in the Potter’s good hand. Now we can consider and reclaim that we are all God’s people. Isaiah wants us to see the God who exists in this very present space, the God who has been present and active throughout all of time, and is here even now—the God who hates injustice so much that he would come down and endure it himself.
It is no coincidence that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke often of “the fierce urgency of now.” “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice,” he said. “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brother and sisterhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”(2) King’s cries in the midst of his own newspaper headlines were indelibly shaped by the Bible in his other hand.
For indeed, Isaiah’s vision of a world that revolves around the kingship of God at the center of all things is a vision that pivots on the urgency of the present moment, shaped not by nostalgia for what once was, but remembrance for who God was, and is, and ever will be. Again and again, God stirs us back to the urgency of the space and time before us. Again and again, the cross reminds us of the fierce urgency of now within a world in need not of more pointing fingers and dividing speeches, but of people willing to rise and work as if now we are all God’s people.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) “Barth in Retirement,” Time Magazine, May 31, 1963.
(2) James Washington, Ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.(New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 218.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Love That Followed
Writer Philip Yancey tells of his experience playing chess against a master player. He explains his rapid realization that no matter what move he made, no matter what strategy he chose, the master seemed to turn his play around to serve his own purposes. As I look back upon my life, it is so evident that the Master, that Hound of Heaven, has been on my trail, working all things out for God’s own ends—God’s own good and perfect ends, I might add.
In studying when the gospel first made inroads into my lineage, I have found that on both sides of my family, the first believers came from the highest cast of the Hindu priesthood six generations ago. The first Christian was a woman. She was interested in the message brought by missionaries, in spite of her family’s terrible displeasure. One day as she was about to leave the missionary compound in order to return home before her family found out, the doors of the compound were shut because of a cholera epidemic. Remaining with the missionaries until the time of the quarantine was past, she committed her life to God. Threat of disease and the walls of a closed compound were the freeing means of her coming to Christ.
Readers of English poetry will recall the turbulent life of Francis Thompson. His father wanted him to study at Oxford, but Francis lost his way in drugs and failed to make the grade time and again. This was a slumbering genius, if only his life could be rescued. When Francis finally succumbed to the pursuing Christ, he penned his immortal “Hound of Heaven”:
I fled Him down the nights and down the days.
I fled Him down the arches of the years.
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind:
And in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
Down titanic glooms of chasmed fears
From those strong feet that followed, that followed after.
For though I knew His love that followed
Yet I was sore adread
Lest having Him I have naught else beside.
And he ends:
Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me.
I am utterly convinced that neither walls nor unfortunate mishaps nor poor decisions can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Perhaps you have noticed footprints of one following closely across your own life. Will you follow them?
Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Mustard Seed
The stories Jesus told are inescapably weighted with ethos and revelation. Theologians have expounded chapters on the intricacies of even the simplest of his parables—agreeing and disagreeing along the way. Yet even so, and no doubt contributing to their appeal, the parables of Jesus are also simple enough to compel a child to listen:
“What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man cast in his garden; it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”(1)
Though the theological and methodological approaches to this parable may be varied, perhaps in varying degrees each contends a similar truth: The kingdom of God holds much to be discovered, discussed, and held in wonder.
German theologian Joachim Jeremias argues that Jesus is not describing the kingdom as the mustard seed itself, but as the vision of the seed brought to fruition.(2) In other words, the kingdom of God is not the tiny seed, but the giant shrub into which it grows, and in whose boughs the birds make their nests. Jesus is looking for the audience to compare the kingdom of God to the final stage of the process from seedling to tree, and hence internalize the vision of a great and protective kingdom. Writes Jeremias, “The tree which shelters the birds is a common metaphor for a mighty kingdom which protects its vassals.”(2) For this influential scholar, the parable of the mustard seed depicts the sharp contrast between the kingdom of God in its fledging beginnings and the mighty kingdom that is breaking-in beyond all asking or perceiving. The kingdom of God is in the process of realization, and this is both an essential component for understanding the parable of the mustard seed, and every word Jesus ever said.
Others contend that the nature of metaphor itself is such that it leaves Jesus’s descriptions of the kingdom largely unarticulated, requiring hearers to draw out the conclusions based on what they know of him, the character of God, and the intricacies of life. The kingdom of God as it is compared to a grain of mustard planted in a garden sets up a point of contrast that is “creative of meaning,” to use the words of another theologian, and unending in dialogue: How is a kingdom like a tiny, planted seed? Who is the man who planted it? How is the realm of God like a tree with branches providing shelter? The conclusions are many—and transforming. Like all of his parables, the comparison of “kingdom” and “seed” sets hearers up for surprise. It is a metaphorical narrative that calls for participation, and leads hearers to a point of decision: Will you continue to see signs of the kingdom as futile and diminutive or will you open your eyes to the possibility of a great and hidden reality? For many scholars, this parable describes the advent of a radical world in its tiny beginnings. It subverts our well-ordered vision of what is, and leaves in its place a system of signs that point us to the person of Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims. We are invited into a conversation about the kingdom of God and its surprising and transcendent presence in our everyday situations.
Still other renderings of the kingdom and the mustard seed weigh in on the social context and cultural conventions of the first century world of the parables. As a Jewish rabbi speaking parabolically of the kingdom of God within a Jewish and Hellenistic context, Jesus would have conceivably elicited reactions quite different than ours today. William Herzog’s description of Mediterranean life as daily affected by insufficient and limited resources might illumine reactions of the audience to the great promise of the kingdom Jesus describes. If everything surrounding first century peasant life seemed in short supply, the description of the kingdom of heaven as a negligible grain of mustard growing into a great tree would undoubtedly be received in earnest wonder. The kingdom of God as the greatest of all shrubs reverses the imagery of status and social-standing by turning the smallest of all seeds into something of momentous proportions. The promise of shelter in the shade of the branches of God’s great reach would also have been a subversion of order to those who were slaves to the land beneath those branches.
In each of these approaches to Jesus’s unlikely comparison, we find truths and wonders worth gleaning as if from a great and fruitful tree. The parable of the mustard seed depicts the inconspicuous ministry of Jesus and the sometimes hidden signs of his significance as holding a potential far beyond metaphor or imagination, culture or history. The kingdom of God is not in the future only, nor is it only at hand in a history we cannot reach; it is here even now, reaching out with branches that bid all to come and dwell. As with all of Jesus’s stories, which “leap out of their historical situation and confront us as if they had not yet spoken their final word,” this parable of the kingdom will continue to surprise us if we will continue to inquire.(3) The great reality of the kingdom has been planted within the life and words of the human Christ, always ready to break forth the fullness of meaning, gradually or suddenly, or sometimes both.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) This parable is told in Luke 13:18-19, Mark 4:30-32, and Matthew 13:31-32.
(2) Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972), 102.
(3) David Gowler quoting Richard Pevear in What Are They Saying about the Parables? (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 2.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Peaceable Kingdom
Where I live, I often see banners, signs in windows, and bumper stickers on cars with the message: “War is not the answer.” While I more or less agree that armed conflict rarely solves the problem of human violence, I am also very aware that a propensity towards violence and aggression are often responses that seem normal for most people. Perhaps this explains why in 2010 over thirty-five major conflicts were happening around the world, some of which have been going on since 1950. The United Nations defines “major wars” as military conflicts inflicting a thousand battlefield deaths or more per year.(1) Looking at these numbers of wars around the world would indicate that violent conflict seems an inevitable aspect of being human.
Of course, one doesn’t need to look much further than one’s own backyard to know that conflicts large and small are a daily struggle. Within local communities, within families, and within ourselves, we are often at war. Our wars may not be fought with sword or gun, but we often pursue a violent agenda with lawsuits and slander, our words and our actions. Simple misunderstandings turn into aggressive power struggles, and we find lethal weapons to cut down or wound our perceived antagonists. War may not be the answer, but solutions to the reality of violence in our hearts and in our world are not easily forthcoming.
Given this propensity towards conflict, I can be tempted to believe it was simply wishful thinking for Jesus to speak of peacemakers at all in his famous Sermon on the Mount. I am tempted to hear his pronouncement of blessing for these peacemakers as an impossible ideal for one such as myself so easily offended and so quick to defend. But Jesus was surely aware of the violent predilections of human beings when he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). After all, once his cousin John the Baptist was put into prison, Jesus was the one who said, “[F]rom the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). Indeed, like his cousin, he too would suffer violence against himself, being falsely accused, tortured by Roman soldiers, and then crucified with two criminals.
So what did Jesus have in mind when he pronounced blessing on the peacemakers? From within his own Jewish context, peace, or shalom, was far more than the absence of conflict, although it would surely include that. Shalom implies a holistic sense of well-being for an individual or a nation. It means harmony in relationships, between individuals or nations, and it is understood to be God’s good gift for God’s people. It also carries the meaning of salvation, wholeness, and healing—both for the people of Israel, and for those who would be blessed by Israel through her witness and proclamation. Peace is the well-being and prosperity of life that results from fully reconciled, healed, and harmonious relationships with God, others, and all of creation.
Jesus pronounces blessing on all those who advance peace because in being peacemakers, they are engaging in the very deepest activity of God. They are behaving as God’s children. Thus, Jesus identifies them as “the children of God” because they are imitating God’s divine work in the world as they live shalom and invite others to experience it. Peacemakers are those who receive God’s saving work into their lives, as ones who have found peace with God, and then make peace in the lives of others. The apostle Paul echoes this call to be peacemakers in his letter to the Roman believers in Jesus: “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
This is exactly what Tom and Libby Little were doing in Afghanistan for over thirty years, until Tom was murdered, along with nine others from his team, on Thursday, August 5, 2010.(2) As medical workers and eye-doctors, the team went to the remotest and often conflict-ridden parts of Afghanistan to bring shalom through medical mission. In an article written just prior to receiving the news that her husband had been murdered, Libby Little spoke of their years as peacemakers, suffering as God’s servants in a war-torn world: “God blessed those occasions and visited us with his power. His amateur followers, stricken with stage fright, forgetting their lines, were acting out in miniature something of his own Grand Narrative—Immanuel, God with us.”(3)
The blessing of Jesus on peacemakers occurs in a world where violence indeed continues. This reality, at the very least, is implicitly acknowledged as Jesus extends blessing on those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. As in the case of the Little’s, and in our own daily conflicts and warfare, peacemaking often involves the hard work of enduring, and sometimes suffering violence, without giving in to the human desire to take retaliatory violence into our hearts and hands. Those who pursue peace are blessed as God’s children, imitating the action of the Father to bring the children peace.
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) “The World at War,” http://GlobalSecurity.org, November 11, 2010.
(2) “The Death of 10 Members of the Nuristan Eye Care Team,” International Assistance Mission, http://iam-afghanistan.org/, November 13, 2010.
(3) Libby Little, “A Small Version of the Grand Narrative,” Christianity Today, August 2010.
Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Pharisee
“You are nothing but a Pharisee,” said Maggie with vehemence. “You thank God for nothing but your own virtues; you think they are great enough to win you everything else.”(1)
Whether familiar or new to the scathing words of Maggie Tulliver to her brother Tom in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, it is clear that she is not speaking complimentary. The word “Pharisee,” as this interchange illustrates, is often used as something of a synonym for hypocrite, a haughty individual with a holier-than-thou air about them. Webster’s dictionary further articulates this common usage, defining the adjective “pharisaical” as being marked by “hypocritical censorious self-righteousness,” or “pretending to be highly moral or virtuous without actually being so.”(2) To be called a Pharisee is far from a compliment; it is to be accused of living with a false sense of righteousness, being blind and foolish with self-deception, or carrying oneself with a smug and hypocritical legalism.
The etymology of the word from its roots as a proper noun to its use as an adjective is one intertwined with history, drawing on the very tone with which a rabbi from Nazareth once spoke to the religious group that bore the name. In seven consecutive statements recorded in the book of Matthew, Jesus begins his stern rebukes with the scathing introductions: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” “Woe to you blind guides!” His conclusion is equally pejorative: “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?”(3) The word “Pharisee” has become far more associated with this critique than its greater context. Thus Maggie can call her brother a Pharisee and not be thinking of the Jewish sect of leaders for which Jesus had harsh words, but of the harsh words themselves.
Yet taking something out of context, even if Webster’s dictionary grants the permission, can be dangerously misleading. These were not always the connotations of the word Pharisee, and we do ourselves and the words of Jesus a disservice by assuming that his harsh words are all we need to remember about them. Quite ironically, the description “pharisaical” would once have been a great compliment. The Pharisees were highly regarded guardians of the strict interpretation and application of Jewish Law. They were known for their zeal and for their uncompromising ways of following the God of their fathers. It is likely that the apostle Paul was a Pharisee, and it is suggested that much of his Christian theology owes something to the shape and content of this earlier training.(4) In other words, to be a Pharisee was not an easy life riddled with loopholes and duplicities, like we might assume. The Pharisees were so certain there was a right way to follow God that they sought to follow this God to that very letter with all of their lives.
In this light, Jesus’s words seem a little harsher, his tone a little crueler—and perhaps his warnings a little closer to home. In the Pharisees, Jesus scolded the very best of the religious crowd, those who dedicated everything, and cared the deepest about following God. If Jesus came today into churches and singled out the ministers who work the hardest, the youth who are most involved, and the families who serve most consistently and called them a brood of vipers, we would be hurt and confused and even defensive. This is exactly what happened amongst the Pharisees.
But not all were so defensive that they refused to hear. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the obscurity of darkness and found himself confronted by a conversation about flesh and light. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish ruling council, who was highly regarded. This most likely explains the veil of night by which he sought to meet Jesus; the comments against his fellow Pharisees were not met with open arms. Even so, it was an act of faith to seek out this controversial young man from Galilee; it was an act of humility to grapple with a message that thoroughly confused him, accusations that cut to his very core, and words that called even the God he knew into question. Yet this initial meeting with Jesus was for Nicodemus the beginning of life made new. This Pharisee who had come so far in his faith, who had lived so great a commitment to God, had not come so far as to reject the idea that even he might need to stop and turn around. Might the Pharisee in all of us respond similarly.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (New York: Penguin, 2002), 394.
(2) Merriam-Webster Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pharisaical, and Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (Cleveland: William Collins Publishers, 1980), 1066.
(3) Matthew 23:33.
(4) N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 182.
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