In a powerful scenario played out in a hot, dry, and dusty wilderness, Jesus said in response to a temptation: “One does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Notice he did not say that man did not live on bread “at all,” as some forms of mysticism and bodily denial might assert. He showed that man did live on bread partially, but not exclusively. In other words, we are both body and spirit, and there is a higher dimension to our existence.

The New Atheists, and the old ones for that matter, would have us embrace what some have called “nothing buttery.” We are nothing but our DNA; we are nothing but our social and biological inheritance; we are nothing but a random collocation of atoms, time, and chance. What is interesting in all this is that those who are saying such things use words. Indeed, they write long books, extensive articles, and scholarly tones to persuade us that we are nothing but “matter in motion.”

Is their use of words, their reliance on reason, their appeal to rationality, a backhanded tribute to Jesus’s claim that there is something higher, more complex, and real that is indeed a major feature of what it is to be human? After all, if my delight in reading or my love of the ideas and impressions that arise from reading are mere chemical reactions with deterministic outcomes, mere responses and not real experiences, then I am left wondering if even my wondering is nothing more than a blind reaction to stimulus. I must confess: I don’t buy it.

If we look at the ancient Scriptures, we see an initial confrontation with several players. Adam and Eve are in an idyllic setting. God is present and in communion with them. Then the “tempter” appears and raises what will be a lasting question, one which has as much bearing on the twenty-first Century as it did when it was first stated: “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1). Now, whether we take this question in broad directions (Is there any God who actually speaks?) or in specific directions (Do I believe God is speaking to me now? What should I do in these circumstances? Can I expect insight from God for life?), the thought has vast consequences. Did God really say?

If there is no God, if there is nothing but chance and necessity, then I must fling myself into existence with all the will and hope I can muster and simply allow the dice to land. If there is a God, however, then I not only have access to the author and creator of life, but I can meet and know a God who is called “The Good Shepherd” and reminds us that his name is Immanuel, “God with us.”

In this age of the saturated self, time and space are drowning in voices, noises, and insistent demands—all clamoring for our attention. We might feel at times as if we are suffocating or simply being squished by blind forces that have no consideration or compassion, and we wonder if we can survive. Did God really say? Did God say anything that could help? In a very powerful story told in Genesis 21:8-20, Hagar, who gave birth to Ishmael by Abraham, was sent away as a result of internal family strife and hostility. Abandoned with a young boy, wandering in a wasteland, she collapsed in hopeless despair. We surely feel her sense of utter desperation and loss. Yet into this bleak, dark, and hopeless scenario, God speaks. And his words are words of hope and words of life. Hagar hears what is being communicated and responds.

Of course, it could all be false. It could all be a construct. It could all be nothing but wishful thinking. Perhaps it is all imagination or the work of religious deceivers across time who have created these moving stories to distract us. Perhaps man really does live by bread alone, and what we need to do is simply accept it and get on with life as it is. Or perhaps—perhaps—there is a God, and God is, as Francis Schaeffer said, there and not silent. The choice is real and it is unavoidable. Jesus offers a way and an alternative to the bleak vision of life bound by time, chance, and necessity: Humanity does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Stuart McAllister is regional director of the Americas at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

In my mother’s antique shop were a variety of treasures for a curious child. My personal favorite was the Victrola that sat stately in the corner, a large internal phonograph that begged to be heard. The sounds it made were bold and cavernous, like an opera in a wooden box. This one was an early model, I heard adults say, and it was in mint condition. So it seemed peculiar to me that our frequent requests to put it into action were, from time to time, resisted. To me it was a perfect treasure, a magnificent and flawless toy. To the motherly owner of the store, it was a treasure that was capable of breaking before it sold. “As is” was not a phrase she wanted to add to the price tag.

A label that was seen occasionally within the shop, “as is” conveyed an item with damage or brokenness of some sort. “As is” marked the clock that had stopped ticking, or the rocking horse that had a crack in one of its legs. Because I knew my mother as one who could fix almost anything, the label also conveyed to me a certain sense of defeat. Whatever the item, it was a lost cause—a treasure bearing some distinguishable, irreparable flaw.

In different ways and in varying degrees throughout our lives, many of us feel something like the object marked “as is,” or the treasure with only a matter of time before something goes awry. With a sense of defeat, we view our lives through the lens of what is broken or has been broken, what is irreparable or what might break. Looking ahead, we see the broken down trailer behind us, which seems to declare emphatically our status “as is.”

Yet writing centuries before our own, King David wrote of God:

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;

you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart,

O God, you will not despise.(1)

Such words run counter to cultures anywhere and everywhere. Brokenness is usually not something we are comfortable admitting, let alone formally presenting it as something that is pleasing to anyone. Whether in ourselves or in others, we are at times almost averse to fragility. Even as Christians who hold knowingly to the cruciform image of Christ, we seem distinctly uncomfortable with broken and grieving people, defeated and weakened lives. Yet it is by the Cross we live. “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows… But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.”(2) Isn’t it strange that we who are saved by one who was broken should struggle in the presence of brokenness at all?

Like the psalmist, the apostle points to the great potential within fragility. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”(3)

Whether we come to God shattered by our own sin, like David, or groaning from living in an imperfect world, we are never nearer to Christ than when we come with nothing in our hands to offer. God’s desire is that we would come as we are—weary or overwhelmed, defeated by life, crushed by injustice. Before the cross, there is no lost cause or irreparable flaw. For in life, as in an antique shop, there would be no recognition of brokenness if there were not such a thing as wholeness.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Psalm 51:16-17.

(2) Isaiah 53:4-5.

(3) 2 Corinthians 4:7-10.

In a poem titled “Moments of Joy” Denise Levertov tells the story of an old scholar who takes a room on the next street down from his grown children—”the better to concentrate on his unending work, his word, his world.” And though he comes and goes while they sleep, his children feel bereft. They want him nearer. But at times it happens that a son or daughter wakes in the dark and finds him sitting at the foot of the bed, or in the old rocker—”sleepless in his old coat, gazing into invisible distance, but clearly there to protect as he had always done.” The child springs up and flings her arms about him, pressing a cheek to his temple and taking him by surprise: “Abba!” the child exclaims, and Levertov concludes:

“And the old scholar, the father,

is deeply glad to be found.

That’s how it is, Lord, sometimes;

You seek, and I find.”(1)

Though many would like to say that the majority of our lives have been spent searching for God, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we have been sought. Even so, like the children in Levertov’s poem, time and again I know I find myself bereft of God’s presence. Sometimes it just feels like I am sitting in the dark.

One of my seminary professors once told me that God’s presence is not the opposite of God’s absence. At first glance this didn’t seem the least bit encouraging. And yet, maybe I have seen this notion lived out after all. For even when I am most stirred by God’s nearness—when God’s presence seems an undeniable truth—am I not also simultaneously stung by the ache of longing to be nearer or the reality of not quite yet being at home? Even in our best encounters with God, presence and absence remain intertwined. What might this then mean for the moments when I am feeling tormented by God’s absence?

The Christian scriptures seem to suggest of the dark what children learn of their parents. Namely, the dark does not imply the absence of a caring person. “Though an army besiege me,” said David, “my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.” David’s confidence was not in the absence of darkness, but in the knowledge of the one who watched over him in the dark. “I am still confident of this,” he concludes. “I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”(2)

Though we might struggle when God seems far off, perhaps it need not be without hope. When the land was dark with the death of Christ weighing on its shoulders, God exhaustively sought despairing hearts in the thick of that darkness. And the risen Christ is still today the certainty of God’s nearness and the promise of his care in the dark. “Thus,” writes Os Guinness, “Christians do not say to God, ‘I do not understand you at all, but I trust you anyway.’ That would be suicidal. Rather, they say, ‘Father, I do not understand you, but I trust you’—or more accurately, ‘I do not understand you in this situation, but I understand why I trust you anyway.’ It is therefore reasonable to trust even when we do not understand. We may be in the dark about what God is doing, but we are not in the dark about God.”(3)

Perhaps you have spent much of life bewailing the one who stood silent as you cried, disoriented in the dark and desperately reaching for something to make it better. What if God was there all along? Perhaps there is reason to be awed by the God who says, “Follow me!” and expects us to trust that we won’t be left or forsaken. Perhaps we should fear the one who won’t let go, whose persistence we might even find exhausting and whose faith in us we find terrifying. Perhaps there reason to be humbled by the God who refuses to leave despite the words we shout in unawareness and our unrelenting waywardness. And perhaps we do better to marvel at the God whose hand we can see clearly through the blinding pain of life. Though uncertainty may surround us and the darkness bid us to see that no Father is there, perhaps we can trust Him nonetheless.

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

(1)Denise Levertov, This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (New York: New Directions, 1999), 60.

(2) Psalm 27:3-13.

(3) Os Gunness, Unspeakable (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 150.

Some time ago, I attended a conference in which a well-known speaker related the cultural and value differences between his current home in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and his childhood home in a small town in the Southwest United States. Many of these cultural and value differences found their expression in a set of rules for civic conduct. In addition to these proscriptions, his church culture also enforced a particularly prescribed set of rules: no dancing, no drinking, no card playing, no long hair. These rules were held sacrosanct. Their violation would invite censure from the community and stern warnings that his eternal standing with Almighty God was now in jeopardy.

As it sometimes happens with this kind of upbringing, the conference speaker moved as far away from his hometown rigidity as he could. He escaped to the Pacific Northwest—a part of the United States known for its laidback attitude and freethinking ways. The speaker believed he had finally found a community that would be free from the constricting rules and legalisms of his upbringing. Yet, he was in for quite a surprise. While he had indeed moved far away from the many rules of his childhood town, he was chagrined to discover that his new community had just as many rules. These rules involved intricacies relating to garbage disposal, the banning of plastic bags at the grocery store, and the sanction of skateboarders or musicians in the common areas of his upscale townhome complex. The wrath of God may not have been invoked in the threats of punishment, but the speaker suffered the self-righteous censure of this community just as bound by legalism as the one in which he had grown up. In both communities, oddly, he found that the rules seemed more beloved than the people they were meant to shape.

In listening to this story, I was jolted by the sting of self-recognition, finding myself within the details of self-righteousness in both communities. Too often, I easily look down on others who fail to live by my rules. Or, I can easily elevate one set of standards, while denigrating a person holding to the alternative. Regardless of the rules involved, it is easier for me to love rules than people.

What might be at the heart of the human tendency towards legalism? The desire to have clear boundaries, and a concern for decency and order to guide communities, is both necessary and prudent. Yet somehow rules meant to offer contours for human thriving and well-being grow into strictures that bind, stifling life and wholeness. Eventually, the standards themselves become the gods that are worshipped. But these are punitive gods who damn all who fall short. Clear boundaries become walls of separation dividing human relationships and community, and the enforcers quickly draw lines around the righteous and the unrighteous. Legalism prompts one to declare her “virtue” as the clearly superior standard to which all others must bow. Perhaps humans find it easier to love legalities because it is easier than loving people. People are inconsistent and imperfect, messy and unpredictable. Rules help to control and confine that messiness.

Into a world in which piety was equated with precise interpretation and obedience to the law came a man who frequently shattered this rigid understanding of righteousness. He upended expectations and eluded the tightly drawn categories of those who sought to control him. He often kept company with those deemed unrighteous—prostitutes, tax collectors, and others called sinners—and he earned the label of “glutton and a drunkard” by those whose laws drew clear boundaries around appropriate company. For those who had clear rules about the Messiah of Israel, this man from Nazareth eschewed political power and stood silently before those who would eventually order his crucifixion. And for those who wanted a “rebel” Jesus, wholly antinomian and defying every convention, he answered by challenging his followers towards a righteousness that exceeded that of the most religious-of-the-religious in his day. In his own words, he told those who would follow him that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Far from being a measure for establishing self-righteousness or from creating a new legalism for his followers, Jesus fulfilled the law by revealing its true intention. He showed that at the heart of the Sabbath law for rest was to allow God to work on behalf of human wholeness by healing those who were diseased, broken, and therefore excluded from community and from worship. The rest God intended for humanity was expressed not in the rule of non-work per se, but in working for the good of all in need of reconciliation. Fulfilling the law, he restored relationships and opened the door for transformation; he reconciled persons to one another and to God. His ministry challenged the lettered adherence to the law, which brought death and revealed that the spirit of the law was to promote life.

Indeed, when he was questioned about the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Jesus understood that the ground of the law was a love for God and a love for persons. To replace the love of persons with a love of the rules missed the point. Loving the rules for rules’ sake engenders self-love; loving God engenders love for others.

As the conference speaker suggested in his twin-stories of community legalism, human beings are far more apt to love themselves. And we often love our rules more than people. But in the idolatry of legalism and the attempt to prove self-righteousness, we ironically depict a truth spoken long ago: The letter kills but the Spirit gives life.

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

(1) Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28.

Not far into John’s Gospel, Jesus is gaining enemies at every turn. He uses a whip to drive men and livestock out of the temple. He breaks a religious law by choosing the Sabbath to heal a man who cannot walk. But it is because of his words that they seek all the more to kill him. To their anger over the healing, Jesus simply replies, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”(1)

To the person well versed in biting comebacks and fatal rhetoric, these words hardly seem like fighting-words. But to Jewish leaders who knew a history of combating (and failing to combat) the polytheistic influences of surrounding nations, Jesus uttered what seemed the most blasphemous notion possible. He called God his own Father.

The notion of God as Father was not an entirely new concept. Even to the Jews who took offense at Jesus’s words that day, God was understood as ‘Father’ in the sense that God is Creator, that God is Lord, that God is protector and forgiver. Fourteen times in the Old Testament God is spoken of as Father, and each instance depicts a glimpse of divine fatherhood.

But here, Jesus added to the notion of Father a distinct element of intimacy and uniqueness with himself. Nowhere else in Palestinian Judaism is God addressed by an individual as “My father.”(2) Jesus’s use of such a title—and elsewhere the very intimate “abba” or daddy—reveals the very basis of his communion with God. And he adds to this vision the promise of the Spirit who comes from the Father and testifies on the Son’s behalf—an invitation to commune within the Godhead itself. To the religious leaders who considered themselves guardians of the profane and the sacred, to the crowds who would have known the significance, these words would have revealed a scandalous glimpse into the mind of Jesus. All the more scandalous, Jesus later extends his communion with God the Father to his followers. “This, then, is how you should pray,” he says:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.(3)

Whether a Christian familiar with the prayer and titles of the Trinity or a secularist familiar with religious jargon, it might seem rather basic to approach the mysterious thought that Christ is Son and God is Father. “Heavenly Father,” “only Son,” and “Holy Spirit” are phrases over which our contemporary ears barely perk. Even those for whom the love of a father was absent or the love of a present father was treasured, the vast allowance of being able to call God ‘Father’ hardly seems a matter to consider. We might even lump it casually together with other generic religious tidbits. Yet it is not a quality inherent in other religions; it is, in fact, an obstruction to some, an enigma to others. The Christian confidence and comfort that God can be approached as Father is the unique and vital gift of the Son made available through the Spirit.

And such is the startling, radical message of the Christian story. As one theologian notes, “[T]his one word ‘Father,’ together with ‘Our,’ contain all these concepts [Creator, Lord, King, Lawgiver] yet at the same time reveals them as intimacy, as love, as a unique, unrepeatable and joyful union.”(4) What might it mean to you to have access to a Father who knows you by name, in whose house you are invited to be who you truly are—to live and work and play as God created you? What if there is indeed a Father who waits, who longs to gather his children together and take them into his arms? What if this is the communion for which you are made? Some will be transformed by love, some will be broken by love, some will refuse to be gathered by love. But God offers a place, positioned within the greater offer of adoption, the hope of communion, and the gift of participation in the kingdom. What if this is indeed our Father whose name is hallowed and whose kingdom we seek, whom we know through the Son and worship in the Spirit as children of the divine?

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

(1) John 5:17.

(2) See Joachim Jeremias, Jesus and the Message of the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).

(3) Matthew 6:9-10.

(4) Alexander Schmemann, Our Father (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 19-20.