Category Archives: Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Point of Exclusion

June 5, 2014 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

With the numerous religions in the world, how can Christians claim exclusivity? I am often asked this question in different settings. But I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the Christian faith is the only one that seems to have this question posed. The truth is that every major religion in the world claims exclusivity, and every major religion in the world has a point of exclusion.

Hinduism, for example, is often represented as being the most tolerant and accepting of other faiths. That is just not true. All Hindus believe in two fundamental, uncompromising doctrines—the Law of Karma, and the belief in reincarnation. These will not be surrendered. In fact, Buddhism was born out of the rejection of two other very dogmatic claims of Hinduism. Buddha rejected the authority of the vedas and the caste system of Hinduism. The issue here is not who was right or wrong. The truth is that they were systemically different—both claiming rightness.

Islam, as you know, is very clearly an exclusive claim to God. A Muslim will never tell you that it doesn’t matter what you believe or that all religions are true.

But before we get upset with such claims, let us remember that it is the very nature of truth that presents us with this reality. Truth by definition is exclusive. Everything cannot be true. If everything is true, then nothing is false. And if nothing is false then it would also be true to say everything is false. We cannot have it both ways. One should not be surprised at the claims of exclusivity. The reality is that even those who deny truth’s exclusivity, in effect, exclude those who do not deny it. The truth quickly emerges. The law of non-contradiction does apply to reality: Two contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense. Thus, to deny the law of non-contradiction is to affirm it at the same time. You may as well talk about a one-ended stick as talk about truth being all-inclusive.

So where does that leave us? We must not be surprised at truth claims but we must test them before we believe them. If the test demonstrates truth then we are morally compelled to believe it. And this is precisely the point from which many are trying to run. As G.K. Chesterton said, the problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.

Christ is either the immeasurable God or one dreadfully lost. Apply the tests of truth to the person and the message of Jesus Christ. You see not only his exclusivity, but also his uniqueness.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Where Other Creeds Fail

June 4, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is one of the world’s largest maximum-security prisons, an eighteen-thousand acre habitat to people who have committed horrible crimes. It houses roughly five thousand inmates, more than half of which are serving life sentences. Death looms large at Angola; ninety-four percent of inmates who enter are expected to die while incarcerated. The fear of dying alone in prison, coupled with the reality that for many inmates their first encounter with death was committing murder, makes death a weighted subject, often locked up in anger, guilt, and dread.

For a few, however, the Angola Hospice volunteer program has drastically changed this. In 1998, equipped with a variety of staff trustees and inmate volunteers, the LSP hospice opened its doors to its first terminally ill inmate. Today it is recognized as one of the best programs of its kind. Giving inmate volunteers a role in the creation of the hospice and in the primary care during the dying process, inmates find themselves in the position to tangibly affect the lives of others by being present, by giving a hand, by offering dignity to the dying. Reckoning with death as a fate that awaits all of humanity as they care for dying friends and strangers, the men often gradually let go of hardened demeanors. As one man notes, “I’ve seen guys that used to run around Angola, and want to fight and drug up, actually cry and be heartbroken over the patient.”(1) Another describes being present in the lives of the dying and how much this takes from the living. “But it puts a lot in you,” he adds. A third inmate describes how caring for strangers on the brink of death has put an end to his lifelong anger and helped him to confront his guilt with honesty.

The Incarnation may seem for some an odd part of the Christian story. But in some ways it is the only story: broken, guilty souls longing for someone to be present. For the men at Angola who stare death in the eyes and realize the tender importance of presence, for the child whose mother left and whose father was never there, for the melancholic soul that laments the evils of a fallen world, the Incarnation is the only story that touches every pain, every lost hope, every ounce of our guilt, every joy that ever matters. Where other creeds fail, the story of the Incarnation, in essence, is about coming poor and weary, guilty and famished to the very scene in history where God reached down and touched the world by stepping into it.

The Incarnation is hard to dismiss out of hand because it so radically comes near our needs. Into the world of living and dying the arrival of Christ as a child turns fears of isolation, weakness, and condemnation on their heads. C.S. Lewis describes the doctrine of the Incarnation as a story that gets under our skin unlike any other creed, religion, or theory. “[The Incarnation] digs beneath the surface, works through the rest of our knowledge by unexpected channels, harmonises best with our deepest apprehensions… and undermines our superficial opinions. It has little to say to the man who is still certain that everything is going to the dogs, or that everything is getting better and better, or that everything is God, or that everything is electricity. Its hour comes when these wholesale creeds have begun to fail us.”(2) Standing over the precipices of the things that matter, nothing matters more than that there is a loving, forgiving, self-offering God who draws near as one of us.

The great hope of the Incarnation is that God comes for us in vicarious humanity. The Father offers the present gift of the Incarnate Son, having come in flesh, and it changes everything. “[I]f accepted,” writes Lewis, “[the Incarnation] illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die,…[and] covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected.”(3) The coming of Christ as an infant in Bethlehem puts flesh on humanity’s worth and puts God in humanity’s weakness. To the captive, there is truly no other freedom.

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

(1) Stephen Kiernan, Last Rights (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2006), 274.

(2) C.S. Lewis, The Complete C.S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 282.

(3) Ibid.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Trust in Crooked Paths

June 3, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

One of the wonderful gifts of being young is the endless optimism about the future. It seems that infinite possibilities stretch out before you; creative energy flows freely and there is a vitality that enlivens each new path and experience. All the roads before you open up and offer smooth transport to the attainment of one dream after another.

When I was a young child, the wisdom sayings of King Solomon were some of my favorite passages in the Bible. Their prescriptions offered an optimistic view of life for those who sought to follow the God. For some reason, the words seemed to bounce with joy, energy, and a sense of lightness. For example, “trust in the Lord with all your heart…and He will make your paths straight” were verses that seemed to indicate God’s direct guidance for all his children into happy, straight pathways. I inferred that trusting in God’s guidance would be the result of walking down all the wonderful, straight pathways that lay out before me. I would willingly and gladly walk towards the attainment of all my goals, desires, and dreams.

While these are still precious Scripture verses to me, I have come to understand them differently as an adult. The trust I proclaimed seemed easy as everything went my way. I didn’t rely on my own understanding because I didn’t have to! But, as is true of much of the human experience, my roads did not all run straight. When dreams began to die, life-goals went unmet, and desires dried up, I realized the challenge these verses really offer.

In his book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes on the challenging nature of belief. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box.”(1) Indeed, as many of my life goals unraveled before me, ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding’ took on new meaning in the face of absence, want, and unfulfillment. Real trust in God would be forged out of the fires of testing—testing that revealed whether or not I really believed in God, or in what God would give me. So, as God had seemingly abandoned my plans, my test of trust began.

C.S. Lewis picks up this theme in his marvelous book The Screwtape Letters. For maturation to take place, God must withdraw “all the supports and incentives” and “leave the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.” He continues this thought through the character of Uncle Screwtape, the senior demon coaching his nephew Wormwood on the skills of devilry: “It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He [God] wants it to be. Only then, when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”(2)

It is often when our paths are most crooked, when the ‘props’ of the journey are nowhere to be found that we are most vulnerable to find other things in which to place trust. The withdrawn supports offer a painful challenge to grow up, and to allow trust to grow up as well. Here is where we learn to trust even while feeling lost and abandoned to crooked, twisting, and unsafe paths; paths we thought would lead us to our plans, dreams, and desires.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.” The journey from youth to adulthood is surely filled with many crooked paths. Many get lost along the way. Yet, the promise of this ancient proverb is that God can and will make paths straight for those who find trust—trust that often is matured by struggle and the courage to trod down crooked paths of disappointment.

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

(1)C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: Harper-Collins, 1961), 34.

(2)C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Harper-Collins, 2001), 40.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Remembering How to Walk on Water

June 2, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

I always thought it bizarre that he asked me to remember something I never saw in the first place. It was a practical observation for a child. I wondered if it was a matter of oversight, sloppy facts, or just too many people to keep track of. I had no recollection. But he asked repeatedly that I try anyway, as if he knew better—and I wondered if maybe he did. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.‘ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.‘ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

With the help of a timeline and some background years later, it was of some comfort to learn that Paul, who remembered these words, had no personal recollection of that night with Jesus in the upper room either. He makes note of it just before he recounts the memory: ”For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). Even so, it seemed a difficult request. How can you remember something you did not witness? How do you remember someone you have never actually met?

Of course, the short of the answer is that we do it all the time. I have many fond memories of my great grandfather, though I was quite young when he passed away. In fact, most of my memories have been constructed by the memories of those who knew him best. Stories I have heard repeatedly make him a character I can visualize, whether or not I was present, or even born, at the time these qualities were visible or the memorable events witnessed. In this, there is a sense that our memories carry us beyond ourselves, and it is far from a solitary phenomenon. Remembering the stories of a particular time in which we were not present, we are in some sense made into participants nonetheless, lifted beyond our familiar, fleeting days by the communities that can reach past us and help us get there.

The one who remembers Christ is lifted similarly with the help of the Holy Spirit and the many witnesses who have gone before him, though it is a far more profound ascent. Remembering Christ in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we remember the last meal shared with the disciples in the upper room; we remember the death of Christ and his path to the cross; we remember these events in such a way that we are carried by the Spirit beyond our present lives to the events that changed all of history. But far more than this, Christians believe we are also lifted to the ascended incarnate Son as he sits today at the right hand of the Father—resurrected, living, and present. In this sense, it is far more than a static memory of a grandparent in history or a friend whose life was cut short. We are lifted with the great community of believers by the Spirit as we remember the one who stands with us yesterday, today, and tomorrow—here and now in the kingdom he died to proclaim. In this memory, we are further united with Christ and his church as adopted sons and daughters. In his presence, we are taught some of the ineffable things our present distractions would have us to forget, and some of the difficult things we are asked to endure, at the side of the one who endured the most. We remember Christ, and we remember who we are.

In fact, Plato spoke of all learning as remembering. Along with Socrates, he saw a world of students with the need to resurrect all that we have forgotten as souls from another kingdom. The biblical call for remembrance is not far from this. By remembering the acts of God in history, the people of God throughout time recollect what it means to be children pursued by the one who has so often tried to gather us, as hen would gather her chicks. As human beings united to the vicarious humanity of the incarnate Son, we recollect what it means to be human by following the one who is most fully human. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,” writes Paul, “we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Christians profess that Christ is not only at work redeeming a fallen humanity, transforming us with the self-giving love of God; he also came to unite humanity with God so that we can remember what it means to be who we are. It was in this spirit that Madeleine L’Engle said she hoped one day she would remember how to walk on water, and not continue on like Peter who remembered instead that humans cannot do what he was doing, and immediately began to sink.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Sigh of Relief

May 30, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Most of us likely missed it. Couched between Wednesday’s building crescendo of assignments and Friday’s promise of their demise, Thursday hardly seems more than a means to an end. So even though it is every bit as holy as Easter Sunday, most of the world moved through it unsuspectingly—even those who have confessed the momentous lines of the Apostles’ Creed: “On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.”

Yesterday was Ascension Day, the day that marks the ascension of Jesus Christ. Forty days after the celebration of Easter and the resurrection of Jesus, the church around the world holds in remembrance this eventful day. The gospel writer records: “Then [Jesus] said to his disciples…. ‘See, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”(1)

The ascension of Christ may not seem as momentous to the world as the resurrection or as rousing as the image of Jesus on the cross. In fact, after the death and resurrection, the ascension might even seem somewhat anti-climatic. The resurrection and ascension statements of the Apostles’ Creed are essentially treated as one in the same: On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. One might even think that the one miraculous act flowed immediately into the other: the death of the body of Jesus was answered in the resurrection of Christ, a presence who then floated on to heaven. Unfortunately, the result of this impression is that many think that the ascension somehow points to the casting off of Christ’s human nature, as if Jesus is now a presence that only used to be human, one we see far more fit to memorialize than we expect one day to see actually face to face.

But in fact, this is far from the experience of the disciples, to whom Jesus appeared repeatedly in the days following the resurrection. To them it was abundantly clear that Jesus was not any sort of spiritual ghost or remote presence. He ate with them; he talked with them; he instructed them as to the ministries they would lead and the deaths they would face because of him. He was in fact more fully human than they ever before realized, and it was this holy body, this divine person that they held near as they lived and died to proclaim his kingdom.

Moreover, the ascension they remembered was no different than the future they envisioned with him—he was raised as a human, fully human. As the disciples were watching and Jesus was taken up before their very eyes, a cloud hid him from their sight. The text then refers to them “looking intently up into the sky as he was going” when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them: “‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go’” (Acts 1:9-11). In this resurrected body, Christ ascended to heaven, fully human, fully divine, and entirely glorified.

For the Christian, no action of Christ is without weight, and this, his last action on earth, is weighed with far more hope than is often realized. On the day Jesus was taken into heaven, the work God sent him to accomplish was finally completed. The ascension was a living and public declaration of his dying words on the Cross: It is finished. Ascending to heaven, Jesus furthered the victory of Easter—the victory of a physical body in whom God had conquered death. Because of the ascension, the incarnation is not a past event. Because of the ascension, we know that the incarnate Christ who was raised from the dead is sharing in our humanity even now. And just as the men in white informed the disciples, so we carry in our own flesh a guarantee that Christ will one day bring us to himself. It is for these reasons that N.T. Wright affirms, “To embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.”(2)

Truly, Ascension Day, a holy day falling inconspicuously on a Thursday in May, is the conspicuous declaration that we are not left as orphans. In the same post-resurrection body he invited Thomas to touch, Jesus invites us to full humanity even today. He ascended with a body, he shares in our humanity, extending his own body even now, and he is coming back for those in bodies. Christ is preparing a room for us, and we know it is real because he himself is real.

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

(1) Luke 24:49-53.

(2) N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 114.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unexpected Encounter

May 29, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

During my high school years, my friends and I would always attend church youth group on Friday evenings. More often than not, these events comprised of playing different games and eating food. After the games were done, we would be ushered in to a room where we would sing songs and then listen to a short talk given by the youth leader. I knew what to do in these moments. I had become an expert at tuning out religious or spiritual talk. I had fifteen years of growing up in a Christian home which consisted of attending church twice every Sunday, one midweek service in addition to another church club. I was a well-seasoned Christian, or at least I thought I was.

But on this particular Friday evening, something happened that I will never forget. I was in the chapel listening to people singing songs, but it all felt so different. I looked across the room and saw people singing as if they really meant what they were singing. People were not only singing about God. They were singing to God. They looked and acted as if God were really in the room. And I must confess that it was the first time, at least to my remembrance, that I felt that same reality. The only way I can describe this moment is to tell you that God was in the room.

I did not sing. I saw the words on the screen. I looked at the person leading the songs and stubbornly did not sing a word. But here’s where things became a bit complicated. The fact is, I did want to sing. All my life, my soul longed to sing out to God. It is hard to explain this tension, but let me put it like this. My soul longed to sing out a song to God, to God’s greatness, but I felt that up to that point, if I were to sing I would simply be singing a song for the sake of being in church. I had never felt the ‘Godness’ of God. It was in this moment that I first sensed the greatness of God all around me. I gave in and started singing.

And what pleasure I felt when I sang. I did not fully comprehend this God to whom I was singing, and I still don’t, but I knew that the one to whom I was singing was real. Deep down, I knew that God was real. Worship, in this case, came before I placed my utter dependence in God. As I tried to make sense of what I experienced that evening, I came across the writings of the late Abraham Heschel. He once wrote that “the secret to spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe. The fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith.”(1) My heart’s expression of worship at the Friday night youth event served as a means to knowing and understanding God more. Indeed, as Heschel pointed out, trust in God was obtained by first acknowledging and responding to the reality of God.

Christian conversion happens in many different ways. As it has been said, there is only one gospel but there are many ways to that gospel. In my case, on one particular evening while I was midway through high school I attended a church youth event not looking for God and was confronted with God’s presence. God’s presence was immediate and palpable. It was then that I encountered God for the first time. I was “overtaken with awe of God”(2) and in singing out, even raising my hands to God, I experienced a rich pleasure that I had never before tasted; pleasure because my voice and hands were finally able to express what my soul had so longed for.

Nathan Betts is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

(1) Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Man? (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), 116.

(2) Ibid.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Scene of Miracle

May 28, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The 1748 essay “Of Miracles” by David Hume was influential in leading the charge against the miraculous, thoughts that were later sharpened (though also later recanted) by Antony Flew. Insisting the laws of a natural world incompatible with the supernatural, the new atheists continue to weigh in on the subject today. With them, many Christian philosophers and scientists, who are less willing to define miracle as something that must break the laws of nature, join the conversation with an opposing gusto. Physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne, for instance, suggests that miracles are not violations of the laws of nature but rather “exploration of a new regime of physical experience.”(1)

The possibility or impossibility of the miraculous fills books, debates, and lectures. What it does not fill is that moment when a person finds herself—rationally or otherwise—crying out for intervention, for help and assurance, indeed, for the miraculous. “For most of us” writes C.S. Lewis, “the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.”(2) To this I would simply add that often prayer is both: both the anguished cry of Gethsemane—”please, take this from me”—prayed at the foot of an impossible mountain.

Whether this moment comes beside a hospital bed, a failing marriage, a grave injustice, or debilitating struggle, we seem almost naturally inclined in some way to cry out for an intervening factor, something or someone beyond the known laws of A + B that sit defiantly in front of us. For my own family that moment came with cancer, complicated by well-intentioned commands to believe without doubt that God was going to take it away. When death took it away instead, like many others in our situation, our faith in miracles—and the God who gives them—were equally devastated.

In the throes of that heart-wrenching scene, every time I closed my eyes to pray, the vision of an empty throne filled my mind. It was something like the vision of Isaiah in the temple, only there was no robe and no body filling anything.(3) My prayers seemed to be given not a resounding “no,” but a non-answer, a cold, agonizing silence, which was also very much an answer. It was only years after the scene of my failed prayers for the miraculous that I was physically startled, again like Isaiah, at the thought that the throne was empty because the one who fills it had stepped down to sit beside us as we cried.

Such a miracle wasn’t the one we were hoping for, and yet, years now after the sting of death, the incarnational hope of a God who comes near—in life, in suffering, even unto the grave—is inarguably the miracle far more profound. I don’t fully know why in the midst of our pain we felt alone and abandoned. Perhaps our eyes were too focused on the scene of the miracle we wanted, such that no other could be seen. ”God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard,” writes C.S. Lewis. ”Our preparations to receive [God] sometimes have the opposite effect. Doesn’t Charles Williams say somewhere that ‘the altar must often be built in one place in order that the fire from heaven may descend somewhere else‘?”(4)

And this somewhere else, the place that catches us off-guard, is maybe even quite often right in front of us, near but unnoticed, miraculous but missed. In the words of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, “I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.”(5)

What if we were to start looking, not for miraculous signs and antepasts from beyond, but for a closer scene of miracle, for invitations to explore that new regime of physical existence brought about by the Incarnation, for foretastes of a banquet to which we are invited even today. Miracle and mystery may well be plainly before our eyes. For of course, Christianity is the story of the great Miracle, the story of the God-Man coming not where we expected, but where we needed him most. Like the kingdom itself and the Christ who came to announce it, the scene of miracle may be nearer than we think.

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

(1) John Polkinghorne, Faith, Science and Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 59.

(2) C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), 60.

(3) See Isaiah 6.

(4) Lewis, 117.

(5) Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 243.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Wholeness, Not Dichotomy

May 27, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Most scholars agree that the Enlightenment or Age of Reason, which began in the early seventeenth century, set up a great dichotomy that persists in modern time.(1) The great “dichotomy” of the Enlightenment entailed the separation of the public and private realms. The public realm was the world of ascertained by reason alone. Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains, “The thinkers of the Enlightenment spoke of their age as the age of reason…by which human beings could attain (at least in principle) to a complete understanding of, and thus a full mastery of, nature—of reality in all its forms. Reason, so understood, is sovereign in this enterprise.”(2) In the realm of reason, therefore, revelation from a divine realm was not needed. Human reason could search out and know all the facts about reality, and “no alleged divine revelation, no tradition however ancient, and no dogma however hallowed has the right to veto its exercise.”(3)

The realm of religious belief was now relegated to the realm of private value and private purpose. It wasn’t that the Enlightenment dichotomy cut out God. Rather, it created a distinction between “natural” religion—God’s existence and the moral laws known by all and demonstrable by reason—and “revealed” religion—doctrines as taught by the Bible and the church. The latter realm, dominant in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, came under increasing attack and was eventually relegated to private expression and personal feelings.

Fueled by scientific and philosophical discoveries, the view of the world as the venue of God’s providence and rule, shifted to the view that sovereign reason could discover all that was necessary to advance humanity toward its highest destiny. All of Christianity’s supernatural claims and all of its revelatory content were unnecessary in a world where the Creator had endowed human beings with enough reason to discern what was important simply by looking at the great book of nature. As such, the autonomous, rational human became the center of truth and knowledge, and that was enough.

What emerged from this dichotomy was the belief that the real world was a world of cause and effect, of material bodies guided solely by mathematically stable laws. It was believed, then, that to have discovered the “cause” of something was to have explained it. There was no need to invoke any supernatural “purpose” or “design” as an explanation any longer.

And yet, purpose remains an inescapable element in human life. Newbigin argues: “Human beings do entertain purposes and set out to achieve them. The immense achievements of modern science themselves are, very obviously, the outcome of the purposeful efforts of hundreds of thousands of men and women dedicated to the achievement of something that is valuable—a true understanding of how things are.”(4) Hence, persisting in the belief that science, for example, is value and purpose-free belies an intentional rejection of reality. The pursuit of science to find causes for effects devoid of any larger purpose will ultimately end in the elimination of all ideals. The very zeal that seeks to explain a world without purpose is a purpose in and of itself.

Proclaiming that purpose infuses human endeavor, and as such, that purposeful human endeavor points to purposeful design, and design to a Designer will not necessarily convince those who see a world only of mechanical cause and effect. Yet, scratch the below the surface of the most strident materialists, and one uncovers a yearning for something more than what can be understood by reason alone. As atheist Sam Harris wrote: “This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute….The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call ‘spiritual.’”(5)

The gospel of John suggests that reason and revelation need not be dichotomized. In this explanation of the significance of Jesus Christ, the objective and the subjective aspects of truth are revealed in a person: “The Word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us.” The divine principle that undergirds all things, as the Greeks understood the Logos, is embodied in the human person, Jesus, according to John’s gospel. And in the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus we have a new starting point for reason. The resurrection is indeed the very basis “for the perpetual praise of God who not only creates order out of chaos, but also breaks through fixed orders to create ever-new situations of surprise and joy.”(6) Ever-new situations of surprise and joy might involve breaking a false dichotomy between public and private faith and the objective and subjective aspects of reality, even between reason and revelation. This one who brings new life and new ways of knowing invites us to wholeness, and not dichotomy.

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

(1) Stanley Grenz and Roger Olsen, 20th Century Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 16-17.

(2) Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 25.

(3) Ibid., 25.

(4) Ibid., 35.

(5) Sam Harris, The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 227.

(6) Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 150.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Church of Amen

May 26, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

It was a worship service gone awry. We had gathered to celebrate the person of Christ, but in the end it seemed we were more celebrating words void of life. I cannot recall the name of the church, the denomination it was a part of, or even what the sermon was about. I only remember the rabbit trail that led us down a darkened hole of condemnation. From body piercings and baggy pants to homosexuals and liberals, the list was long, the frustration clear, and the rationale was fired with as much passion as the targets that had been chosen: “For we recognize that hell is a fearful reality, and that many—maybe even those near to you—will find it their final place of unrest.”

“Amen!” the person in front of me called out. “Yes, amen,” said several others in agreement.

My heart sunk further into my soul than I knew was even possible. Did they know that “Amen!” means “Let it be”?

A great deal of time has passed since this experience, and yet, remembering it still brings despair to mind and a bad taste to my mouth. But what I once remembered only as a particular worship service in a particular city on a particular Sunday afternoon, I now remember as an illustration of the worship service I am all too capable of leading. When I allow myself to cling more to dissent than to Christ, when I cherish words of death more than words of life, when I spend more time complaining about what is wrong with the church than putting energy into being the church, this is exactly the worship experience I recreate—and there are always voices willing to shout “amen” at the end of each of my sermons. Christianity in many circles has become synonymous with negativity.

In his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis took note of a subtle shift in the language of his day, which he felt was the first detour in a road leading far away from Christ. Writes Lewis, “If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philosophical importance.”(1) He goes on to explain the ideologies that grow out of subtle shifts of language. The positive answer requires a perspective that looks outward at others—those who are the recipients of the virtue or else the one from whom this virtue arises in the first place—whereas the negative virtue shows that our concern is primarily with ourselves—our own self-denial—and hence the appearance of good virtue. To this Lewis notes, “The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.” To put this in terms for the subject at hand: Scripture has lots to say about what is wrong with the world. But thankfully, this is never the end of the sermon. (And of course, both the Old and New Testaments have a lot to say about complaining.)

It is very true that we live in a world that is full of philosophical pitfalls, bad behavior, and theology with which we could rightfully see fault. But so it is full of the glory and action of God. So why are we at times more excited to see fault than to see faith? Why are we so quick to complain and so lamentably slow at showing the world our reason to be more fully alive and authentically graceful? The same God who tells us to defend our faith tells us to do so with gentleness and reverence—so that those who abuse you for “your good conduct in Christ” may be put to shame (1 Peter 3:15-16). The same scripture that bids us to do all things “without complaining and arguing” instructs us to do so because it is by our “holding fast to the word of life” that we demonstrate we are truly holding onto a different message than that of a crooked and perverse generation (Philippians 2:14-16). Moreover, the same apostle who died to defend the person of Christ called us to stay focused on the kind of person Christ is: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say ‘Amen’ to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 1:19-20).

In the worship services we create with our words and actions, with the things we do and the things we leave undone, might there be good reason for those around us to say “Amen.”

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

(1) C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), 25.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Freedom and Dignity

May 23, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Sometime ago, a prominent public figure phoned me. Both of us were overseas when he called. Perhaps being miles from home provided him some sense of protection and enabled him to be painfully candid. As I listened to him speak, nothing he told me was any different from what I have heard numerous times before. Perhaps the specifics were different, but the story was the same. He had climbed the pinnacle of success. He had experienced human emotions of the most exhilarating kind. Yet he was like a ship on the high seas without chart, compass, or destination. The conclusion of what he said was that he was at his wit’s end and felt lost. His impressive credentials and his level of despair were totally incongruent. He was living as an icon of success in a make-believe public persona. But privately, both he and his world were falling apart.

I dare say that he is really no different from any of us, if we will but admit it, for we are all totally lost within, despite our accomplishments. This is true for us both as individuals and as a community. Here is the question: Why do we see this so often and yet continue to deny its implications? It is as though we have to learn the same lessons over and over… and still never learn.

But here is the first point of tension with reason. There can be no rational argument against pain unless we assume human dignity, just as there is no reason for restraints on pleasure unless we assume human worth. Life is reduced to an inescapable monotony unless we assume a greater purpose to life; but there is no purpose to life unless we assume design, and death has no significance unless deep inside we seek what is everlasting. These tensions are true across the board in human experience—across cultures, languages, and backgrounds. This is what the Christian faith, in effect, reminds us. Absolute significance and purpose are directly linked to an ultimate design.

It is that subtle assumption of intrinsic worth and purpose that has kept the Western world intact and created the environment and the impetus for the success the West has known. Words like “providence,” “destiny,” “sacred,” and “creator” all carried a direction for life. Generations of men and women have drawn their strength from the Creator and believed in his ultimate purpose. Emergent generations built their successes and opportunities on the foundations others had laid before them. In the darkest moments of Western history, countless Christians have stood in humility before the Lord as representatives of their nations, calling upon God for hope and restoration. There was always a future hope linked to early aspirations and the longing of the soul.

But now in this brave new world, as Christianity is evicted in a culture, I have no doubt that there will not be a vacuum. Rather, a radical form of totalitarian religious belief will take over. The spiritual always tugs at the heart. When the true one is rejected, a spurious one replaces it.

I have sat with leaders in other parts of the world who have voiced their perplexity as to why we in the West don’t see this reality staring us in the face. The birthrate alone tells the future. We are being outnumbered in that category by nearly eight to one to inimical beliefs that seek the domination of the West. The handwriting is on the wall and a sterile secularism will not be able to withstand the religious assault of beliefs that take away our freedom. Only Christianity is strong enough to preserve our freedom and our dignity. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us the enormous privilege of sacred freedom without imposing faith on anyone. Those who mock this faith will find themselves before long under the oppression of an ideological domination that uses religion to gain political and cultural dominance and will not tolerate the mocking of their beliefs without cruel responses.

History is replete with examples that politics never has had and never will have the answers to ensuring the perpetuity of a nation and the freedom and dignity of our souls. From the feudal warlords of ancient Mesopotamia to the divine status of kings in Babylon and Persia, from the democratic and republican ideas of Greece to the empire building of Rome, from the theocracies of Islam and the state church of Europe to flirtation with the idea of freedom without responsibility in postmodern America and the materialism of Communism—what has remained? A world in turmoil.

Political theories come and go. Nations and empires rise and fall. Civilizations wax and wane. For this very reason, Jesus resisted any efforts to make himself an earthly king. The allegiance he wants is that of the heart, for the ultimate universal battle is that of the will against God. In Him alone are we truly made free. The truth of God’s Word that abides forever and results in coherence is first lodged in the heart of a person and then in society. To bring that coherence within takes the grace and the work of God. But it is the heart and will that must sense it and then respond to it. Failing to grasp this is a guarantee of alienation within and then in every outward direction. That is why Jesus said, “I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly” (see John 10:10). He is the author of life and the definer of what is true and good and beautiful. How our hearts hunger for those supremacies. That fulfillment can only come when we submit to his will and know that in Him we are to live and move and have our being. Our lives and our countries need this reminder in every generation.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At the Crux of History

May 22, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In the film Hannah and Her Sisters, the character played by Woody Allen tries to tell his Jewish parents that he has difficulty believing in the God of their faith. His mother won’t hear such nonsense and locks herself in the bathroom. Allen’s character shouts after her, “Well, if there’s a God, then why is there so much evil in the world? Just on a simplistic level, why were there Nazis?” From behind the bathroom door the mother cries out to her husband, “Tell him, Max.” The father replies, “How in the world do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t even know how the can opener works!”

Evil confronts us in many ways, and demands some kind of an answer. Regardless of whether we believe God exists, that we are god, that everything is god, or that there is no god, some kind of answer is needed. To the Christian, the question is posed in light of the view of God that is presented in the Bible, but all beliefs and everyone has to come up with some kind of explanation. The problem of evil demands some kind of philosophical response, but also one that satisfies us existentially.

It has been fashionable of late to reject any and all notions of truth in place of taste and perspective. Reality is merely what one clams it to be. Truth is merely as we see it, or as it is socially constructed. But even when posing the oft-asked questions, “Where was God when such and such an event happened?” or “Why did God allow it to happen?” some knowledge of what life is about is presupposed. Moreover, positing the questions of God’s involvement and whereabouts in the midst of evil presupposes some sense and notion of good.

But where does this notion come from? As the Twin Towers fell in New York City, many of the same voices which days earlier claimed the moral equivalence of all views suddenly seemed compelled to invoke evil as real, as different from something else, and that something called the “good” was both better and to be defended.

The biblical vision captured in the Westminster Confession in 1646 claims: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” To most modern people, the chief end of life is to provide freedom and as much pleasure as we can get forever. Interestingly, as we look back through the history of ideas, the question, “Where is God when it hurts” was not asked before the 17th century. The inquiry has a late pedigree in our making man the center and measure of all things in our considerations.

Yet the Bible clears up any ambiguity about who we are, who God is, what is wrong with the world, and what can be done. The possibility of freely chosen love means allowing conditions that permit freely chosen rejection, evil, or alternatives. Our lack of interest in God and our self-assured confidence excludes any normal or routine reflection on life. For many of us, pain is the platform from which the imperative questions of life are asked and answered. C.S. Lewis put it this way, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The question of God’s presence in the midst of evil is answered in the silhouette at the heart of a different question: Where was God at the crux of human history? As the disciples’ gazed at the cross, their expectations were dashed, their hopes shattered, and they could not see God in the midst of the turning point of history. But at the cross, what people at first could not see was the very triumph of good over evil.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Detective and the Theory

May 21, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

If you want to investigate whether Sherlock Holmes was a real or fictional person, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. His “biography” is as easy to find as Winston Churchill’s (and there seems to be some fact/fiction confusion on both counts).(1) Between the years of 1887 and 1927, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote prolifically of the famous detective known for his heightened skills of observation and eccentric personality. Holmes was both memorable and beloved—and entirely fictional. It is a strange irony indeed that there are a great number of people who would claim the clues suggest otherwise. As Holmes himself once said, “The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”

The process of gathering and interpreting information is never ending. From childhood we learn patterns of life around us and create theories on how it all works and how we must live. Not knowing whether it is insufficient data or fast truth, children readily form theories. For instance, pans on the stove burn fingers. This is one theory a child might conclude having learned the hard way. But as data becomes more sufficient, a child’s theories are readily adjusted—namely, certain parts of a pan on a hot stove burn fingers. Though memory of the sting may last, there seems an unconscious acknowledgment that their theories are the means to understanding and relating to the world. This is very different then theorizing the end they might want, need, or hope to be true.

Strangely, the temptation Sherlock Holmes speaks of—forming theories upon insufficient data—seems to grow with age. As the questions we seek answers for become more difficult, so the ante for interpreting accurately increases as we grow older. And yet, as adults we are often less willing to adjust our theories. The biases we bring into investigating often prevent us from recognizing data as insufficient or tampered with. We also more readily remember the sting of being burned and hold on to it in our interpretation, so that even to some of life’s deepest questions we are responding with predisposed theories. For instance, God cannot exist because if God did exist my mother wouldn’t have died so young, or tsunamis and hurricanes wouldn’t kill people, or I wouldn’t still be struggling with my finances. How would we respond to a child who insisted that if broccoli were good for her, it would taste like candy?

In one of his essays, F.W. Boreham writes of his grade school difficulties with geography class. When the teacher spoke of life in a far-off land, he found himself drifting off to scenes in that land and remaining there long after they had switched to another destination. One day, catching him in the midst of a daydream, the teacher called on Boreham and asked, “What part of the world are we studying?” Recognizing a fellow student in distress, a friend scribbled the correct rejoinder on the paper beside them. ”Java is the answer,” said Boreham. “Good,” the teacher noted, “Now tell me, what was the question?”

When the theories we hold as answers become the end and not the means to understanding, we eventually lose sight of the question. “If God exists,” we essentially ask, “why wouldn’t God be like the God I want to believe in?” or “why wouldn’t God be revealed in the way that I need God to be revealed?” We unreasonably hold the answers without realizing the questions we are even asking. “I maintained that God did not exist,” noted C.S. Lewis of his years as an atheist, “I was also very angry with God for not existing.” There are answers we cling to without admitting the question we have asked is faulty.

I believe the clues of a creative and personal God are all around us. I am convinced that Christ’s vicarious humanity is unique in its ability to change and transform lives. I also know the desperation of clinging to the answers that keep us from really seeing the evidence. But this is not seeing. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that we are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Will we investigate the evidence of God with a mind to see what is really there? Perhaps there is indeed something to the call of Jesus to receive the kingdom of God like a little child.

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

(1) “Fact & Fiction: Churchill Seen as Fake, Sherlock Holmes as Real-life Detective,” USA Today, February 4, 2008.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Work of the Invisible

May 20, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

At any given moment during any time of the year, were you to visit my home, you would find a stack of books on the nightstand beside my bed. Not only do I have stacks of books by my bed, but my office desk is a maze of books. One trail consists of current research, another devotional material, and still another biography and history. Generally, these books represent my varied interests of study. But recently, a new pile of books has emerged amidst the others; I’ve begun collecting books on science, and specifically on physics.

Now for those who love science, and particularly physics, you might wonder why I wouldn’t have a library dedicated to the subject. But for those who, like me, didn’t go far beyond biology, you might think me crazy, or masochistic, or both.

Physics in its simplest definition is the study of matter, energy, and the interaction between them.(1) Physicists are concerned with the “stuff” that makes up the universe as well as with questions concerning the beginning of the universe, and the building blocks of matter. As such, they are often concerned with elements so small that they cannot be seen even with the aid of the most powerful microscope. John Polkinghorne, quantum physicist and Anglican priest, explains, “We now know that atoms themselves are made out of still smaller constituents (quarks, gluons, and electrons….we do not see quarks directly, but their existence is indirectly inferred).” While physicists can only see, as it were, the “shadow” of these tiny realities of matter, they point to and indeed make up materials all around us. I cannot see them, but I trust they are there and at work when I sit down on my office chair each day.

My interest in physics began by considering this particular statement from Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is…the conviction of things not seen.” What a complex and seemingly paradoxical statement about the nature of faith! How can we have a conviction in things that are beyond our senses, beyond our perception and understanding? Can we really sustain conviction in that which is beyond our experiential circumstances?

Writing long before modern physics, the apostle Paul wrote that “what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot is eternal…for we walk by faith not by sight” (2 Corinthians 4:18, 5:7). Like the quantum physicists who affirm the existence of gluons even though they cannot be directly observed, only inferred, the conviction of faith is the ability to see through tangible circumstances to the spiritual realities behind them. Perhaps it is a form of wisdom and insight. For the apostle Paul also insists that there is grace and strength in weakness and a certain kind of wisdom that is found in both the foolishness of the cross and in the suffering Christ. It is, as Jesus instructed, a blessing and joy that is found among those who weep. All these offer the opportunity, for those who “see through a mirror dimly,” to be bound to a concrete reality in God (1 Corinthians 13:12).

In this sense, then, the conviction of faith sometimes calls us to go beyond reason and tangible knowledge to wisdom. And when suffering or difficulty comes, faith calls beyond a desire for ease and comfort to embrace endurance. The writer of Hebrews names a whole cast of characters known through Israel’s history who endured in faith, endured even when the promise was not received or seen, even when they were “tortured, mocked, scourged, stoned, imprisoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, impoverished afflicted and ill-treated” (Hebrews 11:35-38). These were individuals of whom the world was not worthy, the writer tells us. They were able to see beyond their circumstances to a spiritual reality. They saw there is something at work in the invisible.

The “conviction of things not seen” is the substance of faith. It is the attention to those spiritual realities that are the true substance behind the circumstances of our daily lives. The conviction of faith is the ability to see beyond the finite to the infinite—in much the same way as physicists have discovered the infinite world of sub-atomic particles. Those invisible particles provide the essential structure for what we see all around us.

In the classic story of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes of a little fox who promises to reveal the secret of life to the young boy in the story. When the secret is finally revealed it is this: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”(3) Likewise, faith sees what cannot always be seen with the eye. It is the conviction of spiritual truths that give substance to reality.

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

(1) See physics.org.

(2) John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (London: SPCK, 2005), 3.

(3) Antoine de Saint-Exupery as cited by Thomas Long, Interpretation: Hebrews (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), 114.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Arrival

May 19, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“As for me,” said American writer E.B. White, “I enjoy living among pedestrians who have an instinctive and habitual realization that there is more to a journey than the mere fact of arrival.”(1)

Under typical circumstances, the beloved author of Charlotte’s Web would not have presented me with much pause here. The pause of agreement, yes, for his is the kind of thought with which I deeply resonate. Particularly in the segments of life where we are comfortable with our divided realms, we lamentably fail to see the great gift of the collective whole. Much to our own detriment, the end triumphs over means, destination over the journey, heaven is removed from earth, the spiritual from the physical, the present from the eternal. White’s words fit aptly upon any soapbox addressing the gift of a journey, the miracle of the ordinary, the need for an undivided life—head and heart, journey and arrival. Or indeed, the paradox of a kingdom that is both present and approaching, a kingdom found both along the way and in our final arrival. In the mysterious kingdom Jesus espoused, the journey toward it is not a matter of merely arriving one distant day at the gates of pearl, but rather finding the pearl of great price in our midst even now and seizing it for all eternity. Under typical circumstances, I would have enlisted E.B. White’s voice in one of my favorite sermons and kept moving.

But I read this quote as I watched live coverage of 33 Chilean miners emerging from a two-month journey of being trapped beneath the earth. For them, the journey was indeed astounding, but the arrival was everything.

Over seventy years ago from a pulpit in London, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the image of a man trapped after a mining disaster: Deep in the earth, dark as night, the man is cut off and alone. The supply of oxygen is limited. Food, water, and options are scarce; silence and fear are not. He knows his situation, and he can do nothing but wait. Writes Bonhoeffer, “He knows that up there, the people are moving about, the women and children are crying—but the way to them is blocked. There is no hope.”(2) But what if just then, in the distance, the sounds of tapping are heard—the sound of knocking, the sound of friends, the sounds of drills, rescue capsules, and deliverance? This, said Bonhoeffer in December of 1933, is the hope of the Incarnation: the coming of a deliverer, the drawing near of God to humankind, the arrival of Christ our rescuer in flesh like ours. Like the Chilean miners, elated at the arrival of Manuel Gonzalez, the rescuer sent 2,040 feet underground to coordinate the procedure, Christ’s arrival into our dark world matters most profoundly. His descent assures our ascent, his vicarious humanity ever changes the possibilities of our own.

But his arrival is not the end of our waiting. The journey continues. “Can and should there be anything else more important for us than the hammers and blows of Jesus Christ coming into our lives?” asks Bonhoeffer.(3) Indeed, no. The Incarnation of the Son of God teaches us how to wait and to watch, how to experience the journey expectantly, though we remain in the dark, though we find ourselves impatient pedestrians anxious for new scenery. We learn to be pedestrians bent on arrival, but alert on the journey nonetheless: “When these things begin to take place,” instructs Christ, “stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

The world is of course still dark and lonely. But in it every day and each new year is the startling hope of a rescuer in our midst with whom we share our humanity. “There are actually 34 of us,” wrote Jimmy Sanchez from underground, who at 19 years old was the youngest trapped miner, “because God has never left us down here.”(4) The signs and sounds of this hope are all around: sounds of God’s reign in unexpected places; signs of Christ in fellow pedestrians; the sounds of saints who have gone before us, and now stand on the solid surface of our hope.

The story of Christianity is a journey of arrivals—of Christ’s arrival. And it is this storied mystery we are invited to proclaim: Christ has arrived. Christ is among us. Christ will come again.

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

(1) E.B. White, One Man’s Meat (Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House Publishers, 1997), 108.

(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 89.

(3) Ibid., 96.

(4) Tim Padgett, “Chile’s Mine Rescue: Media Circus and Religious Revival,” Time Online, October 12, 2010, http://www.time.com/, accessed October 19, 2010.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Firm Foundation of Unyielding Despair

May 16, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“April is the cruellest month…” begins the first line of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The poem is thought to be a portrayal of universal despair, where we lie in wait between the unrelenting force of spring and the dead contrast of winter, and the casualty of the warring seasons is eventually hope. In the bold display of life’s unending, futile circles, one can be left to wonder at the point of it all. Does everything simply fade into a waste land? Is death the last, desperate word? Perhaps it was somewhere in the midst of spring when the prophet reeled over life’s abrupt and senseless end. “In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years? For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise. The living, the living—they praise you as I am doing today” (Isaiah 38:10, 18-19b).

Though differing in degree and conclusions, literature is unapologetically full of a sense of this deep irony, at times expressing itself in futility. Euripides, writing in the fifth century, remarks,

“…and so we are sick for life, and cling

On earth to this nameless and shining thing.

For other life is a fountain sealed,

And the deeps below us are unrevealed

And we drift on legends for ever.”(1)

Shakespeare, on the lips of Macbeth, is struck by the monotonous beat of time and the futile story it adds up to tell.

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”(2)

Nietzsche further determines that there is nothing distinct about life at all. “Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species…”(3) And in the face of this certain futility, Bertrand Russell explains that we must somehow build our lives boldly upon this “firm foundation of unyielding despair.”(4)

Is this the only fitting response to such a familiar anguish? Must the human lament over fears of death and the uncertainty of life go unanswered—with only our brave, but futile, attempts to face them?

During the Second World War in the midst of her own unyielding despair, Edith Sitwell wrote of a very different foundation. Hers was not a simple-minded declaration of a better place, a billowy picture of a heavenly home and an escape vehicle to get there; nor was it a picture of a powerful Christendom, hope built up by the armor of control and certainty. Her foundation was not the scaffolding of wishful thinking, a psychological hope made into a practical crutch. It was, on the contrary, a picture entirely unpractical, a weak and beaten man, a defeated God crying with her. She wrote:

Still falls the Rain—

Dark as the world of man, black as our loss—

Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails

Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain—

Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:

He bears in His Heart all wounds, —those of the light that died,

The last faint spark

In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark

The cross reminds us that it is permissible—in fact, deeply human—to speak the words at the very depths of our questioning souls. We are at times overwhelmed by abrupt glimpses of life’s finitude, the darkness of suffering, the cruelty of April and the pained limbo of waiting for something different. We are at times devastatingly aware that we are human, we are dust, and we are easily overwhelmed, assailed by fear and death and uncertainty with what is beyond. On these days it is not Christendom that consoles us, not an image of God in the highest, but an image of Christ in the lowest. In the midst of human despair, we are given the cross to cling to, the picture of Jesus in his own unyielding despair, suffering both with us and on our behalves. Following him as savior, we must follow him to the cross, where we find, in his life cut short, hope for our own wounds and our own brief lifetimes, and life where death stings and tears flow.

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

(1) Euripides, Hippolytus, Lines 195-199.

(2) Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, 19–28.

(3) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader (New York: Penguin, 1977), 201.

(4) Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship” Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), 46.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Fairest Jesus

May 15, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The sharp distinction between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith common in New Testament studies has proven to be an inexhaustible mine for those searching for melodramatic ideas to bounce around during important Christian holidays. The historical Jesus is taken to be the merely human person who was born and raised in Palestine and was crucified during the days of Pontius Pilate. The Christ of faith is assumed to be a mythical, supernatural figure invented by the early admirers of the earthly Jesus. Such thinking flourished in eighteenth century German biblical scholarship, particularly after the posthumous publication of the private notes of Herman Samuel Reimarus between 1774 and 1778.

Inspired by Reimarus’s doubts concerning the historicity of the biblical record, many other scholars published monographs in which they cast Jesus in various religious and cultural roles unhinged from the supernatural. The whole movement, which became known as “the old quest of the historical Jesus,” was brought to a near screeching halt by the 1906 publication of Albert Schweitzer’s book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, whose title also branded the movement. Schweitzer demonstrated that the scholars of the old quest shared something in common—they relied heavily on their presuppositions about who they believed Jesus was and so “each individual created him in accordance with his own character.”(1) In other words, each one of them ended up producing the Jesus they went out looking for in the first place.

Unfortunately, the tendency to recast Jesus in our own image continues even in our day. In scholarly circles, it is represented by the Jesus Seminar which refuses to allow the possibility of the supernatural for those who have “seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope.”(2) Even among believers, it rears its ugly head whenever we prefix the name of Jesus with the possessive pronoun “my” in order to secure our turf from unwelcome scrutiny. A few years ago, a friend and I attended a church in which several people broke out in convulsive laughter in the middle of the worship service. My friend later informed me that they were laughing in Jesus. I knew something about the historical Jesus, but this was my first encounter with the hysterical Jesus and further evidence of his protean flexibility in human hands.

The allure of the personality of Jesus is impossible to shake off, whether in profane expressions of provocation or in moments of fervent praise. Enthusiastic children sing about him in Sunday school, while seasoned, scrupulous, dyed-in-the-wool ivory tower scholars make flourishing careers out of studying or even quibbling with his words. The New Ager wants him for an ascended master. The Hindu wants him for a guru. The Muslim will accept him as a prophet of Allah. The secular humanist admires him as a great moral teacher, and the oppressed of the world identify with his suffering. Like an immensely gifted athlete with some eccentric personality quirkiness, it seems Jesus will be welcomed into almost any team, provided the coaches retain a measure of confidence that they can tame him. We insist on meeting Jesus on our own terms, and our ideas of who he is invariably take the form of our most cherished images. Like the proverbial queen in Snow White, our questions about Jesus are sometimes motivated by predetermined answers. We ask, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which Jesus is the fairest of them all?” and the only answer we will accept is the one that best suits our fancies.

But in spite of our audacious determination to craft a custom-made god out of the story of Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible remains in complete command of himself and us. When the dust settles, it is the eternally imposing figure of the one claiming to be the Incarnate Son of God that lies behind the hauntingly inescapable question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). Any honest search for an answer to this question must take our presuppositions to account in light of the available evidence. The main question we all have to contend with is our attitude towards a world in which there exists a Being totally outside our control and to whom we must subject our autonomy. In his book, The Last Word, philosopher Thomas Nagel may have spoken for many when he attributed his own preference for the non-existence of God to a “cosmic authority problem.”(3)

We are easily broken over the pain and suffering we see around us, and well we should. But what a day of rejoicing it is when our hearts are broken by the sweet bitterness of seeing that suffering and our own sinfulness against the blinding purity of the Son of God; when our fists begin to loosen our grip on the stones we would self-righteously cast at others, and when we finally approach God, not as his advisors, but as sinners in need of mercy and forgiveness! When the intent is right and the mirror is the word of God in its historical context, the revelation that true beauty lies in Christ alone will only drive us ever closer to the restoration of our own beauty in God. Such an encounter with our Creator is not to be found amidst the cacophony of noises within the factory of dedicated god-crafters; it is best seen when nothing obscures our view of the cross.

J.M. Njoroge is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia

(1) Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 4.

(2) Robert Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 2.

(3) Thomas Nagel, The Last Word, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 131.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Faith and Mystery

May 14, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Long before Horatio Caine or Gil Grissom made crime scene investigating a primetime enterprise, the Bloodhound Gang was “there on the double” “wherever there’s trouble,” a doughty group of junior detectives who used science to solve crimes. Written by Newbery Medal-winning children’s author Sid Fleischman, the Bloodhound Gang was a beloved segment on the PBS television program 3-2-1 Contact, and my first encounter with the almost unbearable suspension, “To be continued.” Thankfully, with the help of their knowledge of science, no mystery remained unsolved for long.

What I did not realize at the time, or through years of absorbing Unsolved Mysteries, CSI, and my own scientific pursuits, was the hold that simple word “solve” would have on my understanding of mystery. For the Bloodhound Gang, as much as for the philosophers of science who have given rise to the notion, science is the invasion and defeat of mystery. That is to say, for many scientists (though certainly not for all historically), mysteries are there to be solved and put finally beyond us.

One can see how such a notion fuels the perception that science and faith are at odds with one another; science being the conquest of mystery and faith the act of making room for it. For Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor and cognitive scientist, certain aspects of religious belief can be thought of as “desperate measure[s] that people resort to when the stakes are high and they’ve exhausted the usual techniques for the causation of success.”(1) In other words, religion, like the story of the stork for parents not ready for their kids to know where babies come from, is simply a desperate attempt to explain away mystery, even if only by making space for it. And faith is thus seen as the grossly inferior CSI agent.

But what if mystery is less like a case for the Bloodhound Gang and more like the molecule of DNA they use to solve the crime? In so much of the culture in which we operate today, mystery is thought of in reductionistic terms. It is a momentary fascination that needs some higher reasoning, future information, or an hour of crime scene investigating to solve and explain. Everything we do technologically, medically, and scientifically is an attempt to put an end to mystery—to explain everything. But is that remotely possible? And would a reasonable explanation always dispel the mystery in the first place? As Thomas Huxley once put it, “[H]ow is it that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue?”(2) Is mystery always something to be solved?

In fact, the Greek word ‘mysterion,’ from which we get the word “mystery” does not necessarily mean something that is concealed (and hence, in need of our solution). It can also mean something that is revealed—as in a secret. In other words, mystery is not a problem in need of resolution, a concealed issue in need of an explanation. But mystery in this sense is something shown or given, albeit in a surprising, obscure way. It is in this sense of the word that early church father Tertullian spoke of the mystery of faith and ceremonial acts that join the believer to Christ—namely, our baptisms into his life, death, and resurrection, our celebration and consumption of his body and blood. It is a mystery, a gift, a fuller life revealed. Faith is not a theological solution to mystery in the CSI sense of the word; it is the celebration of this mystery—indeed, The mystery.

And at this, it is a mystery all the more captivating than those that can be solved in an hour or in a microscope. For it is a mystery that God has revealed to minds which don’t fully understand or yet fully see, a mystery worthy of a whole lifetime. It is mystery reminiscent of the words of Simone Weil: “God wears Himself out through the infinite thickness of time and space in order to reach the soul and to captivate it…it has in its turn, but gropingly, to cross the infinite thickness of time and space in search of Him whom it loves. It is thus that the soul, starting from the opposite end, makes the same journey that God made towards it. And that is the cross.”(3)

Every Sunday before holding the bread by which we remember all that has been revealed in Christ, all that has been given in the cross, whether seen in part or partly understood, Christians profess in unison the mystery of faith. It is a mystery that does not need my solution, a mystery that continues to surprise, to nourish, and to reveal itself in life and in death: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

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

(1) Steven Pinker, “The Evolutionary Psychology of Religion,” presented at the annual meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Madison, Wisconsin, October 29, 2004.

(2) T.H. Huxley & W.J. Youmans, The Elements of Physiology and Hygiene: A Text-book for Educational Institutions (New York: Appleton & Co., 1868), 178.

(3) Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Arthur Wills (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 140-141.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Art of Being Misunderstood

May 13, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Having a nearly 100 pound German shepherd dog creates both opportunities and challenges. Like most German shepherds, my dog has the intense gaze and keen alertness typical of the breed. He does not have an ‘inside bark’ but rather exerts the full capacity of his lungs whenever a visitor or stranger comes to the door. For the person on the other side, venturing into the house is filled with fear. For all they know, a barking-mad, wild beast of a dog awaits them! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the wide-berth I am given or the anxious looks I receive as I traverse the sidewalks of my neighborhood with my dog. He looks and sounds absolutely ferocious.

Given this description, it might be hard to believe that I have ample opportunities to showcase my dog’s gentle, calm, and loving demeanor despite his apparent ferocity. Kaiser is quick to roll over on his side when he meets another dog. His ears flatten with joy and his tail wags a mile a minute as he greets children and adults alike. For those who give him the opportunity, he proves himself time and time again to be an affectionate, docile canine.

My dog Kaiser is often misunderstood. His size, the reputation of the breed, and past memories of fearful encounters with large dogs will forever preclude a wonderful encounter. While I know this intellectually, I cannot help but take it personally every time I see individuals cross over to the other side of the street. No matter how much convincing I do, or how well-behaved my dog, there will always be those who simply don’t believe me when I tell them how friendly he is and how much he loves to meet other dogs and people. I reluctantly conclude that there will always be some people who misunderstand my dog and his good intentions.

This is a trivial example of being misunderstood—which is a painful fact of life. Being misunderstood is never pleasant or easy, and can often feel like a personal rejection. Being misunderstood can also stir up feelings of self-righteous anger. How could this person believe that about me? Don’t they know me better? Why wouldn’t she give me the benefit of the doubt? The desire to justify oneself rises up like a wave. I am right, I am smart, my point is valid….

As I think about my own reaction to being misunderstood, I recognize how often it is rooted in pride. Like the Hollywood image-makers who craft perfect personas, I desire to be viewed in the best possible light—always. My fragile ego cannot hold up when I am not seen as ‘perfect’ by others. In this way, misunderstanding offers me the gift of being able to see the true nature of my shabbily built self-image; for any misunderstanding of my super-human status demolishes its self-righteous construction.

As a Christian, when I read the gospels I find that Jesus mastered the art of being misunderstood. He often asked questions rather than giving answers. Or he answered those who questioned him with parables or enigmatic exhortations that left his followers (and those on the outside) without even the smallest shred of understanding. Consider his remarks in the gospel of John as an example:

I am the living bread which comes down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews therefore began to argue with one another saying, ‘how can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in yourselves.(1)

The gospel goes on to tell the reader that as a result of Jesus saying these things many of his followers withdrew and were not walking with him any longer. But Jesus doesn’t go on the offensive and try to explain what he was saying. He leaves the very hard things he has just said to stand. Mysteriously, he allows himself to be misunderstood. He leaves room for those who heard these strange sayings to wonder; he leaves room for wrestling, and even for many to walk away.

While there are many facets of Jesus’s art, his willingness to be misunderstood is a facet I cannot ignore. His conversations, his questions, his hard sayings all create an often uneasy space for those who want to justify themselves. He does not have the need to be understood, or to maintain a perfect persona. His was not a presence that clamored for attention nor did he strive to protect his image.

While there are many things I do to create misunderstanding that must be corrected and made right, there will always be times when what I say or do—even with the best of intentions—will be misunderstood. In these times, I have the opportunity to allow room for misunderstanding, or I can give way to my desire for self-protection, or worse, self-promotion. In remaining in that uneasy space, a certain kind of art can be created. It is the art of practicing a necessary discipline—like Jesus—to “have no stately form or majesty,” nor craft an appearance to which “anyone would be attracted.” Instead, as followers of the one who was despised and forsaken we too can practice the art of being misunderstood.

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

(1) See John 6:48-66.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Land of Likeness

May 12, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

There are some questions we ask over and over again even though we don’t really believe the answers. ”What do you want to be when you grow up” is one such question. My younger sister’s answers once ranged from “a chicken” to “a ballerina” to “an explorer in Africa” depending on her mood. Ironically, as one gets closer to initiating that choice with a first job, the question can seem more than a little misleading. There was a time when choosing an answer for the smiling questioner seemed much like choosing a point on a map with endless possibilities. And logically, it followed that the shortest distance between this point and our current locale was, as we learned in high school geometry, a straight line. Somewhere between geometry and job interviews, however, most of us discover that the choice is neither an end point nor the distance as direct as the crow flies. Winding roads and unlikely encounters later, we find ourselves with roles we might never have been able to articulate in the first place.

In the world of spiritual expression and character, similar assumptions are often made. We look at people like Gandhi or mother Theresa, Saint Augustine or Julian of Norwich, Oscar Romero or Martin Luther King—people who are remembered for their spirituality, uncompromising characters, or brave and bold faith in times of need—and we think of their faith as points on a map, distances that can be reached with certain steps—or conversely, locales not reached because the distance is just too far. Probably many of us imagine these steps as nearly impossible, far too lofty as goals for our own lives. But we see their spirituality nonetheless as a choice and a destination: missionary, martyr, saint, apostle. We see in their faith a location that is reached with standard steps and directions, a straight path to a determined place we may never reach.

There is a sense that this is true, that the greatest saints who lived the most beautiful lives for God indeed sought that faithfulness and followed a particular way to their rich spirituality. For the Christian, the one we follow is unapologetic about that particular way. ”I am the way,” he said causing both amazement and fury. His most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, is full of direct and bold expressions of what following him would look like. He was entirely unambiguous about the qualities of a disciple that make him or her blessed: ”Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Blessed are the merciful… Blessed are the pure in heart… Blessed are the peacemakers… Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (Matthew 5:3-10). The most notable Christians in history indeed share many of these qualities.

But there is something quite misguided about seeing these spiritual qualities as particular destinations with straight roads between you and an estimated time of arrival. In our world of instant access, easy connections, and ever present ten-steps-to-a-better-you, the danger is to think of spirituality as we might a career choice with childish eyes, to think of it as a destination in the first place, and at that, a destination with standard directions and a set path. What if, on the contrary, spirituality is less a destination to pursue than a life lived, a way embodied, a person joined? What if it is an awareness of the creator so deeply within us, a union with the one so vicariously human, that it actually puts flesh on what it means to be human? Thus, Jesus concludes his list of beatitudes with, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (5:11). For the vicarious connection between the shape of our lives and his own is unmistakable.

For the Christian, sainthood is not a set destination to work toward, but a deepening of our own life with Christ as we become more like the one to which we are united. To be spiritual, then, is likely not to become “humble” or “joyful” or “pure in heart,” but to become like Christ, and subsequently, to become more like ourselves. United with him, we are creatures who are continually discovering the likeness of God in our lives, discovering ourselves as we once were. This is not to say we are never tempted to wander in what Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard called the “the Land of Unlikeness”—to wander away from the likeness of God within us and deeper into the places of unlikeness.(1) But this is no more binding than a child’s decision to be a astronaut even after he discovers a disdain for math. To make room in our lives for God is always an option at any stage in life, one that just might open us up to new depths of identity and personhood—both Christ’s and our own.

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

(1) As cited in Jon Sweeney, The Lure of Saints (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006), 203.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Faces in the Light

May 9, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Master photographer Edward Steichen once remarked that the mission of photography is to explain human to human and each to him or herself—a mission he found at once both complicated and naïve, but worth fumbling toward. “Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper,” notes Steichen. “The photographer begins with the finished product.” It is a thought befitting of a scene from 2001, when the who’s who of the country’s finest photographers volunteered their time for such a mission. What they discovered is that when the “finished products” are the faces of children in foster care systems across the country, photography can offer the chance of new life.

Diane Granito is the founder of the Heart Gallery, a unique program that uses photography to help find homes for older foster children, sibling groups, and other children who are traditionally difficult to place with families.(1) The program started in New Mexico in 2001 at the suggestion of a local photographer. Space was then donated by a prominent gallery in the city, where more than 1,000 people came opening night. The photos on exhibit were the end result of the photographers’ attempts to coax out the unique personalities in hundreds of children—a great contrast to the typical photos attached to a child’s file. “They look like mug shots,” said one of the photographers of the typical case photos. “This is an opportunity to just portray them as kids in their environments,” said another involved. “We’re treating this as a living, breathing project.”

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

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

We all have many faces that could be portrayed to the world. If the pictures that represented us to the world were pictures that showed our worst sides, I wonder how different the circles of people around us would be. There are definitely certain faces I would prefer not to have captured in a photograph and placed in my file. While those close to me have by now seen me in many kinds of light, it is frightening to imagine my adoption being contingent on any one of them. And yet, for the Christian, this is precisely the story we tell. Our adoption as God’s own was completed as we stood in the worst of all possible lights. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That is to say, as Christ died for the sins of the world, he held dear even the pictures of us at our worst.

While imprisoned for his attempts to stand again Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with the many reflections of his own life. As a seminary instructor he was considered a saint and a giant. In America they made him feel like an escapist. In prison they made him feel like a criminal. There were days when he saw himself as all three and all the stages in between. It was in such a convolution of images that he asked:

“Who am I?

This or the other?

Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,

And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me still like a beaten army,

Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me,

these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.”(2)

In the Christian story, our adoption by God is our identity. It is the picture we hold as children until the day when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, and God will wipe every tear from our eyes. And neither death nor life, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from this love of God that is in Christ.

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

(1) See http://www.heartgalleryofamerica.org/.

(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 348.

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Category Archives: Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Point of Exclusion

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Where Other Creeds Fail

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Trust in Crooked Paths

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Remembering How to Walk on Water

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Sigh of Relief

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unexpected Encounter

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Scene of Miracle

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Wholeness, Not Dichotomy

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Church of Amen

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Freedom and Dignity

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At the Crux of History

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Detective and the Theory

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Work of the Invisible

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Arrival

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Firm Foundation of Unyielding Despair

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Fairest Jesus

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Faith and Mystery

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Art of Being Misunderstood

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Land of Likeness

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Faces in the Light

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