Category Archives: Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Apologetics for Whom?

November 18, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

When I was a student fielding attacks on the Bible or the logic of Christianity, feeling threatened by the claims of other religions, or merely finding myself alone in the dark night of my own doubt, the discovery of apologetics was like the discovery of a good friend or a warm blanket. It is infinitely comforting to discover a God who can handle tough inquiry, and more than assuring to realize the truth is not contingent on my making sense of it. And while it is good to discover that we can ask questions and be asked questions without feeling like the tower of faith will come crashing down, apologetics is so much more than a tool for the fearful.

While reading the other day, I happened upon something that alluded to the “Christian arsenal”—those items, ideas, and arguments that “arm” Christians in a hostile world with facts and certainty. Among other things, the author described helpful resources for a world of challenging questions, harsh accusations, and conflicting worldviews. While some of the books in particular were things that I, too, had found helpful, hearing them referenced in terms of weaponry and fear seemed a disheartening incongruity. Like a chorus of self-assured debaters singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” when apologetics becomes something aimed to help us fight, or to help us feel secure, the gospel itself seems somehow lost in the battle. Sadly for many, the work of apologetics remains far more about ourselves than our neighbors, far more about the Christian arsenal than the love of God and creation. Subsequently, the gospel is not presented as good news, or even average news. On the contrary, the gospel is presented as something that proves: I am right.

When the apostle Paul spoke to the Athenians at the Aeropagus, he did not come with a barrage of clever answers, trite comebacks, and confident Scriptures. In fact, he didn’t quote Scripture at all. In his own words, he told them the story that changed his life. He also told it not in the language and imagery with which he would have most fluent and comfortable, but in a language the Athenians themselves would recognize. While those of the Aeropagus kept themselves current with every new and coming school of thought and religious conjecture, they were likely unfamiliar with the Jewish Scriptures, the story of Israel, and the God who chose them. Thus, Paul began at the beginning, but he did so in a way that invited them to see he was telling their story, too. “Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands” (Acts 17:23-24). His arguments, reasoning, teaching, and commending were all offered in humility, respect, and love.

Of course, this is not to say the apostle’s words were easily embraced or dimly spoken. Before a council that regularly and eagerly heard new teachings, Paul presented a teaching that would not stand beside others, a Logos who would not remain as one lesson embraced among many. His words were controversial, but they were not hurled in battle. While there is indeed biblical imagery that alludes to the conflicts that come when we carry the name of Christ, for the sake of the gospel, Paul strives to be “all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:22). While the call of Christ is indeed a call to put on spiritual armor, renounce what is false, and live counter-culturally, none of this imagery is intended to contradict the image Christ gave of one’s neighbors. As Paul reiterates the lesson of Jesus, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). The danger in seeing the Christian life as a battlefield and the work of apologetics as weaponry is that we begin to see enemies instead of neighbors, obstacles that need to be overcome instead of people we are told to love.

In his message to the Athenians, Paul not only established a common ground, he grounded their differences in thoughts that included philosophers they respected. He saw them as neighbors with valuable thoughts and minds. “As even your own poets have noted,” we are “God’s offspring,” and therefore, not distant material byproducts of an unknown maker. God is far nearer than we realize, far closer than handmade idols contend, or obstructive altars permit. Within this crowd of first century Greek philosophers, the unique apologetic challenges were many. But Paul’s presentation was deftly suited to their specific worldviews, pursuits, and ideals. Far from using apologetics, the gospel, or persuasion as weaponry, Paul spoke gently and respectfully to crowd who had invited him to answer their questions. He spoke not to obstacles or enemies, but to men and women made in the image of the very God he stood before them to proclaim.

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

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Ravi Zacharias – Will and Impulse

November 15, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Author Daniel Goleman wrote a best-selling book in 1995 called Emotional Intelligence. He begins that book with the heart-stirring story of Gary and Mary Jean Chauncey who were in the Amtrak train that went down over a bridge into swirling waters which swallowed up the lives of many. They themselves were trapped in their compartment as they tried desperately to save their eleven year-old wheelchair ridden daughter Andrea. They succeeded in saving her life, and they did so at the cost of their own.

In describing this noble act, Goleman points out that such emotionally charged moments do not give birth to impulse in a vacuum, but rather it is the outworking of a commitment to certain values and truths already made in one’s life. I believe Goleman is right in this sense. What is most obvious in the love and commitment of these parents to their young one is that passionate commitments never stand alone; they stand on the foundation of a worldview.

I mention this holding thought of many wars and much heartache around the globe, killings, insurgencies, and other manmade devastations. We shake our heads in disbelief that murderous and cruel individuals can masquerade throughout the world as heroes and saviors. They are not. They are destroyers of lives, addicted to hate and power. The truth is that many have wedded hate to their own selfish wills, and once hate lives in the human heart reason dies.

In fact, this is why Jesus said that it is not murder that is the crime; it is hate, the foundation where it all begins. He said that it is not adultery that makes a relationship wrong; it is the lust from where it all begins. You see, our actions do not come just by impulse. They come by a system of values to which our lives are deeply committed. Murderers and masterminds of violence and oppression are rarely emotionally deranged people; they are morally perverted. Their thinking is destructive and their emotions follow.

There is a simple lesson here. We must learn to think righteously if we are to act righteously. We must think justly and honorably and mercifully if we are to act with goodness and honor and mercy. And for this kind of strength, only God’s power is big enough. I hope your life and mine can learn to think God’s thoughts. Only then can hate be conquered and life be lived with truth and love.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Too Good to Be True

November 14, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

You may have heard it said that religion only survives because people desperately want it to be true, because they can’t come to terms with their own mortality (or that of loved ones). It was Sigmund Freud who helped to popularize this idea, as he suggested that the concept of a loving Creator was simply a psychological projection of a person’s innermost wishes:

“We tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there was a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is the very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.”(1)

This kind of argument would seem to ring true, at least on a superficial level. You would expect it to be more likely for people to believe in something that they like than something that they don’t, and it is clear that Christianity is powerfully compelling. In fact, the argument itself is an admission of this, as it acknowledges the innate desire in us all that is fulfilled by God. Who wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with a loving deity who not only wants the best for those he has created, but who is offering eternity in a place that is more wonderful than can be imagined? Yet the Bible also contains some very hard-hitting passages, which would seem to contradict the notion that religious belief is simply a projection of our wishes. C. S. Lewis pointed out that scripture also teaches that believers should fear the Lord, but you would not then suggest that this meant faith was some kind of “fear fulfillment”!(2)

The problem with the argument is that it cuts both ways. If you suggest that people only believe because they want it to be true, then the counter-claim is that atheists are only non-believers because they don’t want it to be true. Some people have expressly stated this, such as Aldous Huxley who wrote:

“For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust.”(3)

As Czeslaw Milosz points out, this is a negative wish-fulfillment, because “A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”(4)

The problem with these types of argument is that, as Manfred Lutz points out, Freud can provide an equally compelling reason for why someone might believe as to why they might disbelieve. Yet, crucially, when it comes to discerning the all-important matter of which position is actually true, he cannot help us.(5) As this suggests, just because you want to believe in something does not mean that it is true.

What is interesting about the Christian faith is that the intellectual arguments for God are backed up with a reality that can be personally experienced. There are countless examples of people who discover a life-changing faith even though they were once hostile to the idea of it. This may sound too good to be true, but this is something that is within everyone’s reach. The final word should perhaps go to the Victorian pastor William Haslam, whose conversion experience in 1851 has to rank as one of the best—not to mention funniest—examples of someone encountering God when they least expected it. The transformation was as dramatic as it was real, and it resulted in an outpouring of joy that he had never felt before:

“So I went up into the pulpit and gave out my text. I took it from the gospel of the day—’What think ye of Christ?’ As I went on to explain the passage, I saw that the Pharisees and scribes did not know that Christ was the Son of God, or that He was come to save them. They were looking for a king, the son of David, to reign over them as they were. Something was telling me, all the time, ‘You are no better than the Pharisees yourself—you do not believe that He is the Son of God, and that He is come to save you, any more than they did.’ I do not remember all I said, but I felt a wonderful light and joy coming into my soul, and I was beginning to see what the Pharisees did not. Whether it was something in my words, or my manner, or my look, I know not; but all of a sudden a local preacher, who happened to be in the congregation, stood up, and putting up his arms, shouted in a Cornish manner, ‘The parson is converted! The parson is converted! Hallelujah!’ and in another moment his voice was lost in the shouts and praises of three or four hundred of the congregation. Instead of rebuking this extraordinary ‘brawling,’ as I should have done in a former time, I joined in the outburst of praise, and to make it more orderly, I gave out the Doxology—’Praise God, from whom all blessings flow’—and the people sang it with heart and voice, over and over again. My Churchmen were dismayed, and many of them fled precipitately from the place. Still the voice of praise went on, and was swelled by numbers of passers-by, who came into the church, greatly surprised to hear and see what was going on. When this subsided, I found at least twenty people crying for mercy, whose voices had not been heard in the excitement and noise of thanksgiving. They all professed to find peace and joy in believing. Amongst this number there were three from my own house; and we returned home praising God. The news spread in all directions that ‘the parson was converted,’ and that by his own sermon, in his own pulpit too…. So clear and vivid was the conviction through which I passed, and so distinct was the light into which the Lord had brought me, that I knew and was sure that He had ‘brought me up out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a Rock, and put a new song into my mouth.’ He had ‘quickened’ me, who was before ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’… At the end of this great and eventful day of my life—my spiritual birthday, on which I passed from death to life by being “born from above”—I could scarcely sleep for joy.(6)

Simon Wenham is research coordinator for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Europe.

(1) S. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York, 1962), 21, in A. McGrath, Mere Apologetics (Grand Rapids, 2012), 167.

(2) C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays (New York, 2022), 19.

(3) R. S. Baker and J. Sexton (eds.), Aldous Huxley Complete Essays, iv (Lanham, 2001), 369.

(4) C. Milosz, “The Discrete Charm of Nihilism”, in J. C. Lennox, Gunning for God (Oxford, 2011), 47.

(5) M. Lutz, God: A Brief History of the Greater One (Munich, 2007), in Lennox, Gunning, 46.

(6) W. Haslam, From Death Unto Life: Twenty Years of Ministry (Teddington, 2006), 42.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – In a Word

November 13, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Some anniversaries slip past us without recognition, and yet one such recipient is still smiling nonetheless. The very first emoticon, perhaps better known in the realm of online discourse as the smiley face, has been smiling for more than 25 years. Its creator, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman, suggested the symbol in 1982 in an online discussion about the limits of online humor. “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: ,” he wrote. “Read it sideways.”(1)

The rest is history. Fahlman’s smileys spread from his classroom to other classrooms, from universities to the corporate world, and eventually around the world. The emoticon aided what online communicators were all too aware was ailing. In the world of instantaneous communication, miscommunicating is sometimes more likely than communicating. Humor, sarcasm, and general human warmth can easily be sacrificed in this subculture of speed and technology. Words merely given in brief can be misperceived as terse or loaded. Comments meant to be taken lightly can be missed altogether. Many would argue that the invention of the emoticon has helped, though it certainly has not eradicated every obstacle.

Nonetheless, the quick embrace and subsequent evolution of emoticons suggests at least a subtle awareness that in the breakdown of language something human is in fact lost. High school and college professors readily lament the frequency with which “chat” language is creeping further into term papers. Their greatest concern is that many students don’t even realize there is a difference. While it can be argued that email encourages a certain sloppiness in communicating, text messaging has forged the creation of an entirely new language—a language created with regard first for the technology as opposed to the speakers or the conversation itself.

In a recent publication, Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio made the observation that words and language both shape and affect our humanity. He then added, “The corollary of this claim is the observation that cultural institutions and habits that corrupt or weaken our use of language are profoundly dehumanizing.”(2) When words are ransacked of meaning and replaced with concepts less distinct, we ourselves become something less distinct. Though technology is far from the only culprit, wherever the offense is committed, consequences are costly. In fact, it is said that one of the first steps to slavery is a loss of language.

In his Narnian conclusion The Last Battle C. S. Lewis illustrates the enslaving force of corrupted words. The ape explains, “[The god] Tash and Aslan [the Lion] are only two names for you know Who. That’s why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan. Aslan is Tash.”(3) Later the ape altogether changes the name to “Tashlan,” and the impressionable crowd abides. In their hearts they still want to believe in the Aslan they thought they knew, but the loss of language is enough to set them to serve the deceptive ape. “When you have killed a word,” writes Lewis in another work, “you have also blotted from the human mind the thing that word originally stood for. Men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say.”(4) Those who allow their language to be corrupted, find their minds following suit. In the loss of words, something human is lost.

In this, there is much to be said about the kind of God who values words, whose most persistent instruction to a faltering people is “remember,” and who gives us both permission and the responsibility to say what we mean. “Good teacher,” asked the young man of Jesus. “Can you tell me the way to eternal life?” But Jesus asked in reply, “Why do you call me good?” In other words, are you saying what you really mean? Are you ready to walk with the burden your own word requires? “For no one is good—except God alone,” he replies.(5) Indeed, are you willing to hear his answer fully knowing who he is?

There is a connectedness between our words and our humanity, between the Word at the beginning and what is real today. Those who stand alert in the world of words, who fight the corruption of language, and who learn to let their “yes” be “yes” and their “no” be “no” shall see something more through the glass darkly. They may in fact see the God who first spoke a word and brought the world into existence.

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

(1) Daniel Lovering, “Happy Anniversary, emoticon,” LA Daily News, September 22, 2007.

(2) Mars Hill Audio Journal, Issue 75.

(3) C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 32.

(4) “The Death of Words,” On Stories, Walter Hooper ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 107.

(5) Mark 10:18).

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – What Do You Want?

November 12, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

What do you want me to do for you is a common enough question. It is implied in the question, how may I help you, used by store clerks and public servants. It could be asked by a clerk of a patron or between spouses in dialogue. It could be used casually between friends or spoken harshly in retort for misunderstanding. Whatever the context, it is a question of clarification. On the one hand, it seeks to clarify the expectations of the one to whom it is directed, and on the other hand, it seeks to clarify what action is required of the one who asks.

What do you want me to do for you is also the seemingly ordinary question asked by Jesus. It takes on a richer significance, however, as it is posed to the blind Bartimaeus and to the disciples of Jesus.(1) The gospel writers place the story of Bartimaeus immediately following a revealing exchange between Jesus and his disciples. But their answers to this question couldn’t be more different.

We do not know much about Bartimaeus. His name literally means, son of Timaeus. What we do know about persons with disabilities living in the first century is that they were completely dependent on the care and nurture of the society around them. Given that Bartimaeus is blind and given that he is begging on the street, it is likely that he had no living family members to care for him. Perhaps he heard that Jesus, the miracle worker, was coming down the street in his general direction because he cries out, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

He didn’t just call out once, but made such a nuisance of himself that “many were sternly telling him to be quiet.” Yet, he refuses to comply and calls out all the more for the Messiah to have mercy upon him. Given the persistence of his cries for mercy and his debilitating condition, it seems a cruel irony for Jesus to ask, “What do you want me to do for you?” Couldn’t Jesus see his need? More important, didn’t he care?

Jesus, prior to walking in Bartimaeus’s direction, had just finished a conversation with his disciples, specifically with James and John who request that Jesus “do for us whatever we ask of you.”(2) Jesus had just described the way of the Messiah not as a political and military victor returning the fortunes of Israel, but as the way of suffering and death. He told them plainly of his own coming crucifixion. But the disciples did not understand. Instead, they argued about who would be the greatest in the Messianic kingdom. James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they replied, “Grant that we may sit in your glory, one on your right and one on your left.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking for.” Jesus explained that to request glory in God’s kingdom is to request the way of the suffering servant. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Those readers and hearers of this text in the early Christian communities would not to miss the ironic juxtaposition of these two request narratives—one for mercy and the other for glory. Jesus asked Bartimaeus “What do you want me to do for you?” to make his request explicit for those disciples to hear. In asking for mercy, what is it that you want? The one who is blind asks in faith and believes that the mercy of Jesus will bring restoration and wholeness. He wants to be healed of his blindness so that his sight is literally restored, and that he is restored to his community. The text tells us that “immediately he regained his sight and began following after him on the road” (Mark 10:52). He became one of the many followers of Jesus. He became a disciple.

Yet those who were chosen as part of the twelve disciples asked for glory and honor. Jesus wants his disciples, blinded by their own ambition for glory and exaltation, to learn what it truly means to see and to follow as disciples. By asking, what do you want me to do for you, Jesus makes explicit their self-aggrandizing desires and the demands of discipleship.

What do you want me to do for you? The same question is asked of all who read and hear these texts. By posing this question to all who would seek mercy, or to be healed of blindness, we are invited to follow Jesus as disciples, even though “following after him on the road” might involve taking a way we would not choose for ourselves.

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

(1) The story of blind Bartimaeus is found in Matthew 20:29-34 and Mark 10:46-52. Luke 18:35-43 actually suggests that there were two blind men asking to be healed.

(2) See Matthew 20:20-28, Mark 10:35-40.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Will You Consider It?

November 11, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

For his fluency with words and unrivaled poetic voice, Isaiah has been called the “Shakespeare of the prophets.” His words are assuredly lyrical; they were also political and prophetic, enduring well beyond his life. Unquestionably, the prophet fulfilled his sense of the call of God with conviction. But as human followers often note of the things God calls us to do and do whole-heartedly, it is God’s voice that reverberates in creative ways unknown even to the one called, at times beyond our own understanding, beyond our own lives.

The 53rd chapter of the book of Isaiah offers the image of a servant who embodies a severe faithfulness despite unjust opposition. “He was oppressed and he was afflicted,” writes Isaiah, “but he did not open his mouth” (53:7a). The prophet describes a sufferer of flint-like submission in the face of extreme violence. “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (v.7b). He describes a servant who is crushed and anguished, stricken, and yet somehow satisfied. “As a result of the anguish of his soul,” writes Isaiah, “he will see it and be satisfied; by his knowledge the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, and he will bear their iniquities” (v.11). Whether Isaiah had in mind someone who fit the description or merely longed to see God’s words come to fruition, the prophet offers an image of one who changes all the rules.

Isaiah utters words abundantly verified in Jesus Christ. Almost 700 years after Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant, Jesus was carrying sorrows and curing infirmities; he was suffering rejection, hatred, and affliction (v.4). He was despised and brushed aside without regard (v.3). He was taken away by a perversion of justice (v.8). He was assigned a grave with the wicked (v.9). Yet he set his face “like a flint” upon the will of God (Isaiah 50:7, Luke 9:51). He was cut off from the land of the living, so that many would live (Isaiah 53:8b).

Whether you hear it as an exile in ancient Israel, a tax collector in 1st century Jerusalem, or an academic in contemporary Europe, Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant is one that warrants contemplation. Even Isaiah, out of whose mouth the description emerged, was compelled to ask with bewilderment: “Who shall consider it?” Who can imagine a man in such circumstances? Who knows what to do with a servant like this? “Who has considered that he was cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?” (v.8a). So asks the prophet who would not live to see the suffering servant he described. How much more so should we who see the face of the prophecy consider this description of Christ?

Isaiah 53 describes a Christ oppressed and afflicted but silent, even dumb, in the face of his oppressors. Like a sheep submitting to its shearers, he did not object; he didn’t even open his mouth. He was taken from justice and afflicted by people who seemed to hold some real sense of power over him. Yet he did it all willingly and silently, as if he were allowing them the power in the first place. He was a victim of violence though he had committed no violence himself. He was categorized as wicked though a deceitful word was never on his lips. There seems a paradox here like the great paradoxes of the kingdom he described: The last shall be first; the first shall be last. Those who mourn are blessed. All is not as it appears. “But who from his generation will be able to fathom it?” Isaiah seems at once to ask both a rhetorical question and a pessimistic one. Will anyone consider it? Is anyone really catching all of this? Who is really in control here—the silent one or the ones who think they are silencing him?

This metaphor of the submissive sheep is pervasive in Isaiah’s description, immediately hastening images of sacrifice, blood, and atonement. Like a lamb, the sufferer was led to slaughter. In the case of most sacrificial animals, they go unsuspectingly; they follow without much thought. But this is clearly not the case in this metaphor. Isaiah describes a Christ who is led and killed, but he does not go unknowingly. While it may be natural in certain conditions for a man to follow people who end up harming him, it would not be natural for that man to follow silently in the midst of harm. A ewe might not cry with its shearers, but it would certainly bleat if you hit it repeatedly. This lamb went to his death submitting to those who led him, but it was far from unintentional. He followed with a depth of thought we have difficulty considering.

In fact, there is something altogether silencing about the one who remains still and submissive while the ultimate injustice weighs on his shoulders. Isaiah describes a servant who seems immobilized and powerless. It is the unnamed crowd in each verse that seems to be in control. It is they who afflict him, oppress him, and strike him. It is they who lead him to the slaughter and put him in a grave. Yet is it not entirely significant that this nameless crowd, which seems to hold all the power, remains at least structurally inconsequential? There is no real description offered of the oppressors in the entire chapter. “They” did not earn the subject of more than one sentence, perhaps because “they” are not the point. He is.

It is still ours to consider: What if Jesus chose this path for himself? What if he chose to remain silent, to be weak in our nameless hands, to pour himself out even unto death? What if he chose to take on the violence that would bring us peace? Indeed, who shall consider it?

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 – Where the Light Is Strong

November 8, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A classic vaudeville routine begins with a pitch-black theater except for a large circle of light coming from a street lamp. In the spotlight, a man is on his knees, crawling with his hands in front of him, carefully probing the lighted circle. After a few moments a policeman walks on stage. Seeing the man on all fours, he poses the obvious question: “Did you lose some¬thing?”

“Yes,” the man replies. “I have lost my keys.”

Kindly, the police officer joins the man’s search, and two figures now circle the lighted area on hands and knees. After some time, the officer stops. “Are you absolutely certain this is where you lost your keys? We’ve covered every inch.”

“Why no,” the man replies matter-of-factly, pointing to a darkened corner. “I lost them over there.”

Visibly shaken, the policeman exclaims, “Well, then why in the name of all heaven are we looking for them over here?”

The man responds with equal annoyance: “Isn’t that obvious? The light is better over here!”

The classic comedy enacts a subtle point. It is far easier to limit our examining of life’s missing keys to easy, comfortable places. Like a modern parable, the story registers an illogic common to most. Searching dark and difficult corners—where the keys may have in fact been lost—is far less desirable.

Somewhere between reading belittling headlines of a once-popular celebrity and hearing an open invitation to weigh-in on the latest political scandal, I wondered if the drama didn’t register something more. It is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the signs that we live, particularly in the west, in a world of criticism. We are encouraged by all facets of the media to examine the flaws of everyone, to search for the scandal in every story, and to pour over everything that divides us, offends us, or otherwise differs from us in any way.

But more than this, we are encouraged to opine and criticize regardless of whether we know anything about the subject or person whatsoever. Online news articles quite typically now have a section for comments where readers are invited to put their own remarks in writing. And comment they do. The long list of critics offers thoughts on anything from the topic, to the author, to things completely unrelated. Carrying this one step further, one online bookseller not only invites anyone to be an official book reviewer; they also invite anyone to comment on these comments, to vote on whether or not the reviewers themselves need to be critiqued. While I appreciate some of these services, the attitude they endorse seems so pervasive. Everyone is now a critic and an expert at once.

And this is where the man in the drama seems unquestionably familiar. How easy is it to search where the light is strong, to examine the faults and scandals of others as if it were the best place to logically spend our time? As the light of the media shines on an individual or the light of gossip draws our attention like searchlights to a grand opening, how easy is it to declare this particular spot the place we will fully scrutinize? How readily do we prefer to be critics of those in the spotlight rather than fumble over our own flaws in the dark?

In the Christian journey in the shadow of the God-Man, where some follow the darkened path of self-examination, it is helpful to know that Jesus was aware just how tempting is the option of the easier route. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own?… You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-4). The flaws we see in pop-stars, politicians, and co-workers may seem so startlingly clear to us. The critiques and opinions we can so readily offer about books and public scandal, internal gossip and things about which we actually know little all may seem innocent enough. But might there not be a better place to spend our energy searching? Maybe we are looking where the light is strong, but not where keys are really lost.

An old proverb explains, “The mocker seeks wisdom and finds none, but knowledge comes easily to the discerning.” Perhaps this is true because the mocker spends his time searching the comfortable places of life, the easy targets where light and company will always be found. The difficult, dimly lighted places require much more of us, and often we are left to search on our own. But the discerning know that wisdom comes with the kind of seeking that pulls us mysteriously inward, into places where there is actually something to find, and before a merciful throne that compels transparency. Here, everyone who seeks finds, the lost themselves are discovered, and once dark corners of the soul are changed by the light of Christ.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Too Good to Be True

November 7, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Simon Wenham is research coordinator for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Europe.

(1) S. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York, 1962), 21, in A. McGrath, Mere Apologetics (Grand Rapids, 2012), 167.

(2) C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays (New York, 2022), 19.

(3) R. S. Baker and J. Sexton (eds.), Aldous Huxley Complete Essays, iv (Lanham, 2001), 369.

(4) C. Milosz, “The Discrete Charm of Nihilism”, in J. C. Lennox, Gunning for God (Oxford, 2011), 47.

(5) M. Lutz, God: A Brief History of the Greater One (Munich, 2007), in Lennox, Gunning, 46.

(6) W. Haslam, From Death Unto Life: Twenty Years of Ministry (Teddington, 2006), 42.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Embracing Abundance

November 6, 2013 broboinhawaii 3 Comments

A great newspaper headline can tell as much as the article itself. A caption once confessing “India Embraces Superlatives” promptly won my attention. The article summarized the growing obsession in India with holding Guinness World Records. “How do you stand out in a land with a billion people?” the article inquired. The answers were as extreme as the superlatives themselves: longest backwards run, fastest drinker of a bottle of ketchup, smallest writing on a mustard seed, longest ear hair ever grown. “We are desperate to be acknowledged by the world as being worthy,” said a columnist for the Times of India. ”We hunt for any signs that the external world recognizes us, and then we celebrate them.” To distinguish oneself in one of the biggest crowds in the world, embracing superlatives is imperative.

Ironically, there could not be a more common human behavior. Though India might be embracing a unique path to superlatives, the road to noteworthy is one of the oldest, most well-traveled paths in the world. We are constantly about the work of distinguishing ourselves from whatever crowd we find ourselves standing in. From increased interests in book-writing and extreme sports, to becoming one of reality television’s idols, aspirations to be the fastest or the richest or the greatest are nothing new.

But the ever-spinning world of the best and the brightest reaches well beyond personal aspirations. Thus, the best bottled water can no longer be simply from a source in Texas; it must be from the coldest waters of the highest springs of the Swiss Alps. Grocers now have upwards of 12 kinds of bottled water on their shelves, each promising a better superlative. Of course, by nature, superlatives only exist because there are less extreme talents, stars, and water by comparison. The word is derived from the Latin superlatus, which means “carried beyond.” Though it is not always clear what standard we are using for comparison, it is arguable that we are now about the business of carrying absolutely everything “beyond.” A recent report on NPR showed that the number of choices in a grocery store in 1969 was somewhere around 7,000. Walking into the average grocery store today we are confronted with 70,000 choices. Sometimes it seems we are intent on the endless pursuit of out-doing our own superlatives.

It is in the midst of this wearying competition with ourselves and every crowd that the Christian worldview stands tall to do what it does best: not finger-wagging, not nay-saying, but extending a resonant, viable, and hopeful alternative. When Jesus proclaimed “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” he was stating something essential for the one desperate to be acknowledged as worthy. Knowing who we are without our records and superlatives, knowing that all our efforts cannot give us what we ultimately need, knowing that worth is something quite different than standing out in a crowd, is perhaps the starting point for finding life as it exists most abundantly.

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 – Louder Than Words

November 5, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A wordsmith, according to Merriam-Webster, is a person who works with words; especially a skillful writer. As a part of my quest to become a wordsmith, I have subscribed to what has become one of my favorite online sites, Wordsmith.org. Each day the site sends a word of the day to my inbox. For example, the word bumbledom came into my inbox today. A bumbledom is a behavior characteristic of a pompous and self-important petty official. While I love the sound of bumbledom rolling off of my tongue, I am not sure how often I will find a use for it in my writing and speaking. But it sure is fun to drop it into conversation!

Words are the lifeblood for writers. Indeed, words are to writers, what food is for chefs. Writers spend their days imagining just the right combination of words put together in such a way that a beautiful sentence or idea emerges. When this happens, what is written can actually take the reader beyond the page creating images, pictures, colors, sounds, and smells that transport the reader to another world. Just as a chef combines the right ingredients to create a delicious dish, a skilled writer mingles words and carves out sentences to offer an experience of transcendence beyond the everyday realities of life.

Words are powerful. But there are times when words are not enough. There are mysteries that lie beyond their reach, such as when a joy experienced is too great, or sorrows are too deep as to be inexpressible. In such encounters, words seem rudimentary and inadequate. Nothing written can adequately capture the depth of what is being experienced or contemplated.

A group of early Christian teachers understood that there was a relationship between “the things that are spoken and the things that are ineffable, the things that are known and the things that are unknowable.”(1) They understood that there was a limitation of language in the face of mystery. In the contemplation of the Divine, for example, God’s essence, or ousia in the Greek, is something that could not be captured by words since God is beyond human understanding. God must do the extraordinary—divine revelation—for anything of God to be known.

Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan describes this early Christian theology as apophatic: “Theology was, at one and the same time, sublime and ‘apophatic,’ that is, based on negation. As the evangelist John had said, ‘no one has ever seen God,’ which means one could see the glory of God, but not God himself.”(2) God’s being or essence was beyond human beings. All that could be known or even spoken of was what God had chosen to reveal.

And God’s chosen means of ultimate revelation was startlingly in a person. The writer of Hebrews proclaims: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:1-3). In the person of Jesus, who is the logos or Word of God, God is revealed.

In Jesus we receive a vision of the ineffable God. “No one has ever seen God,” the Evangelist proclaims. “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). What we can know about God is centrally communicated in Jesus through his life and ministry. Jesus embodied God’s saving work of redemption in his life, his death, and his resurrection. God is revealed definitively in Jesus who came to seek and to save what was lost.

As one who writes and speaks, I know the power of words. In the defense of the gospel, a carefully crafted argument is often critical to breaking through the barriers of misinformation and misunderstanding. Yet, I am reminded that even words have limits, and people must see the gospel lived out, and must experience its power. The gospel must be embodied by those who claim to believe it. The oft-used saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi “preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words” is a helpful reminder of the power of our lives in communication. And if I’m honest, embodying the gospel takes far more creative effort than simply crafting an argument or a skillful, word-smithed sentence.

The Christian tradition presents a God chiefly revealed through a person. As a result, I am challenged to consider the speech given by my life and actions just as carefully as I choose my words for an essay. For, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God has acted in a person, and this action speaks louder than words.

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

(1) John of Damascus as quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 31.

(2) Ibid., 32.

(The 5000 Post of the DDNI Blog )

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Sovereign

November 4, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

For years, I never used the word “sovereign” as a noun. I knew it could be used in this way—”Like a sovereign,” writes Shakespeare “he radiates worth, his eyes lending a double majesty”—I just never did. But trial and tragedy have a way of waking us to words and realities overlooked. There was a time that whenever I closed my eyes to pray I was leveled by the image of the throne, and it was empty. And it was somewhere in the midst of this recurrent vision that I realized my neglect of the noun. Was God indeed the Sovereign who spoke and listened? I had often used the word as an adjective. But adjectives, like good moods, seem to come and go.

The prophet Jeremiah depicts a Sovereign that cannot come and go, simply because He is. For Jeremiah, God’s sovereignty is not a coat that can be taken off when all is going well or when all is going poorly. God does not cease to be the Sovereign though the world refuses to bow or “distant” seems a better adjective. And God’s words are not stripped of their sovereignty though no one is listening or no one responds. The Sovereign of all creation is always sovereign, active, and near, the prophet wants us to see; it is we who are inconsistent.

Jeremiah chapter 6 begins with an image of the Sovereign speaking to a people unwilling to listen, an honorable Judge whose words are dishonored. “To whom shall I speak?” the LORD inquires. The question is a lonely one, reflecting both the prophet who speaks and the Sovereign whose words are ignored. The inquiry also has the force of sarcasm: Why bother speaking to a people who won’t hear? But the words are not a commentary on God’s behavior; God is not throwing his hands up and suggesting the route of silence. Rather, it is a commentary on God’s words themselves, which are weighted with the compulsion to be heard. Though our ears are closed and we scorn his warnings, the Sovereign speaks and his words go forth with power. “God is always coming,” says Carlo Carretto. “God is always coming because He is life, and life has the unbridled force of creation. God comes because He is light and light cannot remain hidden.”(1) God’s decrees from the throne create and sustain the world. There is a person enthroned in every word, bidding the world’s response to every call and every sound.

Yet we listen with stubborn ears and apathetic wills. It is not a blind and stiff obedience God seeks, but a response appropriate for the Sovereign embodied in God’s words and concern for creation. The people of Israel were responding with formality in sacrifice while acting shamefully in other areas. Today we might respond the same, making nods to religion in public or private, but refusing to wholly bow to the Most High, and hence, settling for something less than real humanity. For in their failure to listen, the Israelites were losing their ability to perceive altogether. “They acted shamefully…yet they were not ashamed; they did not know how to blush,” says Jeremiah.(2) In human failure to kneel before the Sovereign of all creation, we lose something of what it means to be human.

I don’t know why the throne was empty every time I closed my eyes some years ago. Perhaps I had removed God from the throne long before sorrow hit like a roaring sea and seemed to remove everything in its wake. Perhaps God was ruling from the rooms where we needed God most. I don’t know. But the emptiness of the throne forced me to reexamine the one who inhabits sovereignty itself. Carretto’s words once again hit the gist of such examining: “The true problem is this: Is God an autonomous presence before you, like you before your friend, the bridegroom before the bride, the Son before the Father? […] Can you meet God as a person on your road and prostrate yourself before Him as did Moses before the burning bush? […] Can you experience his presence in the dark intimacy of the temple as did the prophets? In short, is God the God of transcendence, and thus the God of prayer, the God of what lies beyond things, or is He only the God of immanence, revealing Himself in the fruition of matter, in the dynamics of history, in the promise to free mankind?”(3) Is God the Sovereign you will trust at the center of all things? Upon a throne high and lofty, God asks us to look again, calls us to walk in ancient paths, and promises rest for weary souls.

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

(1) Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1974), 3.

(2) Jeremiah 6:15.

(3) Ibid., Intro.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Mere Christianity

November 1, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“I can’t believe how many children there are here,” I leaned and whispered to my husband. We were visitors at a church whose smallest members were helping with the service that morning. A young girl, no more than 8, stood at the front of the altar beside the minister. As she began to speak, her voice echoed the eagerness that her countenance gave away. “Join me in saying the Apostles’ Creed,” she said with a tone that caused me to heed the invitation differently:

I believe God made the world, the sky, the stars, the animals, and all the people in the world. I believe that God’s Son, Jesus, came into the world from heaven. That’s what we remember on Christmas.

Thus began the Apostles’ Creed reworded for children, and in these almost familiar lines were the tenents of the Christian faith, the reminder of all that Christians remember from Christmas to Easter. The little girl’s voice rose above the sounds of a congregation speaking in unison. She was clearly excited by the assignment she had been given. She seemed equally excited by the words of the Creed, the statements of belief shared with the very adults she was leading. It was a creed led in such a way as to remind everyone present that the call of Christ is one a child can answer. The substance to Christian hope is a simple, though profound, reality.

The word creed comes from the Latin word credo, meaning, “I believe.” When asked by Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s response was his creed: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”(1) The earliest creeds were used as baptismal vows, affirmations of belief in God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For persons standing on the precipice of faith, the creed was the statement with which they prepared themselves to jump, and in so doing, found they had been given something on which to stand. As Martin Luther noted of the Apostles’ Creed, the most common of ancient confessions, “Christian truth could not possibly be put into a shorter and clearer statement.”

In dire contrast to this ancient attempt to develop concise affirmations of Christian belief is the call among us for a simplified faith that lessens the significance of Jesus’s birth, life, and death, while focusing more on the responsibility his life imparts. Whether or not he was really born or buried, whether he was fully human and fully divine is thought nonessential; the obligation to respond, the need to build relationships, the call to follow, is considered more important. The creeds say so much more than this. Christmas and Easter say so much more than goodwill and forgiveness.

In the letter to the Hebrews, the affirmation is given that faith gives substance to our hopes and makes certain the realities we do not see. Those who first said “credo” did so with the assurance that their lives were dramatically about to change. They were saying in these vows that their beliefs were worth the chance of persecution, suffering, and even death. In their confession of faith was the conviction that what is true is of greater substance than fear or self. They went to their baptisms knowing that the birth, life, and death of Christ was the hope on which they must live and die and believe.

The lines of the Apostles’ Creed, the mere Christianity that men, women, and children continue to stand on, repeat this stirring hope and sounding joy:

I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

This is no mere Christianity. This is the story we welcome into a manger and receive from the tomb. This is what we remember on Christmas and every day after.

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

(1) See Matthew 16:15-16.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Starting With a Question

October 31, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Starting with a question seems like a good idea to most people: it helps to bring a sharper focus, it’s conversational, it reveals gaps in knowledge, and it’s quite natural.(1) Kids seem to use questions instinctively to find out about the world. Of course, there are lazy questions and there are thoughtful questions. The difference is hard to explain, but anyone who has ever heard or asked a great question, asked at the right time, will immediately know why good, careful, thoughtful questions are always worth asking.

When it comes to questions about faith, Christians have often pointed to the example of God asking Adam and Eve, ‘Where are you?’ (Genesis 3:9), and the way in which Jesus interacts with people in the New Testament. Here are just a few of the questions of Jesus:

What are you looking for? What do you want me to do for you? Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me? If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Do you want to be well? Do you see this woman? What good is it to gain the whole world but forfeit your soul? Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Who is greater, the one seated at the table, or the one who serves? Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? Which of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish? How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God? Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God? Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I command? Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For which of these good works are you trying to stone me? Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels? Would you like some breakfast? Have you come to believe because you have seen me? I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Do you love me?

Perhaps starting with questions isn’t such a bad idea after all, is it? Even so, some may be suspicious of starting with questions. Some may find them leading or loaded. Others may be worried about being unfaithful to God if they use and engage properly with questions. But, as you can see, Jesus used questions, which, for me, is the strongest reason to use them. And when Jesus asked a question it suddenly brought everything into focus, not just for the one he was asking, but for everyone listening as well. Jesus’s often subversive questions summarize and lift up the prevailing authority structures, symbols, and assumptions. His questions lift them high up into the air for inspection, so that everyone can see more clearly the motives, traditions, assumptions, and all the wildness that often rages under the surface.

Questions can help us to concentrate, pay attention, and think together. A good question can transform a meandering discussion into a life-changing moment, when reality breaks through illusion. In these moments, when we gently ask the right questions of ourselves or others, we can sometimes get under a question, and meet the one behind it. In the words of T.S. Eliot, “Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.” The message of Christ comes in power, reality, and compassion and is able to answer the deeper questions that come bursting out when the door is opened.

Tom Price is Academic Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Europe.

(1) Article adapted from “Starting With Questions” Pulse, Issue 8 (Summer 2011), pp. 12-13.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Truly Human

October 30, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“What does it mean to be human?” has been the inquiring theme of more than a few journals, conferences, and special reports. It is a question that is considered from anthropological, theological, and biological perspectives, from within medical, ethical, and spiritual circles. Yet regardless of the examiner, any plumbing of the depths of the nature of humanity is a discovery that the implications are as far-reaching as the subject itself.

Generation after generation, voices that have spoken to the question of human nature often reflect something of the paradoxical character of humanity. Plato described human life in terms of the dualistic qualities he observed. While the mind is representative of the intellectual soul, the stomach is an appetitive beast that must be tamed. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote of the human propensity for both compassion and cruelty at once. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”(1) Speaking in the 17th century, Blaise Pascal made note of further dueling extremes present within humanity. “For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all—and infinitely far from understanding either… He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.”(2)

What does it mean to be human? The seeming paradoxes in and around us make the question difficult to answer. Don’t we sense at times within us contradiction and inconsistency—a desire to be a good friend beside the wherewithal to manipulate or exploit, the intention to be a good neighbor beside the tendency to walk away without helping? It is reminiscent of Aslan’s response to the children in Prince Caspian: “‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.’”

As a Christian, I understand my own inconsistencies by the explanation given in the Christian story. Humans are bearers of God’s image, made with the intention and care of a good Creator. But it is a reflection that has become blurred. The image of God in humanity is an image tarnished. We have been made in God’s image, but it is an image that needs restoration, reviving, resuscitation.

In the company of Pascal and Solzhenitsyn, I find Christian doctrine to provide the only framework that makes sense of the contradictions within us. But far more than this, it is also the only framework that redeems the tension within us, the tension between my identity as a child of God and a daughter of humanity. New Testament writers have assured the promise is ours: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” For Christ is not only at work redeeming a fallen humanity, cleansing us from the sin that corrupts our nature. Christ came to unite humanity with God so that we can be truly human.

This is far more hopeful news than other worldviews or self-help plans impart. For if true humanity is a humanity fully united to its creator, then the possibility is ours. Acting on our own power and authority, independent of God, we merely expose our alienation from God and from our true selves. We fail to know what it means to be fully human. But united to Christ through faith we are united to another nature entirely. Writes one disciple, “[God] has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:4).

While Christ is the one who makes our resuscitation possible, the one who restores in us the image of God, the process of reviving is also something we actively take hold of as human beings united to the Son. In other words, to live as children made in God’s image and united to Christ is not a static hope, but an active calling. “So then,” in the words of Paul, “just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness” (Colossians 2:6-7).

What does it mean to be human? Perhaps we only begin to answer this immense inquiry when we turn to the one who shows us the very meaning of the word.

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

(1) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956 (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 75.

(2) Blaise Pascal, Pensess (New York: Penguin, 1995), 61.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Body Only God Could Create

October 29, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

They both trod along the dusty streets of ancient Palestine: one as an outcast and traitor and the other as a would-be hero. One used his position to cheat and extort his own people. The other carried a dagger under his cloak to swiftly exact vengeance on agents of government extortion. Neither man would have hoped to meet the other. Yet, a stranger from a backwater town would bring the two of them together. In fact, this most unlikely pair would not only meet, but live alongside each other for three years as they followed this stranger. All that had previously defined them would give way to an entirely new path of life.

On that most unexpected day, Matthew was collecting taxes from the people. He made sure to extract more than what was necessary to fill his coffers with unlawful profits. The stranger who came by the tax office that day looked like any other man, so it likely came as quite a shock to Matthew when the stranger called out to him, “Follow me.” No one from among the people of Israel would even desire to speak with Matthew—yet this stranger called after him and invited him to follow. To where, he did not know, but his invitation was irresistible. That very night, Matthew invited the stranger to his home for dinner and they reclined at the same table. Even to Matthew, it would have been a radical sight. Seated among the most despised members of society, didn’t the stranger know how deeply this company was hated? How was it that he had come to Matthew’s house, a man hated in all Israel for being a sellout to the Roman government? Yet, here was this intriguing stranger eating and drinking with outsiders and sellouts.(1)

The day that Simon the Zealot was approached would be no less surprising. The Zealots sought any and all means to overthrow their Roman oppressors. As revolutionaries, Simon’s political affiliates hated all that Matthew’s kind represented. For Simon, Matthew was nothing but a colluder with those who sought to oppress the people of Israel. Yet this stranger from Nazareth called both of these men to his side. “Follow me,” he asked. So along with a group of fisherman—Simon Peter, the sons of Zebedee, James and John—and this wretched tax collector, Simon the Zealot was invited to follow this stranger who gathered a most unexpected group of followers.(2)

Why would anyone call such an eclectic collection of people to become his followers? What kind of leader brings together people who for all practical purposes are at opposing ends of the spectrum with regards to their views of the world?

The man was Jesus of Nazareth. And his call to “follow” would upend all their expectations, replace all previous affiliations, and transform their views of the world. This unlikely group would follow Jesus beyond personal expectations and goals, as well as their expectations of him as their leader. The nature of his teachings and his form of radical hospitality would not only change their own lives and views, but transform the world. Jesus called Matthew as well as Simon, sellouts and revolutionaries alike. And the power of Christ’s message is displayed in the fact that a tax collector authored one of the four gospels, and the Zealot most likely gave his life—not as a revolutionary hero, but as a martyr.(3)

Jesus proclaimed good news good enough to bring together a tax collector and a zealot, men from entirely opposing camps, the poor and the rich, the outcast and the sellouts. Indeed, he declared that anyone who does the will of God is family-his brother and sister and mother. The good news was also given to a former blasphemer, persecutor, and violent aggressor. But this is not what we remember the apostle Paul for either. We remember him for his efforts to take the good news throughout the Roman world. It is this man who said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am the foremost of sinners; but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who would believe in him for life everlasting” (I Timothy 1:15-16).

The gospel has a way of reaching out and adopting into the family of Jesus a most unlikely group of characters, just as it did for Matthew and Simon and Paul. Jesus called them to follow him—together. And he continues to call disparate groups of individuals together today as the gospel goes forth into the utmost parts of the earth.

This, then, is both the challenge and the opportunity of the gospel. Because it is an invitation broad enough, wide enough, and good enough to include even me, it also reaches out and welcomes those I might not expect and bids me to serve alongside. It challenges me to leave my preconceptions behind, as the door to the kingdom of God swings open to fellow sinners who will become saints. And it ushers us in a community of new allegiances, a body only God could create.

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

(1) See Mark 2:13-17.

(2) See Mark 3:13-19.

(3) Many later church traditions suggest that Simon joined Jude in apostolic ministry. Later tradition suggests that Simon was martyred by being sawn in two. See for example, The Golden Legend (Aurea Legenda) compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, 1275.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Peripheral Identities

October 28, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The Old Testament book of Ruth is a careful commentary on the interplay of self and social identity in its characters. No opportunity is missed to describe Ruth as the perpetual outsider. She is referred to throughout the story as “Ruth the Moabite” or “the Moabite woman” or even merely “the foreigner.” In fact, even Ruth refers to herself as a foreigner long after she left Moab. Yet her seemingly permanent status as an outsider is juxtaposed with her wholehearted declaration to identify herself with a new people, a new land, and a new God. “Where you go, I will go,” she says to her mother-in-law. “Where you stay, I will stay; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

Identity is a very complicated thing. Even when we try to identify ourselves with something new, something we know to be true, something given to us or chosen for ourselves, it may only be a peripheral identity.

Nineteenth century poet Francis Thompson led the turbulent life of one caught between such dueling identities. His father wanted him to study at Oxford and become a physician, but Francis wanted to be a writer and moved to London to pursue a career. Sadly, he lost his way in narcotics, and for the rest of his life he would oscillate between brilliant writer and homeless addict. He lived on the streets, slaking his opium addiction in London’s Charing Cross and sleeping on the banks of the River Thames. But he continued to scribble poetry wherever he could, mailing his work to the local newspaper. The editor was immediately taken, noting there was one greater than a Milton among them, a slumbering genius with no return address. Thompson acknowledged that he was running from God, and in fact, spent his life wrestling between his identity as a child on the run and his identity as a child who had been found. Once succumbing to the pursuing Christ, he penned the famous words to “The Hound of Heaven.”

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

Pain and loss have a way of shaping who we are and what we see. Thompson’s divine pursuer is one Ruth did not yet know, and Naomi could not see. Interestingly, the first time Naomi spoke directly of her God within earshot of the foreigner who pledged to follow this God, it was to say that God had made her cold and grieving. Naomi imparts that her name should no longer be Naomi, which means “my delight,” but Mara, which means “bitter.” “For I went out full,” she says, “but the LORD brought me back empty.”

Naomi’s words are honest. She has lost her husband and her sons and her grief is consuming. The very meaning of her name seems a cruel irony. But there was also more to her. Tightly wound within Naomi’s identity was understandably her status as a widow, her status as empty. But she was not only a widow; she was not alone in her grief. She had not returned entirely empty. Naomi returned to Judah with a loyal daughter-in-law who had pledged to discover the God of Israel, maybe even as Naomi discovered the God of Israel herself. Though the social status of widows would certainly have justified Naomi’s vision of herself as empty, God used another widow—a foreign widow at that—to bring Naomi back to the meaning of her name.

It is often in the battle of warring identities that we seem most clearly to discover who we are. Naomi was indeed bitter, and she had every right to cast off the identity of delight in her name. Ruth had chosen a new life for herself, but she was indeed a foreigner, and was reminded of her status as an outsider at every turn. Even so, these identities, reinforced by their social standing, would not sway the God who loved them.

In the book of Ruth, the identity of God is always somewhere in the interplay of the dueling identities of its characters. Who God is seems slow to emerge, though the divine Spirit can be ascertained in the care of the outsider and in the bringing of an empty woman through her bitterness. But the identity of these women as God’s own is made unmistakably clear in the tracing of the Messiah through the bloodline of their own lineage: a foreigner named Ruth and a grieving woman named Naomi.

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 – Mere Wrappings

October 25, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In a study included in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine children were shown to overwhelmingly prefer the taste of food that comes in McDonald’s wrappers. The study had preschoolers sample identical foods in packaging from McDonald’s and in matched, but unbranded, packaging. The kids were then asked if the food tasted the same or if one tasted better. The unmarked foods lost the taste test every time. Even apple juice, carrots, and milk tasted better to the kids when taken from the familiar wrappings of the Golden Arches. “This study demonstrates simply and elegantly that advertising literally brainwashes young children into a baseless preference for certain food products,” said a physician from Yale’s School of Medicine. “Children, it seems, literally do judge a food by its cover. And they prefer the cover they know.”(1)

The science of advertising is often about convincing the world that books can and should be judged by their covers. These kids were not merely saying they preferred the taste of McDonald’s food. They actually believed the chicken nugget they thought was from McDonald’s tasted better than an identical nugget. From an early age and on through adulthood, branding is directive in telling us what we think and feel, who we are, and what matters.

But lest we blame television and marketing entirely for the wiles of brand recognition, we should recall that advertisers continue to have employment simply because advertising works. That is, long before marketers were encouraging customers to judge by image, wrapping, and cover, we were judging by these methods anyway. When the ancient Samuel was looking for the person God would ordain as king, he had a particular image in mind. In fact, when he first laid eyes on Eliab, Samuel thought confidently that this was the one God had chosen. But on the contrary, God said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

The study with the preschoolers is startling because adults can see clearly that a carrot in a McDonald’s bag is still inherently a carrot. Yet how often are we, too, blindsided by mere wrappings? Is the mistake of a child in believing the food tastes better in a yellow wrapper really any different than our own believing we are better people dressed with the right credentials, covered by the latest fashion, or wrapped in the right belief-systems? Covered in whatever comforts us or completely stripped of our many wrappings, we are the same people underneath.

According to the apostle Paul, there is one exception. Paul writes of a kind of clothing that changes the one inside them. “[F]or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”(2) Clothed in the righteousness of the man Jesus, a person is wrapped in the identity of one without sin. They are given new packaging, new life, new robes worn only by Christ, and thus, like him, they are fitted to approach the throne of God.

Unlike the catch and costliness of well-marketed wrappings, the robes Paul describes are free. The beautiful and difficult word of Christianity is that Christ requires only that we come without costume or pretense. The many robes we collect, the covers with which we judge the world, we must be willing to give him. He takes from tired shoulders robes of self-importance and false security. He tears from determined grasps those garments of self-pity and shame. And then he clothes the needful soul with garments of salvation, arrays us in robes of righteousness, and reminds us that we wear his holy name from the inside out.

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

(1) “Foods Tastes Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say,” Forbes, August 6, 2007.

(2) Galatians 3:27-28.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Making History

October 24, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

If you are familiar with the writing of the new atheists, you will notice that they often portray history as if there is an ancient and on-going war raging between science and religion. Why is it that such simplistic ways of viewing the past can become so prevalent?(1) One theory is advanced by Christian Smith in his book Moral Believing Animals. He argues that one of the central, fundamental motivations for human action is the locating of life within a larger external moral order, which in turn dictates a person’s sense of identity and the way in which they act. He claims that, whether or not they realize it, “all human persons, no matter how well educated, how scientific, how knowledgeable, are, at bottom, believers.”(2)

He suggests this is because “human knowledge has no common, indubitable foundation,”and therefore the way people choose to live and the knowledge they accumulate is all founded upon basic assumptions and beliefs that cannot themselves be empirically verified.(3) This includes the Enlightenment ideas of foundationalist knowledge, the autonomously choosing individual and even universal rationality itself, which he argues “always and only operates in the context of the particular moral orders that define and orient reason in particular directions.”(4)

In order to make sense of life, he suggests that all individuals perceive the world according to an all-embracing narrative, in which factual information about different events and people is woven into a storyline that makes an overall point. The Scientific Enlightenment Narrative, for example, is one that has been popularized by the new atheists:

“For most of human history, people have lived in the darkness of ignorance and tradition, driven by fear, believing in superstitions. Priest and Lords preyed on such ignorance, and life was wearisome and short. Ever so gradually, however, and often at great cost, inventive men have endeavored better to understand the natural world around them. Centuries of such enquiry eventually led to a marvelous Scientific Revolution that radically transformed our methods of understanding nature. What we know now as a result is based on objective observation, empirical fact, and rational analysis. With each passing decade, science reveals increasingly more about the earth, our bodies, our minds. We have come to possess the power to transform nature and ourselves. We can fortify health, relieve suffering, and prolong life. Science is close to understanding the secret of life and maybe eternal life itself. Of course, forces of ignorance, fear, irrationality and blind faith still threaten the progress of science. But they must be resisted at all costs. For unfettered science is our only hope for true Enlightenment and happiness.”(5)

Although this narrative may seem to be the very opposite of a religious worldview, Smith makes the interesting observation that “what is striking about these major Western narrative traditions is how closely their plots parallel and sometimes mimic the Christian narrative.”(6)

They all include a period of darkness followed by redemption, as well as a promise for the future and the identification of potential threats to the desired utopia. He explains that: “So deep did Christianity’s wagon wheels wear into the ground of Western culture and consciousness that nearly every secular wagon that has followed—no matter how determined to travel a different road—has found it nearly impossible not to ride in the same tracks of the faith of old. Such is the power of the moral order in deeply forming culture and story.”(7)

This is a fascinating observation, because it suggests that the Christian way of perceiving the world still informs the worldview of many of those who think they have jettisoned all the remnants of it. He argues that this pervasiveness is not surprising though, as “the human condition and the character of religion quite naturally fit, cohere, complement and reinforce each other,” because they link the narratives with the historical and personal significances at both the individual and collective level.

The fact that the message is so compelling will come as no surprise to Christians, but, above all, Smith’s work illustrates the problem faced by those who insist that they live by science, logic, and empirical evidence, rather than relying on any belief. It also highlights that there is a considerable blind spot in the thinking of many people today, when it comes to appreciating the role religion has played not only in shaping their own ideas, but also in underpinning core aspects of western society. It may be fashionable to dismiss this foundation, but the final word should perhaps be left to the influential German thinker, Jürgen Habermas, who explains that the Judeo-Christian legacy is neither insignificant, nor should it be forgotten:

“For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.”(8)

Simon Wenham is research coordinator for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Europe.

(1) Article adapted from Simon Wenham’s, “Making History: The ‘War’ Between Science and Religion,” Pulse, Issue 8 (Summer 2011), pp. 2-4.

(2) C. Smith, Moral Believing Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 54.

(3) Ibid., 154.

(4) Idem.

(5) Ibid., 69.

(6) Ibid., 72.

(7) Idem.

(8) Ibid., 153.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At the Table

October 23, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

When summer comes and city corners are full again of kids with bikes and basketballs, my mind returns to a particular playground. For several summers I worked at a church with an outdoor recreation ministry, whose intent was to serve the neighborhood, meeting the kids and building relationships. We played games, read stories, jumped rope, and organized basketball tournaments. One year a volunteer came and helped the kids make pottery, so we commissioned them to create some new communion plates and chalices for the church to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

Most of these kids had never taken communion before; many had never heard of the Lord’s Supper or been told the story of Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. So with muddied hands we told the story, and together that summer several sets of communion plates and cups were fashioned by kids eager to see them in use. I have never seen more colorful, misshapen objects grace the altar of a church; nor have I ever seen so many wide-eyed children come to life at the communion table. The elders held the lopsided plates and cups, inviting the church community to come and remember the one who shapes us. The children had a physical reminder of their place at the table, and the church was reminded again that we are all children being nourished by the Son of God.

When Christians proclaim the Incarnation, they proclaim the gift of a God who comes noticeably near his creation; the Lord’s Supper is another gift marking a God who comes near. The table is a place, like the manager in Bethlehem or the Cross of Calvary, where we are welcomed—rather, summoned—to come forward as we are: the poor to a benevolent giver, the sick to a physician, the sinful to the author of righteousness, children to the Father of life. Jesus left this sign and seal specifically with human beings in mind. When he gave us the command to take the bread and the cup in remembrance of his presence among us, he gave us a sign of this presence that is both visible and physical. Fourth century preacher John Chrysostom wrote of this physical gift as a vital reminder both because we ourselves are physical and Christ as well: “Were we incorporeal, he would give us these things in a naked and incorporeal form. Now because our souls are implanted in bodies, he delivers spiritual things under things visible.” We are given a sign to hold, a reminder of Christ’s nearness that nourishes both body and soul. In the act of eating, we are given the assurance of a real and present and nourishing Christ: “Lo, I am with you always even unto the ends of the earth” (Matthew 28:20).

Coming to the table like the disciples centuries before us, Christians consume a meal that sustains us like any other. And yet, it is at his table that we ingest the death and life of Christ; we participate in his birth among us, his suffering on the Cross, his humiliation and burial, his resurrection and new life. As a visible sign, it is far from one-dimensional. Like the children who first witnessed the Lord’s Supper from bright plates painted at their own hands, it is personal. It is so much more than a meal.

Christ calls those who will hear to the table to commune with himself and a great cloud of witnesses. He calls us to locate our selves and our redemption in the presence of a great community and in the midst of a remarkable story. We are invited to see our lives within the history of a covenant people and a vast community of believers. For we are children sustained by a mighty Father, a provident parent aware of our vast need and more than able to fulfill it. Christ was born as a child in Bethlehem not merely to come nearer, but to usher the world by his grace into communion and community, into his life and his death, the journey of faith, the pilgrimage of believers, and the story of salvation. We are invited to a great and intimate table:

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and broke it and gave it to those he loved saying, Come, take and eat, this is my body broken for you…

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 – Conversation Matters

October 22, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Search the Internet these days and you will find an abundance of entries on the art of conversation. Best-selling books have been written on how to interact with anyone from bus driver to head of state. Whether from the shortened sound bites of “Twitter” to the perpetual conflicts in government, the practice and the art of having meaningful and constructive conversation seems to be the topic of conversation! Sadly, it seems that opportunities for honesty, authenticity, and respectful debate are waning in today’s information-saturated yet disconnected world. When real conversations happen they are a true gift.

In recognizing both the gift of and the need for conversation in my own life, I discovered something very interesting captured by the writers of the Bible. Recorded within its pages are some fascinating conversations between God and various individuals. Far from being the polite, deferential, and circumscribed conversations of a more politically correct age, these conversations are full of questions, challenge, and doubt. These features, in and of themselves, should grab the attention of even a casual reader, for how many of us if given the opportunity to have a close encounter with God would even have the ability to speak? And yet, the writers of Scripture saw fit to capture even the kind of conversations in which the Almighty God engages reluctant and less than willing humans.

Early in the narrative of Genesis, for example, the first time we hear Abraham engage God in conversation, he responds to the promises issued by God to give him great reward with a certain level of incredulity.(1) “O Lord God, what will you give me, since I am childless?” (Genesis 15:2). These are the very first recorded words of Abraham. As far as we are told from the biblical story, Abraham left his country and family of origin without question; he heard God’s great promise of a great nation and blessing without any question or doubt. Yet his first recorded words question God. When visited by God at Mamre prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham bargained with God to spare the city. Lower and lower fell the number of the righteous required to save it until finally God promised not to destroy it if ten righteous persons were found.

Moses also questions God in his encounter with the Almighty.(2) Despite seeing a bush burning with fire but not consumed, despite seeing his shepherd’s staff transformed into a serpent, and despite seeing his hand become leprous and then healed of leprosy, Moses fires back question after question and challenge after challenge to the God revealed specially and uniquely to him: “I AM THAT I AM; I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.” Moses appears not to recognize his conversation partner, the God of his father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, as he questions God repeatedly in their dramatic conversation: “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). “Now they may say to me, ‘What is God’s name?’ What shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13). “What if they will not believe me, or listen to what I say?” (Exodus 4:1). “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10). “Please Lord, send someone else to do it” (Exodus 4:13).

What amazes me about these dialogues is that they are included in the Bible at all. For on the surface, it appears that these are not examples of great conversations for God. If we simply evaluated them on contemporary conversational etiquette, or persuasive ability, neither party does very well. God isn’t very successful in terms of persuasion and the human conversation partners are better at giving excuses than giving respect. But of course, there is more to the story. As Abraham and Moses continue their conversations with God-as one offers up the child of promise for sacrifice, as the other negotiates with Pharaoh and then shepherds the Israelites in the wilderness-we hear complaint, lament, question, and argumentation that we could hardly imagine, let alone speak before the Almighty. And yet, Abraham is called “the friend of God” (Isaiah 41:8) and Moses beholds the glory of God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 33:18-9). The conversation matters—even conversation that questions and argues—for God values communion. Indeed, Abraham and Moses, Job, the psalmists, and the prophets all provide us with rich and engaging narratives of authentic, challenging, questioning, and even argumentative conversation with God.

Despite Moses’s questioning of God, the Scripture tells us that “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Perhaps the way we talk with God illuminates our willingness to engage in great conversation. Indeed, perhaps the way we talk with God illuminates the depth of our friendship.

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

(1) Genesis 15:1.

(2) See Exodus 3-4.

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Category Archives: Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Apologetics for Whom?

Ravi Zacharias – Will and Impulse

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Too Good to Be True

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – In a Word

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – What Do You Want?

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Will You Consider It?

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Where the Light Is Strong

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Too Good to Be True

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Embracing Abundance

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Louder Than Words

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Sovereign

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Mere Christianity

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Starting With a Question

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Truly Human

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Body Only God Could Create

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Peripheral Identities

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Mere Wrappings

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Making History

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At the Table

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Conversation Matters

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