Topic: Just Thinking Magazine by Ravi Zacharias on December 2, 2016

The seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes is best known for his dictum “I think, therefore, I am.” A cynic may well quip that Descartes actually put des cart before des horse, because all he could have legitimately deduced was, “I think, therefore, thinking exists.” I do not intend to defend or counter Cartesian philosophy; I only wish to underscore that thinking has much to do with life and certainty.

One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life—a life that thinks, thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God’s thoughts after Him.

A person sitting at his desk and staring out of the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree or Archimedes in his bathtub bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal’s Pensées, a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.

The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” Solomon wrote (Proverbs 23:7). Jesus asserted that sin’s gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. The apostle Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, “Whatever is true…whatever is pure…if there be any virtue…think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly. But how does one manage this in a culture where progress is determined by pace and defined by quantity?

What is even more destructive is that the greatest demand comes from neither speed nor quantity but rather from the assumption that silence is inimical to life. The radio in the car, music in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining the “on hold” callers add up as impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness.

Aldous Huxley’s indictment, “Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself from thinking,” seems frightfully true. The price paid for this scenario has been devastating. Indeed, T.S. Eliot observed in his poem “Choruses from The Rock”:

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Think Again: The Dying Art of Thinking →

Before I begin my thoughts for the year ahead, on behalf of our entire team based in fifteen countries, may I first thank all who have stood with us through 2016. I pray that our partnership continues and grows. We need you to stand with us. Because of your help, we have had our best year. I wish you a blessed year ahead.

I was intrigued by the comment made by a leading voice in the present administration, discussing the political changes ahead for the nation following the election in November: “Now we know how the loss of hope feels.” Fascinating, considering that the slogan for the past eight years has been “Hope and Change.” What is more, I well recall those who lost the election eight years ago echoing the same dismay.

These are deep sentiments because the loss of hope can easily become a breeding ground for cynicism and apathy on the one hand, or anger and violence on the other. Where morals are relative, hate and violence become alluring absolutes. That is why hope is that necessary posture of the mind to even move forward against all odds.

I recall seeing a painting years ago of a dilapidated violin with broken strings titled, “Hope.” How was such a title given to a worthless instrument? One had to look closely to see that one string still held firmly taut. In the hands of a maestro, even one string gives hope for a melody.

So I ask, how does a thoughtful person describe the present as bereft of hope? There are two possible answers: the first is what I call the reverse of a feared crossing of purposes. The secular critic despairs at the possibility of the politicization of religion. Rightly so. But what has replaced that fear is equally dreaded, if not worse: making a religion out of politics. Yes indeed, politics is the new creed of the faithless, replacing spiritual truths with the hollow hope of political dominance. Power does corrupt when one loses sight of the vertical dimension of life. We endured a blood-letting slugfest of words on the road to the election. Once the electorate spoke, the losers have tried every conceivable trick in the book to malign the victors. Who would have ever thought that the feuding would continue so long after the voting was done? Why is there such bitterness in the loss? I can only conclude that the deepest convictions of the average person are born from their political theory and that this gives them their creed on all choices and values. David Gelernter, Professor of Computer Science at Yale, wrote a powerful article earlier this year with the provocative title “Why the Left Is So Vicious.”

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A New Year with New Hope →

Common is the sentiment among recent college graduates that they went in feeling like they knew something, and leave realizing, in fact, how little they know. I remember what this felt like, walking down the aisle to accept my diploma, wondering at the wondering at the irony. Yet as uncomfortable as that moment of recognition might be, I am convinced that the thought is an important place at which to arrive.

Ravi Zacharias tells of being a graduate student when the new encyclopedia Britannica was released in its fifteenth edition. It was a massive collection that had taken fourteen years to produce, and he remembers being fascinated by the statistics: two hundred advisors, three hundred editors, four thousand contributors, over a hundred thousand entries, thirty-four million dollars, forty-three million words. Even so, in the last pages of that work, one of the editors had the audacity to conclude: “Herein contains the entirety of human knowledge.” The number of outdated encyclopedias lying in thrift stores and recycling bins does not help their point.

In the stories of Scripture where God is encountered, we find men and women who, having come in contact God, find themselves blown away by the notion that they didn’t know all that they didn’t know. As Jacob lay dreaming, he saw God appear above a great ladder where God was introduced as the God of his ancestors. Upon waking, Jacob’s his first words were filled with astonishment: “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”(1) Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah, had a similar reaction after she encountered God in the desert. Having run away from Sarah’s abuse, Hagar was resting beside a spring when God spoke to her and told her to return. We read that she was amazed: “And she gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the one who sees me.’”(2)

Whatever we see—in the midst of uncertainty, for the year ahead, in life, truth, faith, reality—there is almost always more. In fact, it is probably the one thing we can count on—and the one thing we do not. Christian philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek writes, “We labor under the misimpression that we see what we see, that seeing is believing, that either I see it or I don’t.”(3) Perhaps seeing is not always about 20/20, and seeing God is something else altogether.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Real and Unsearchable →