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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Surprised by Time

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Ravi Z

Have you ever noticed how often we are surprised by the passing of time? Do you catch yourself with the familiar maxim on your mind, “Time flies!” or perhaps another version of the same: “Where did the summer go?” “I can’t believe it’s already September.” Or maybe you recall the last time you noticed a child’s height or age or maturity with some genuine sense of disbelief.

Isn’t it odd to be so poorly reconciled to something so familiar, to be shocked at a universal experience? C.S. Lewis likened this phenomenon to a fish repeatedly astonished by the wetness of water. Adding with his characteristic cleverness, “This would be strange indeed! Unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.”(1)

As we consider the idea of time itself, seconds on the clock faithfully pass even as we ponder. All the same, we recognize that time is not just a fleeting thing. As Ravi Zacharias notes, “[Time] never moves forward without engraving its mark upon the heart—sometimes a stab, sometimes a tender touch, sometimes a vice grip of spikes, sometimes a mortal wound. But always an imprint.”(2) To be sure, the most profound imprints hold in our minds a definite place in history—the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, occasions of exceptional joy or beauty, moments of unusual pain. But isn’t there sometimes a sense that they also hold something more? In such moments, we are touched by the reality of the thing itself, a meaning that is bigger than this very moment. We walk beyond the brush strokes of time to find a glimpse of a canvas that makes our usual view seem like paint-by-number. Some of these moments seem to hold the stirring thought that eternity will be the vantage point from which we see the big picture.

Those who challenge the notion of eternity claim that it is a human invention, like religion itself, created to soften what we do not understand, to undermine the painfulness of life, to release us from the finality of death. As scientist Carl Sagan writes, “If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I’d be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote…Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”(3)

Even as I give this quote some thought, my mind returns to the crematory disaster that touched the headlines across the U.S. some years ago. Few could overlook the unfathomable outrage. Over 300 bodies were carelessly discarded around the woods and lakes of the property, bodies that should have been cremated but for whatever reason were not. Deceitfully, families were handed containers holding cement or burned wood in place of a loved one’s ashes. Across the nation, people commonly noted that they felt somehow violated by this act of sheer irreverence to the dead, whether they knew them or not. In fact, at the time laws against such matters did not even exist. Who would have thought them necessary? Yet few denied that these were crimes against both the living and the dead.

But why? If we our origins are so humble and we are destined for nothing more, if we are merely a collocation of time and atoms and accident, why would we sense that something sacred had been desecrated? Why would we be astonished at such a treatment of the dead if life itself is nothing permanent?

I think we are outraged because quite certainly, something substantial was trampled on indeed. In a lifetime, we see countless glimpses of it. We remember sacred moments in time, and we understand human life to have intrinsic dignity and worth, even when our philosophies say otherwise. Note that no one asked the names, occupations, race, or accomplishments of any of the victims. Our dignity is not assigned because of who we are, nor worth due to something we have accomplished.

The Christian story makes the very robust, central claim that humankind is significant because God is significant, the Son of God choosing not only to fashion all of creation but to become one with it, taking on humanity himself. Perhaps there is a sacredness about life and death because the eternal author of time has come so near to it. Our surprise at time’s passing and our outrage at life—and death’s—violation are indeed thoroughly strange, unless God is vicariously involved in both our origin and our destiny.

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

(1) C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Orlando: Harcourt, 1986), 138.

(2) Ravi Zacharias, The Lotus and the Cross (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2001), 16.

(3) Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (London: Headline, 1997), 204.

 

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Breaking In

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The hometown of Jesus was a small village tucked between the hills of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean, located away from the main centers of the population. The Gospel of Mark describes the first time Jesus visited his hometown after he had become a public figure (Mark 6:1-6). His public ministry had, up until then, been based largely in Capernaum.

The townspeople had undoubtedly heard stories. Whispers of miracles and strange events were being reported from neighboring cities. His teaching was being called different, holding a different sort of authority among rabbis. I imagine the people of his hometown took a proud interest in all of the murmuring, anxious to see why everyone was talking about Jesus, anxious to claim him as their own. Now he was coming back home and they were excited about it. Invitations to teach in the synagogue were usually extended to distinguished visitors; he was, no doubt, in many eyes, the local boy done good, and now they would see for themselves.

According to Mark they were not disappointed. In fact, he reports, “they were astounded” (6:2). Making reference to the wisdom they heard and power they beheld, they clearly took notice that he was a man out of the ordinary. And yet, they couldn’t take the man at face value, for it was not just any man; it was Jesus. They could not get past the fact that this seeming authority in front of them was Mary’s son, the carpenter, the boy next door. And so Mark notes, they “took offense” at him, stumbling over the commonality of the extraordinary one before them (6:3).

During his tenure as a professor at Magdalen College in Oxford, C.S. Lewis delivered a memorial oration to the students of King’s College, the University of London. It was titled, “The Inner Ring.” Addressing his young audience as “the middle-aged moralist,” Lewis warned: “Of all passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”(1)

Lewis spoke of the natural desire to find ourselves a part of the inner circles that exist endlessly and tauntingly throughout life. He cautioned about the consuming ambition to be an insider, and not an outsider, though the lines we chase are invisible, and the circle is never as charming from within as it looks from without. Like the taunting mirage the weary traveler chases through the desert, the quest for the Inner Ring will break your heart unless you break it, he insisted. For “it is the mark of a very perverse desire that seeks what can not be had.”(2)

Yet it is no doubt a desire that touches us all. There are those we will never truly see because they are within our circles. And there are those we will never see because they are without. Our invisible lines will continue to exclude the majority, and our pursuit of the inside will keep us in confined by our own impervious parameters of sight. Unless we allow them to be broken.

The kinfolk of Jesus chose to belittle the depth of his teaching, the compassion of his hands, and the significance of his power because they could not see past the circles they were certain he was excluded from. Throughout his testimony, Mark gives witness to the close ties between faith and healing, expectation and eyesight. This hometown crowd could not see Jesus for who he was because they were blinded by lines that told them what he could not be. “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” they scoffed in fear and disgust (6:3). Excluding mention of Joseph, their words were intended to belittle Jesus and his origins, to put him on the wrong side of the line with one who was sexually suspect.

And yet ironically, in pointing to Mary, they unwittingly point to the miracle of the virgin birth, the first evidence of Christ’s breaking of an inner ring. Where his hometown saw scandal and commonality, where we see circles that exclude, this human Son breaks the lines of separation, and extraordinarily offers the world an invitation into the presence of Father, Son, and Spirit.

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

(1) C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1980), 154.

(2) Ibid., 154.

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – Beyond These Shadowlands     

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These priests provide only a hint of what goes on in the true sanctuary of heaven, which Moses caught a glimpse of as he was about to set up the tent-shrine. It was then that God said, “Be careful to do it exactly as you saw it on the Mountain.” —Hebrews 8:5

So often we tend to think of heaven as surreal and earth as real. In other words, our point of reference is earth. This is earth. This is real. And heaven? Well, who knows?

In truth, it’s the opposite! Heaven is what is real, earth is what is temporary. That is why C. S. Lewis described life on earth as “the shadowlands.” Earth is only a pale version of heaven, not the other way around.

God commanded Moses to build a tabernacle like the one in heaven. And in Hebrews 8:5, we read that the priests in New Testament days served in a place of worship that was only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. In fact, as Moses prepared to build the tabernacle, God gave him this warning. He said, “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain” (Hebrews 8:5, NLT).

God wanted to make it clear to Moses that the original was in heaven and the copy was on the earth. To quote C. S. Lewis again, “The hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as the substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal.”

As earthbound human beings, we tend to start with earth and reason up toward heaven. What we ought to do is start with heaven and reason down toward earth. Heaven is the real deal, the eternal dwelling place. Earth is the copy, the temporary dwelling place.

When you see that sunset or that panoramic view of God’s finest expressed in nature, and the beauty just takes your breath away, remember it is just a glimpse of the real thing that awaits you in heaven.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

 

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Sledgehammers and Other Good News

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Ravi Z

I found myself sighing with something like relief one day after reading a comment made by C.S. Lewis. He was responding to a statement made by a scholar who noted that he didn’t “care for” the Sermon on the Mount but “preferred” the Pauline ethics. Lewis was of course bothered at the suggestion of Scripture alternatives between which we may freely pick and choose, and it was this that he addressed first. But his response also included a striking remark about the Sermon on the Mount itself, and this is what caught my attention. Said Lewis, “As to ‘caring for’ the Sermon on the Mount, if ‘caring for’ here means liking or enjoying, I suppose no one cares for it. Who can like being knocked flat on his face by a sledgehammer? I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that of the man who can read that passage with tranquil pleasure. This is indeed to be ‘at ease in Zion.’”(1)

To be “at ease in Zion” was the deplorable state of existence the prophet Amos spoke of in his harsh words to the Israelites.(2) Reeling in false security and erroneous confidence from their economic affluence and self-indulgent lifestyles, the Israelites, Amos warned, would be the first God would send into exile if they failed to heed his words.

The Sermon on the Mount was likely as alarming to those who first heard it as the thought of exile for those whose homeland is far more than an identity. Lewis’s comparison of Christ’s words to a sledgehammer is not far off. Those potent chapters are not unlike the electric paddles used to shock the heart back to life, back to the rhythm it was intended to have all along.

The Sermon on the Mount is like the keynote address for the kingdom Christ came to introduce and to gather us together like a hen gathers her chicks. On that mountainside, Jesus points out many of the mountains that blur vision of this kingdom. He repeatedly notes that we are not quite seeing as he sees, not grasping reality as it really is. “You have heard that it was so…” he says again and again, “but I tell you…” His words are hard and thorough, and even the simplest of phrases is permeated with the profound glory of a kingdom we far too easily settle for only seeing in part:

Blessed are the poor in spirit…

Blessed are those who mourn…

Blessed are the meek…

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…

Blessed are the merciful…

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.(3)

Perhaps I have become at ease in Zion if I can read these words without wondering if I am among the blessed, if I am one seeing God or missing it. When I lose sight of the kingdom behind the haze of selfish ambition, guilt, or fear, Christ’s words become like a foghorn calling me to set my eyes on the one I follow and live up to the hope I embody: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” When I find myself making demands of God, I am shown again just how much God demands of me. “You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall not murder. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister’ is guilty of the same.

For the crowds that gathered that day on the hillside, Jesus’s words were likely quite troubling. If God’s commandments were difficult to follow before this sermon, they were now entirely terrifying. Who can stand in this kingdom Jesus describes? And how is this good news? How could we ever be gathered into this communion? And yet, in all of his wisdom, in his unfathomable love, in the middle of his sermon Jesus proclaims gently but confidently: Do not worry. It is as if he says to those rightly awake and trembling with the fear of certain failure, “I am not only the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets, but the embodiment of these good things and the one who makes all things possible for you.” This, he also says repeatedly. In his humanity, Jesus vicariously approaches our own, lifting us to possibilities we can only imagine.

The Sermon on the Mount is a concentrated example of how Jesus came to fulfill in us dynamically everything the law meant to show us. Like a sledgehammer to a frozen heart, his life cries out to all who are at ease in Zion, whether cold from self-indulgence or unaware of God’s life-giving pursuit of our affection. In this, Christ’s role is uncompromisable. He is both the human Son of God who is embodiment of all we are meant to be in the fellowship of the Father and our mediator who bestows us the very possibility.

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

(1) C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 181.

(2) Amos 6:1.

(3) Matthew 5:3-9.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Beautiful and Terrible

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In one of Shakespeare’s most known and loved passages, the young heroine, Portia, urges Shylock, the moneylender, to show the kind of mercy that “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,” that “is enthroned in the hearts of kings,” and “is an attribute to God Himself.”(1) This arresting image of mercy is both noble and other-worldly, rousing images like that of Caravaggio’s “The Seven Acts of Mercy,” in which an angel’s outstretched hand reaches over seven scenes of mercy: burying the dead, feeding the hungry, refreshing the thirsty, harboring the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and ministering to prisoners.  The seven scenes are based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:35-36: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Though Jesus does not specifically reference burial of the dead as an act of mercy, it was deemed merciful by the church during the time of plague, when care of the dead was literally care of one’s neighbors.

Similar depictions of sympathy, provision, and kind leniency often come to mind at the mere thought of mercy wherever it is found. As Caravaggio paints it and Shakespeare depicts it, mercy is beautiful. Images of quiet humanitarianism and heavenly acts of concern afford mercy a reputation worthy of Portia’s words.

Yet this is not the only perception of mercy in action. Even Shakespeare reasons elsewhere, “Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.”(2) There is perhaps no better representation of this contrasting perception than in the practice of “compassionate release” for convicted criminals. Every year, in each of the countries with compassionate release programs, thousands of requests are considered. Though few are granted, it is typically more than unpopular. At the release of the terminally-ill Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, who was sentenced to life in prison for the 1988 bombing of a Pan American jetliner, mercy was justifiably detested. One headline described Megrahi’s release as “an ugly act of ‘mercy.’”(3) Mercy is indeed far less beautiful when its recipients mar the pictures.

Reactions to ‘ugly acts of mercy’ are understandable. In Megrahi’s case, cries for justice were heard across the globe. The sense of injustice was palpable, particularly for those who lost loved ones at the hands of the released man. Much could be said in this case about justice and injustice. For indeed, justice demands that guilt not be swept under the carpet; and yet here, mercy served as the broom. What cannot be said, however, is that we should expect anything different from mercy, that we can expect mercy to always be beautiful, or somehow easier to swallow. Mercy is always ugly to someone.

Yet we rarely see it this way with any consistency. When demanding justice in situations where we have been wronged, mercy’s ugliness is usually clearer. But we seldom apply the same thunderous demands for justice when it works against us. This is well-illustrated by Orual in C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces. Orual, who has spent a lifetime carefully building her case against the gods, meticulously describes each instance where she has been wronged, and demands to be heard by the gods for the sake of justice. But after she has finally had her chance to formally state her case before the gods themselves, she is stunned to hear that it is now her turn to face her judges.

“My judges?” she asks.

“Why, yes, child. The gods have been accused by you. Now’s their turn.”

“I cannot hope for mercy,” she laments to the one beside her.

“Infinite hopes—and fears—may both be yours,” he replies. “Be sure that, whatever else you get, you will not get justice.”

“Are the gods not just?” she asks.

“Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?”(4)

I don’t believe our strong sense of justice is misguided. But justice demands that we apply it to ourselves as thoroughly as we apply it to others. For those who realize the gravity of this equation, no image except the unthinkable injustice of the cross of Christ will console. For here, mercy is indeed as ugly as it is beautiful: “Divine love speaks its most exalted word just as it plunges into unspeakable degradation.”(5) In Christ’s unjust suffering and unfathomable love, we are mercifully restored. Beautifully and terribly, we are liberated.

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

(1) William Shakespeare, The Works of William Shakespeare, Vol. 1, “The Merchant of Venice,” (London: Bickers & Son: 1874), 186.

(2) William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (Philadelphia; J.B. Lippincott, 1899), 165.

(3) “Lockerbie Terrorist’s Release Is an Ugly Act of ‘Mercy,’” LA Times, August 21, 2009, http://www.latimes.com, accessed August 24, 2009.

(4) C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Orlando: Harcourt, 1984), 297.

(5) Jeremy S. Begbie, “The Future of Theology Amid the Arts” in Christ Across the Disciplines: Past, Present, Future, ed. Roger Lundin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 160.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – THE GLAMOUR OF ATHEISM

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Ravi Z

The title of this article risks overstatement. Consequently, I hope the reader will do me the courtesy of not regarding it as a cheap ploy for attention. My aim is simple: I wish to examine an aspect of atheism’s imaginative appeal. Christians are frequently accused of wishful thinking, of retreating to the church in the face of a vast and pitiless universe. Though this is clearly a double-edged sword (wishful thinking works both ways), my reason for focusing on the “glamour” of atheism is not so much to craft a rejoinder as to train a lens on a frequently overlooked issue.

Atheism, like any belief system, makes a loud appeal to the imagination, and if we overlook this striking fact we turn a blind eye to one of the key sources of its persuasive power. Specifically, I want to suggest that death is atheism’s ultimate appeal, and that death lends atheism its special glamour. It is in the arena of popular culture in particular that this glamour frequently announces itself most vocally. My hope is that this thesis will seem less controversial and even less outrageous as we progress.

A new type of character has emerged in popular television.[1] Not only is this character a hardened naturalist, this character is a principled cynic when it comes to human motive, an inveterate pessimist on all matters of progress, and an outright fatalist where man’s destiny is concerned. This character sees through everything and everyone, and is not afraid to issue shrill reports on his or her unseemly findings. It goes without saying that “said character” is usually some kind of investigator, preferably a medical doctor or a detective, and that said character usually dispenses with all social formalities in the name of blunt honesty that often borders on misanthropy. After all, said character cannot be bothered with the usual conventions that govern civil society. Said character’s only allegiance is to the truth, and truth rarely agrees with our sense of decorum.

Have you met this character? He goes by the name of Gregory House in the television series House, M.D. We see him in the current BBC adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, and his latest incarnation is detective Rustin (aptly shortened to Rust) Cohle in HBO’s True Detective.

 

 

The following is a brief sampling of detective Rust’s worldview: The world is a “giant gutter in outer space.” Rust says that human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself; we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. Rather, we are things that labor under the illusion of having a self—this accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programed with total assurance that we are each somebody when in fact everybody’s nobody. Hence, argues Rust, “The honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand-in-hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

When Rust’s partner poses the very reasonable question of how he manages to get out of bed in the morning, Rust replies, “I tell myself I bear witness. But the real answer is that it’s obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide.”

As is often the case with this kind of character, a direct correlation is drawn between Rust’s unflinching outlook and his misery. He is a functional alcoholic throughout most of the show and occasionally abuses drugs in order to subtract sleep from his obsessive work routine. We catch brief glimpses of him working through the details of his case in his spartanly furnished home, the walls decorated with crime-scene photos. He has no friends. His marriage crumbled beneath the weight of a tragedy that took his daughter’s life—a tragedy he describes in positive terms when he is under the influence of his nihilistic worldview. His partner repeatedly describes him as “unstable,” and it is visibly evident that he walks a thin line between genius and madness.

So, what in any of the foregoing could possibly be construed as appealing? As articulate as Rust is on the subject of human nature (or the lack thereof), few will find much inspiration in his conclusion that “everybody’s nobody,” and fewer still will feel compelled to “deny our programming” and waltz headlong into extinction. And yet, I think there is a powerful appeal to Rust’s bleak philosophy, and even a kind of austere beauty to it.

In a masterful essay entitled “Is Theology Poetry?” C.S. Lewis frames atheism in mythological terms, and names Man as the tragic hero of the story.[2] Here is man’s trajectory in brief: From complete emptiness, certain forces and molecules appear and collide, and the cosmos is born from their chaotic convulsions. In the wake of ageless eons and a diverse set of biological wardrobe changes, mankind emerges on faltering steps, survives by brute force and instinct, worships a god fashioned in his own image, becomes enlightened, throws off the shackles of religion to awake in the dawn of a new era of reason and progress where all illusions are well and truly vanquished. But the last act lends the special poignancy to the story that elevates it from melodrama to high art: In the end, nature has her revenge, matter winds down, and man is extinguished as easily as the flame on a candle’s wick. This is atheism in the tradition of high tragedy.

What is the chief appeal of atheism? In a word, death. This story begins and ends with nothingness. Carbon-based life is a brief reprieve between two absolute abysses. We have our minute sliver of time on this minute patch of existence, both of which will be swallowed by oblivion in the long run. Seen in this light, suicide—“denying our programming”—is the most potent and naked expression of human free will on display, a great cosmic revolt against the material upheavals that accidentally produced us in the first place.

This is why atheism is a zero-sum game, a philosophy of death that can offer nothing but death. This is why the rising tide of secularism in the Western world is fostering an indefatigable culture of death. Forged in a crucible of nothingness, we wander as cosmic orphans back to the yawning void from which we were so tragically ejected. In such a stark context, anything more than death, or on the side of life, or even minimally optimistic must be regarded with either pity or callous derision because it is obviously deluded, naïve, or dishonest.

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said “existence precedes essence.” In other words, we have no stable or fixed identity that precedes us. The burden of identity, selfhood, and meaning rests solely on our shoulders. But, again, if we came from nothing and are returning inextricably to nothing, life is a temporary accident, and death is the only authentic currency at our disposal. Why is death authentic? Because it is life that is artificial and nothingness that is essential. It is not that this worldview tries to be especially morbid—in many cases it makes a valiant attempt to be life-affirming—it’s simply that it has literally nothing else to offer, or, rather, it has precisely nothing to offer.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that it is impossible for atheists to lead exemplary and even noble lives. Clearly, many do. What I am saying is that, from the standpoint of scientific naturalism, such behavior is an anomaly because naturalism, devoid of any and all metaphysical underpinnings, can provide neither the motivation nor the justification for a truly selfless life. Such values must be borrowed, or smuggled in, so to speak. In a provocative article, the journalist Matthew Parris, himself an avowed atheist, reluctantly concedes that removing Christian evangelism from the continent of Africa would be disastrous. Why? “In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”[3] My point is not that atheists can’t be good people. My point is that it is manifestly impossible for atheism to “change people’s hearts,” to inspire transformation and rebirth on its own steam. Those wishing to find the ethical resources for such an undertaking must look elsewhere.

The apostle Paul tells us that the mind set on the flesh is death (Romans 8:6). An honest materialist will agree with this statement. If the material universe traces its lineage back to a cosmic accident, then life cannot be regarded as anything other than alien, an intrusion where emptiness will ultimately prevail. So, the materialist mind is set preeminently on emptiness and death.

Part of our unique and pastoral mission as Christian men and women is to revive in people a love of life in a culture of death. We need to work carefully to restore the appeal of life in all of its vital glory. We need to remind this culture of death that life, not emptiness, is essential, primal, and original. In fact, we have value and purpose precisely because we have been created by a personal God in his image, fashioned for intimacy and joy with God as well as with others. We can preach nothing less than eternal life, because anything less than eternal life is simply a temporary loan from a bankrupt universe. Indeed, the poverty of atheism is so total that it is powerless to offer anything more than death.

 

It is this life offered by Christ that stands in stark contrast to the materialist mindset. As RZIM colleague Os Guinness says, “Comparison is the mother of clarity.” My intent has not been to isolate those who resolutely deny any kind of divinity. Rather, my honest hope is that the radical nature of the life that Christ offers us might come into sharp focus when set against the unsparing backdrop of consistent materialism.

David Bentley Hart has said that we have only two options at our disposal: Christ or Nothing.[4] A casual survey of our cultural landscape makes it abundantly clear that our love of life is in desperate need of resuscitation. I believe Christ alone can accomplish this resuscitation.

Cameron McAllister is a member of the speaking and writing team at RZIM.

[1] Strictly speaking, this character is not new, but is in fact ripped right from the pages of an existentialist novel. A primary example would be Meursault from Albert Camus’ The Stranger. However, the sensibilities displayed by this kind of character are new to the world of television.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 123-126.

[3] This quote is taken from Matthew Parris’s article “As an Atheist, I Truly Believe Africa Needs God” on Come and See Africa’s Website. Accessed April 4, 2014 http://comeandseeafrica.org/casa/atheist/athiestafrica.htm.

[4] See David Bentley Hart, “Christ and Nothing (No Other God)” in his book In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009), 1-19.

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – Nothing New     

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History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. —Ecclesiastes 1:9

Joy Davidman, the wife of C. S. Lewis, made this insightful statement about the pursuit of pleasure: “Living for his own pleasure is the least pleasurable thing a man can do; if his neighbors don’t kill him in disgust, he will die slowly of boredom and lovelessness.” And that is true. It has been said that the only cure for hedonism is to try and practice it.

The pursuit of pleasure is nothing new. As Solomon reminds us a number of times in the book of Ecclesiastes, when you boil it down, there is nothing new under the sun. Though our technology has changed and we have had certain advancements since Solomon wrote those words, the basic cravings of humanity have not changed, nor have the basic things we look to. The philosophy of eat, drink, and be merry has been with us for a long time.

When Solomon decided he would pursue everything this world had to offer, He was not considering God in all of it. He was living horizontally — he had adapted a worldview that omitted God. Eventually he came to realize there was nothing to profit from under the sun. It was only when Solomon looked above the sun and looked to God that he found the answers he was seeking. When we see God for who He is, we will see the world for what it is.

If you have a close relationship with God and are walking closely with Him, you will recognize philosophies, concepts, and ideologies being propagated that are contradictory to what the Bible teaches. When you are walking closely with God, you will see this world for what it is.

Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Something Understood

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Ravi Z

In an essay titled “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C.S. Lewis describes a scene from within a darkened shed. The sun was brilliantly shining outside, yet from the inside only a small sunbeam could be seen through a crack at the top of the door. Everything was pitch-black except for the prominent beam of light, by which he could see flecks of dust floating about. Writes Lewis:

“I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving in the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”(1)

Each time I come to the gospel accounts of the woman with the alabaster jar, I notice something similar. “Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks, as if he is speaking as much to me the reader as he is to the guests around the table. With a jar of costly perfume, she had anointed the feet of Christ with fragrance and tears. She then endured the criticism of those around her because she alone saw the one in front of them. While the dinner crowd was sitting in the dark about Jesus, the woman was peering in the light of understanding. What she saw invoked tears of recognition, sacrifice, and love. Gazing along the beam and at the beam are quite different ways of seeing.

The late seventeenth century poet George Herbert once described prayer as “the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage.” At those words I picture the woman with her broken alabaster jar, wiping the dusty, fragrant feet of Christ with her hair. Pouring out the expensive nard, she seems to pour out her soul. Fittingly, Herbert concludes his grand description of prayer as “something understood.”

The woman with the alabaster jar not only saw the Christ when others did not, Christ saw her when others could not see past her powerless categories. “Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks while the others were questioning her actions past and present. “I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much.”(2) Her soul’s cry was heard; she herself was understood.

There are many ways of looking at Jesus: good man, historical character, interesting teacher, one who sees, one who hears, one who loves. At any point, we could easily walk away feeling like we have seen everything we need to see, when in fact we may have seen very little. The risk of looking again may well change everything.

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

(1) C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 212-215.

(2) Luke 7:44-47.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Lesson From A Toothache

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Our Daily Bread

Hebrews 12:3-11

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. —Hebrews 12:7

When I was a child I often had a toothache,” wrote C. S. Lewis in his classic book Mere Christianity. He continued, “and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something that would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I did not go to my mother—at least not till the pain became very bad. . . . I knew she would take me to the dentist the next morning. . . .  I wanted immediate relief from pain, but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right.”

Similarly, we might not always want to go to God right away when we have a problem or are struggling in a certain area. We know that He could provide immediate relief from our pain, but He is more concerned with dealing with the root of the problem. We may be afraid that He will reveal issues that we are unprepared or unwilling to deal with.

In times like these, it is helpful to remind ourselves that the Lord “deals with [us] as with sons” (Heb. 12:7). His discipline, though perhaps painful, is wise, and His touch is loving. He loves us too much to let us remain as we are; He wants to conform us to the likeness of His Son, Jesus (Rom. 8:29). God’s purposes of love can be trusted more than any of our emotions of fear. —Poh Fang Chia

Thank You, Lord, for showing me my hidden

faults, for You treat me as Your dear child.

Help me surrender to Your cleansing work

till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.

God’s hand of discipline is a hand of love.

Bible in a year: 2 Chronicles 30-31; John 18:1-18

Insight

A constant refrain in Scripture is that God chastens and that such discipline is evidence of His love and a prerequisite of our sonship (Deut. 8:5; 2 Sam. 7:14; Job 5:17-18; Ps. 89:30-33; Prov. 3:12; Heb. 12:5-8). But God’s discipline is much more than just rebuke and punishment. It includes nurture, instruction, and training in holiness and righteousness (12:10-11).

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Trust in Crooked Paths

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Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Scene of Miracle

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Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(3) See Isaiah 6.

(4) Lewis, 117.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Church of Amen

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Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Detective and the Theory

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Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Horns of Elfland

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Ravi Z

Whether compelling the visions of a child or inspiring music or architecture, the power of the imagination is often clear.

O hark, O hear! How thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.(1)

But what of the mere presence of the imagination? “I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental,” wrote C.S. Lewis. “I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.”(2) Certainly, this taste of a richer fare was sensed in the formative imaginations at which Lewis supped long before he knew he was starving for their Host. Writes Lewis:

“Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete—Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire—all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called ‘tinny.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books.”(3)

And while Lewis would come to see that this “lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit,” he is equally certain that God in God’s mercy can profoundly make it such a beginning.(4) My own encounter of the great imagination of C.S. Lewis is similar to a testimony given at his funeral, namely, that “his real power was not proof; it was depiction. There lived in his writings a Christian universe that could be both thought and felt, in which he was at home and in which he made his reader at home.”(5) I believe I probably first loved God as an untame Lion, not because the God I wished for was kinder than the God who is, but because I did not yet see that my deficient vision of God was the vision that needed a better imagination. As Lewis later wrote of his intense love of all Norse mythology, “[A]t the time, Asgard and the Valkyries seemed to me incomparably more important than anything else in my experience…More shockingly, they seemed much more important than my steadily growing doubts about Christianity. This may have been—in part, no doubt was—penal blindness; yet that might not be the whole story. If the Northernness seemed then a bigger thing than my religion, that may partly have been because my attitude toward it contained elements which my religion ought to have contained and did not.”(6)

Even so, in moments of moral crisis, we do not pause to ask what Jane Erye would do, I once heard a writer say. She had referenced the Brian Nichol’s story—the gunman who went on a shooting spree in Atlanta and ended up holding a woman hostage in her apartment where she read to him from The Purpose Drive Life and eventually convinced him to turn himself in. She then asked if this story would have turned out the same if the young girl had read to him from Moby Dick or War and Peace or any of the great classics of history. Her point was clear: the influence of art and imagination is usually not in the thick of things, but on the margins of culture; nor it is always clear and obvious, but often dense and unsettling. And yet there are inarguably characters and stories that indeed become of moral significance, pulling us into worlds that call for attention, compassion, and consideration. Long before I had any idea about the word “allegory” or the concept of good or bad literature, Narnian kings, talking beavers, and the Queen of Glome began appearing in my dreams, beckoning me to another place. In the aftermath of death and subsequent disappointment over the miracle we did not get, it was Aslan’s empathetic tear for the grieving Digory that came to mind when all seemed lost. For Lewis, it was the bright shadow coming out of a George MacDonald book that found him mercifully in the margins. “In the depth of my disgraces, in the then invincible ignorance of my intellect, all this was given me without asking, even without consent. That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer. I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.”(6) But the Spirit no doubt mercifully did.

It is quite true that a young materialist or pessimist, atheist or agnostic who wishes to stay this way cannot be too careful in choosing what to read. God is unscrupulous, as Lewis attests, willing to use our own imaginations against us, our own pens to probe the wounds. If imagination is not the property of materialism, but the playground of heaven, it is nonetheless not the thing itself. But the hopeful signs of God’s own compelling imagination are everywhere—beautiful and terrible, inviting and transforming. It is the encounter with the Gate, not the signs along the way, that transforms the entire journey. It is said that Lewis became more like himself when he finally kneeled and admitted that God was God—”as though the key to his own hidden and locked-away personality was given to him.”(7) Everything is intensified—his loves, his responses, Jack himself—as the one brought in kicking and screaming discovered in Christ and his kingdom the world of Joy he had only before heard feebly. The faint horns of Elfland give way to the resounding glory of the creator and wonders beyond our imagining.

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

(1) C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (Orlando: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1955), 167.

(2) Lewis, 213-214.

(3) Lewis, 167.

(4) Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis (San Francisco: Harper, 2005), 312.

(5) Lewis, 76.

(6) Lewis, 181.

(7) Jacobs, 131.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Happy New Year

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Ravi Z

Is happiness really attainable? It is a question many have sought to answer—debated in philosophy halls, whispered about at slumber parties, promised in innumerable marketing campaigns—and particularly at the turn of a new year. Our countless approaches to pursuing happiness are as diverse as our many definitions of the word. But what if the attainability of happiness is intimately connected to our answer to another question? Namely, what is the source of your greatest enjoyment in life? In other words, could there be a connection between your worldview and your capacity to experience happiness?

In a significant study, Armand Nicholi, professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard University, compared the life and work of Sigmund Freud to that of C.S. Lewis.(1) Each cultural giant was recognized for the remarkable accuracy with which he observed human emotion and experience. And yet, each man defined and experienced happiness in strikingly different manners, through radically different worldviews.

Freud’s experience and understanding of happiness emerged as fundamental to his materialist understanding of the world. He observed happiness to be “a problem of satisfying a person’s instinctual wishes.”(2) Consequently, the possibility of attaining happiness was met with pessimism.  Freud recognized that the human appetite is never fully satisfied. His observation is not without merit. Happiness, defined in such terms, is problematic, if at the same time, the goal is to achieve a lasting happiness. Money may be able to achieve one instinctual wish, and yet instinctual wishes ebb and flow with perpetually changing appetites. The average U.S. citizen’s buying power has doubled during the last four decades, yet studies report that the average American is not any happier, but in fact, less happy than reported in studies conducted forty years earlier. Sadly, Freud’s life itself reflected his definition of happiness. His letters were increasingly filled with pessimism and depression, even mentioning drug use as the only effective mood-lifter he could find.

What makes C.S. Lewis a fascinating point of comparison is that like Freud, he too, was intensely pessimistic about the possibilities of happiness early in life. And yet as emphasized by many biographers and close friends, his life was profoundly transformed in his early thirties, following a dramatic shift in worldview. Through a worldview far different than one of materialism, Lewis reasoned, “What does not satisfy when we find it, must not be the thing we were desiring.”(3) Happiness, for Lewis, could not ultimately be met in the material. As he found himself approaching a worldview shaped by something beyond the material, Lewis first thought he was coming to a place, an idea, and found instead that he came to a Person, one within the material world and also beyond and behind it. In fact, it was the surprise of finding a person that first redefined the notion of happiness for him—happiness from within this source of joy that marked his life even during times of pain and loss.

In this new year of potential promise, ultimate sources of happiness may be as worth considering as each possible option or hopeful resolution. The psalmist writes of a creator as a source within and beyond the material, “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” There may well be a connection between our capacity for happiness and our understanding of life. In the Christian view, Christ stands in flesh and blood calling you nearer that your joy may be transformed by a present and enduring love.

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

(1) Armand Nicholi, The Question of God, (The Free Press:  New York, 2002).

(2) Ibid., 100.

(3) C.S. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1992), 123.

 

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Letter To A Child

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Our Daily Bread

All of 3 John

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. —3 John 4

Even at the end of his life, C. S. Lewis showed an interest in the spiritual nurture of younger believers. Although in ill health, he took time to respond to the letter of a child named Philip. Complimenting the boy’s fine written expression, Lewis said he was delighted that Philip understood that in the Narnia Chronicles the lion Aslan represented Jesus Christ. The next day, Lewis died at his home in the Kilns, Oxford, England, one week before his 65th birthday.

The apostle John, in his later years, sent a letter to his spiritual children. In it we see the joy of a mature believer encouraging his spiritually younger disciples to keep walking in the truth and following Christ.

John wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth” (3 John 1:4). Short by New Testament standards, John’s letter demonstrates the joy that comes in nurturing and watching the next generation’s spiritual growth.

Encouraging spiritual understanding in the next generation should be the pursuit of mature believers. Sending a note of appreciation, giving a word of encouragement, praying, or offering sound advice can all be ways of helping others on their spiritual journey with God. —Dennis Fisher

To help another in Christ to grow

You have to pay a price

It takes the giving of yourself

And that means sacrifice. —D. DeHaan

The journey is better with someone who knows the way.

Bible in a year: Zechariah 9-12; Revelation 20

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Attending To Our Words

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Our Daily Bread

Psalm 66:10-20

Certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer. —Psalm 66:19

A week after C. S. Lewis died in 1963, colleagues and friends gathered in the chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, England, to pay tribute to the man whose writings had fanned the flames of faith and imagination in children and scholars alike.

During the memorial service, Lewis’ close friend Austin Farrer noted that Lewis always sent a handwritten personal reply to every letter he received from readers all over the world. “His characteristic attitude to people in general was one of consideration and respect,” Farrer said. “He paid you the compliment of attending to your words.”

In that way, Lewis mirrored God’s remarkable attention to what we say to Him in prayer. During a time of great difficulty, the writer of Psalm 66 cried out to God (vv.10-14). Later, he praised the Lord for His help, saying, “Certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer” (v.19).

When we pray, the Lord hears our words and knows our hearts. Truly we can say with the psalmist, “Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me!” (v.20). Our prayers become the avenue to a deeper relationship with Him. At all times, even in our hours of deepest need, He attends to our words. —David McCasland

My Savior hears me when I pray,

Upon His Word I calmly rest;

In His own time, in His own way,

I know He’ll give me what is best. —Hewitt

We always have God’s attention.

Bible in a year: Ezekiel 37-39; 2 Peter 2

 

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – Paradise Found

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You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. —Psalm 16:11

Whenever we took the freeway through Anaheim when I was a kid, I would gaze out the car window at a familiar image in the distance: the Matterhorn at Disneyland. To me it represented the Promised Land. I remember making a vow to myself that when I became an adult, I would go to Disneyland every day.

When Disneyland first opened in 1955, visitors were charged for each attraction. Apparently there were a lot of complaints that Walt Disney was nickel-and-diming people, because Disneyland came up with a ticket book. There was a certain ticket in the book that was more important than the rest. You guessed it: the E ticket. That is what got you on the Matterhorn (the best ride back then) as well as the Monorail and the Submarine Voyage.

I still enjoy going to Disneyland, though I haven’t kept my vow to go every day. But there is a far better paradise that I am looking forward to now. The final chapters of the Bible describe that paradise, which God has created for us in heaven. In the first book of the Bible, we see paradise lost. But in the last book of the Bible, we see paradise found.

The good news is the admission price to heaven already has been paid. There won’t be any nickel-and-diming, and there won’t be any need for E tickets—or any other tickets for that matter. The admission was purchased for me—and for you—by Jesus on the cross.

One day there will be restoration. Handicaps will be gone. Mental and physical disabilities will be nonexistent. There will be laughter. There will be joy. C. S. Lewis said it well: “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” In God’s presence is fullness of joy—no E ticket required.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Undermining Our Own Mines

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Ravi Z

G.K. Chesterton once made the proclamation that it is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God. We live in a world where objections are made to everything under the sun. Yet, the moment any of us condemns something, we have to assume there is some standard by which to condemn it. The modern day rebel, as Chesterton refers to the skeptic, has no standard left because he has rejected everything. Thus, he lives in contradiction. Chesterton reasons:

The new rebel is a sceptic and will not entirely trust anything… [T]he fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation applies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces but the doctrine by which he denounces it… As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, as a philosopher, that all life is a waste of time. [He] goes to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.(1)

If the whole universe has no meaning, C.S. Lewis said similarly, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. The very cry of skeptical objection often betrays the skeptic himself. And yet, I have no doubt that the peculiar act of undermining one’s own mines is hardly a skill left only to the skeptic.

In this, the Gospel is unique in its power to pull down our own contradictions. Jesus repeatedly challenges the way we experience reality, the way we experience ourselves as alive. What seems solid reasoning, Christ establishes as contradictory. What we might denounce as a total loss, he describes as found. What we would be quick to discard as broken, he shows us the meaning of whole.

A friend of mine in college profoundly illustrated to me this very truth. He was born with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, and as a result he is unable to speak or walk or feed himself. He communicates through a computerized voice by typing with his toes. Overcoming more in his lifetime than most can imagine, he was in a public speaking class when I first became acquainted with him. Though an unlikely candidate for a career in public speaking, he has become exactly that, and is now a much in-demand speaker. His message is as powerful as his will to proclaim it. “My body,” he says through the voice of a computer, “is a slow moving, twisted shell of uncontrollable muscle, and yet my life is a picture of nothing short of wholeness. This glorious contradiction I attribute entirely to Jesus Christ.”

Jesus compels us to drastically redefine what we mean by life, just as he compelled the disciples on Easter Sunday. “They were the ones marked out for death,” writes author Paul W. Hoon, “[Christ], the ‘dead’ was really the living.”(2) Lives that are littered with inconsistencies, blind to the ways in which we undermine our own mines, are given a new picture of what it means to be human. Giving him a life to reassemble, we are given wholeness.

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

(1) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Haddonfield, NJ: Dodd, Mead & Co, 2013), 28-29.

(2) Paul W. Hoon, Integrity of Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), 141.

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – An Inescapable Reality

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“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’ ” —Matthew 25:41

Often whenever the subject of judgment and hell comes up, so does this question: If God is all-loving, then why would He send people to hell?

Answer: because He is a God of love and justice. Hell was invented, if you will, for the devil and his angels. Do you think the devil deserves to go to hell? Of course he does.

And if a person ends up in hell, it is because they have rejected, through their lifetime, the offer of forgiveness through Jesus Christ that required the death of the Son of God on the cross. They rejected it again and again. It is not that God sends them to hell as much as they go there voluntarily.

J. I. Packer said, “Scripture sees hell as self-chosen. . . . Hell appears as God’s gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshiping Him, or without God forever, worshiping themselves.”

Also, C. S. Lewis wrote, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: Those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no hell.”

Heaven and hell do exist. And in that final day, if you are a believer, God will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord” (see Matthew 25:21, 23).

But if you are not a believer, God will say, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (Matthew 7:23).

Everyone will meet Jesus Christ one day. It is inescapable and unavoidable. And if you don’t meet Him as Savior, then you ultimately will meet Him as Judge.