“Lamentation” is not a word that is heard very often. Words like sadness, regret, sorrow, or mourning are far more common. But I wonder if something is not lost in the dismissal of lament from our language and our lives.

The Christian hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” is for me a song of lament. Because of certain associations, it is a song that immediately evokes a sense of grief, and yet it is the sort of mourning for me that is somehow both held and expressed in worship. Whether the Christian story is one you embrace or not, the connection of these two ideas—worship and lamentation—may seem even more foreign than the word itself. What could lament possibly have to do with worship? Surely if not opposites, they are words and postures diametrically opposed. While this may be true in many popular applications, which use the word worship to denote passion for something, worship in the Judeo/Christian vision and experience of the world once considered lamentation a significant element. It is a thought worth considering, particularly on behalf of those who dismiss the possibility of God’s existence out of a conviction that a world of so much pain is incompatible with a God worth loving.

In her honest memoir No More Faking Fine, Esther Fleece admits between court hearings, restraining orders, and the harrowing dynamics of a shattered family that it was shaping her suspicions about God. “I was learning a dangerous lesson: that love can end abruptly, that the support that was there in the past can sometimes be swept up suddenly like a rug under your feet, leaving you stumbling. What’s worse, I couldn’t help but worry if God’s love was like this too.”(1) The book recounts her ability to successfully fake being fine; she went from competent student to accomplished professional, all the while reeling with anxiety and battling debilitating despair. But discovering the language of lament offered a kind of merciful undoing. “A lament saves us from staying stuck in grief and rescues us from a faith based on falsehoods,” she writes. “It was a false belief that told me I would always be incapable of being loved. It was a false belief that led me to believe I was the reason for my parents’ divorce. It was a false belief that told me I would never find my way out of despair… While a lament may not change our circumstances, it will help clear up our misunderstandings about God… A lament is a pathway; it serves a purpose. But a lament denied turns into a lie.”(2) Fleece discovered that the God who not only gives permission to lament but considers it worship was far more capable of reaching a crumbling world of pain than she ever imagined.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Case for Lament →

There is a growing interest in new spirituality in our times. With its all-inclusive approach to religion accompanied by its emphasis on the spiritual disciplines, the East has become an object of great attraction. Eastern spirituality offers a wide variety of options from which one can choose depending on inclination. Prominent among them are yoga, astrology, holistic healings, and transcendental meditation, among many others.

The term ‘spirituality’ is sometimes used in a very vague sense. Gordon Wakefield offers a very helpful definition which says that in “all (Christian) traditions, and in many non-Christian faiths and philosophies, the underlying implication is that there is a constituent of human nature which seeks relations with the ground and purpose of existence, however conceived.”(1) The Bible describes this same predicament as a consequence of God’s work in us so that mankind would somehow desire and reach out for the Divine.(2) Over a period of time, this basic truth about human nature has taken different shapes and forms in terms of its expressions.

According to the new spirituality, the diagnosis of the problem of mankind is not moral sin against a Holy God (as diagnosed by the Biblical view) but that mankind suffers from “a type of metaphysical amnesia—an ignorance of their divine nature.”(3) In order to overcome this ‘metaphysical amnesia,’ the new spirituality has introduced several mystical paths as a means of attaining salvation or, in other words, to awaken people from a deep seated ignorance to the realization that they are god. What then lies at the heart of this path to ‘self-realization’ is the “transformation or alteration of consciousness,” which involves the process of “following a mystical path,” which would ultimately aid in the union with the Divine.(4)

These prescribed paths in turn are to be pursued with the sole spiritual objective to acquire the union between the finite and the infinite, wherein the individual in the ultimate sense ought to lose one’s identity by being one with the divine (like a drop of water loses its uniqueness when it merges with the vast ocean). Clearly, one has to strictly follow all that has been prescribed in order to earn one’s salvation. However, despite the labor that this spiritual exercise demands and the length of time that it consumes, there is, in fact, no assurance that one can ever attain success. Most importantly, there is also no way for us to verify if these paths are at all true.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – In Pursuit of Spirituality →

In a world of finger-pointing, Tetsuya Ishikawa paused instead to confess guilt. After seven years at the forefront of the credit markets, he took the idea of a friend to write a book called How I Caused the Credit Crunch because, in the friend’s analysis, “it sounds like you did.”(1) In the form of a novel that discredits the notion of the financial sector as a collaboration of remote, unthinking forces, he admits in flesh and blood that he believes he is guilty, too. Though reviewers note Ishikawa does not remain long with his admission of responsibility, he succeeds in showing the financial markets as a reflection of human choices with real, moral dimensions—and, ultimately, the futility of our ongoing attempts at finding a better scapegoat.

Whenever the subject of blame or fault comes about in any sector of life, whether economic, societal, or individual, scapegoating is a far more common reaction than confession. Most of us are most comfortable when blame is placed as far away from us as possible. Even the word ‘confession,’ the definition of which is concerned with personally owning a fault or belief, is now often associated with the sins of others, which an outspoken soul just happens to be willing to share with the world happily willing to listen: Confessions of a Shopaholic, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Confessions of a Columnist. We are interested in those confessions of a former investment banker/warlord/baseball wife because the ‘owning up’ has nothing to do with owning anything.

Perhaps like many of us in our own confessing, Charles Templeton’s 1996 book, Farewell to God, which offered the confessions of a former Christian leader, is filled with moments of confession in both senses of the word: honest commentary and easy scapegoating. In his thoughts that deal with the Christian church, it is particularly apparent. Pointing near and far and wide, Templeton observes that the church indeed has a speckled past: “Across the centuries and on every continent, Christians—the followers of the Prince of Peace—have been the cause of and involved in strife. The church during the Middle Ages was like a terrorist organization.”(2) He admits that some good has come from Christian belief, but that there is altogether too much bad that has come from it. He then cites the church’s declining numbers as evidence that the world is in agreement; people are losing interest because the church is failing to be relevant. Pews are empty; denominations oppose one another; the church is floundering and its influence waning—except perhaps its negative influence, which he insists is on the rise. Of course, Templeton is by no means alone in these accusations.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – What Is Wrong With the World? →