The following essay from Vince Vitale is an excerpt from his newly released Jesus Among Secular Gods coauthored with Ravi Zacharias.

Suppose there was a machine (maybe before long there will be!) that would give you any experience you desired. You could choose to experience winning Olympic gold, or falling in love, or making a great scientific discovery, and then the neurons in your brain would be stimulated such that you would experience a perfect simulation of actually doing these things. In reality, you would be floating in a tank of goo with electrodes hooked up to your brain. Given the choice, should you preprogram your experiences and plug into this machine for the rest of your life?(1)

I join philosopher Robert Nozick, who first devised this thought experiment in the 1970s, in thinking that we should not plug into this “experience machine.” And this suggests the falsity of hedonism, a view dating back over two millennia to the Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus. If all that mattered were pleasure (in other words, if hedonism were true), then we should plug into the experience machine and we should encourage everyone we know to plug in as well.

We rightly care about more than just happiness or pleasure. We want to not only feel loved; we want to actually be loved. We want to not only dream of accomplishing our dreams; we want to actually accomplish them. We want to not only feel inside as if we have made a difference in life; we want to actually make a difference. Hedonism is not the desire of our hearts; it is all that is left when every other “ism” has failed us.

A recent academic book suggested that, on hedonistic assumptions, because some animals can feel pleasure like human persons but cannot suffer in some of the worst ways as human persons, those animals could be understood to be more valuable than humans.(2) If the acquisition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is the measure of all, these animals score well on pleasure with fewer deductions for the complex psychological pains such as anxiety and disappointment to which the human psyche is vulnerable. This same assumption led utilitarian Jeremy Bentham to the view that “the game of push-pin [a children’s game] is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry.”(3) The problem here is not with the logic leading to the conclusions but with the underlying assumption of pleasure as the sole determiner of value.

Pleasure and happiness are good things, but they are not the only good things. We should care not only about feeling good on the inside but also about truth and about the impact that our lives have outside of ourselves. As C.S. Lewis put it, if happiness were all he was after, a good bottle of port would do the trick.(4)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – “Whatever Makes You Happy” →

Around the world, the sentiment is the same even though there are many different ways to convey the message: from the Dutch “Gelukkig Nieuwjaar” to the Greek “Kali Chronia,” from the Spanish “Feliz año Nuevo” to the Swahili “Mwaka Mzuri” or the Urdu “Naya Saal Mubarik,” the citizens of the world wish for a “Happy New Year!” Regardless the time zone, the stroke of midnight ushers in a celebration that encircles the globe. Fireworks fill the skies with explosive colors carrying hopes and dreams for the coming New Year. A new year brings the chance of fresh possibility and promise, of goals and aspirations, and of renewal and growth. It is the chance to start again and, of course, it is hoped that the year will be filled with happiness.

Despite the revelry and festive mood, the advent of each New Year will inevitably usher in its share of sorrow and sadness. Each year brings its share of natural disasters or calamity. Each year brings some nations closer to war or perpetuates ongoing conflict. For some, economic fortunes will be lost. And for others, the New Year will bring personal loss or suffering. While no one likes to think of these things, they too will come to surprise the unsuspecting.

So what is it that we wish for, and what is it that we want when we say, “Happy New Year”? Far deeper than a simple saying, these words house cherished imaginations of possibility and promise. And those cherished imaginations vary depending on the way in which one defines happiness. Some define happiness as a year in which everything goes their way. Others hope for simpler pleasures, and still others simply hope it will be a year of stepping up to the plate, finding a job, or surviving another day despite the aching hunger or aching loneliness.

Like most, my own thoughts for the substance of a happy New Year tend to revolve around achieving certain goals, seeing dreams fulfilled, or feeling deeply connected to a sense of purpose. One of my yearly rituals is to go through the previous year’s calendar to transfer birthdays, anniversaries and other recurring events into my new calendar. As I did so this year, I reviewed the events of the previous year. While this past year was filled with joys and wonderful celebrations, there were losses that filled the pages as well. I wondered aloud what it will mean for me to have a ‘happy New Year’ and what it will mean for others?

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – New Year Wishes →

The world is full of beginnings and endings. We begin a new year with a certain hope—another year, another chance, a new day. But we carry with us the same fears, the same longings, the same resolutions. A more cynical riposte might be: Is there ever really anything new about a new year?

When the past or present seems so broken that its shards seem to reach well into the future, new days are often filled more with fear than with promise. I remember a time when I could see the end of a difficult situation, but I could not see a beginning unmarred by the residue of the past. “Is there really such a thing as new day?” was the question I held disconsolately. A friend gave me the following words and asked me to hold them instead:

“But this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul,

‘therefore I will hope in him’” (Lamentations 3:21-24).

Spoken in a time of exile, I imagine these words were as pungent for the people they were spoken to as they were for me. The ancient writer of Lamentations held fast to the assurance of things new, even in the midst of a situation that blinded him from any vision of what that could possibly mean. In all of the suffering and sorrow surrounding him, it would not have been unreasonable for him to admit that he saw no way out. With all the damage that had been done, with the uncertainty of exile, and the finality of a destroyed Jerusalem, no one would have blamed him for seeing new mornings as nothing but a cynical promise of more of the same.

But this was not the lament on his lips. Written in the style of an ancient funeral song, the writer’s words, though consumed with death, call to this God by name: The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. Another translation reads, Because of Yahweh’s great love we are not consumed; his mercies are new every morning. What the writer was able to see in the midst of his own lamentation is that only an all-powerful God can truly make a new beginning, a new creation. And new mornings, new years, in and of themselves, are useless and worse than useless if they are not seen as belonging to the one who makes all things new.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – another year, another chance, a new day →