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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Think Again: Beyond Mere Morality

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Beyond Mere Morality

Posted by Ravi Zacharias on August 28, 2013 – RZIM

AS HUMAN BEINGS, we have the capacity to feel with moral implications, to exercise the gift of imagination, and to think in paradigms. We make judgments according to the way we each individually view or interpret the world around us. Even if we do not agree with each other on what ought to be, we recognize that there must be—and that there is—an “ought.” For example, we all ought to behave in certain ways or else we cannot get along, which is why we have laws. In short, we ascribe to ourselves freedom with boundaries.

Yet too often we shun boundaries because we feel impeded or we’re afraid they will deprive us of what we think we really want. While we know that freedom cannot be absolute, we still resist any notion of limitation … at least for ourselves.

The Bible does not mute its warning here. We are drawn like moths to the flame towards that which often crosses known boundaries, that can destroy, and yet we flirt with those dangers. But at the end of life, we seldom hear regrets for not going into forbidden terrain. I do not know of anyone who died as a Christian exercising self-control who wished he or she had been an atheist or had lived an indulgent life. But I have known many in the reverse situation.

In this inconsistency we witness unintended consequences. As I have noted before, I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out. That failure not only robs us of our inner peace but mars the intended light that a consistently lived life brings to the one observing our message.

After lecturing at a major American university, I was driven to the airport by the organizer of the event. I was quite jolted by what he told me. He said, “My wife brought our neighbor last night. She is a medical doctor and had not been to anything like this before. On their way home, my wife asked her what she thought of it all.” He paused and then continued, “Do you know what she said?” Rather reluctantly, I shook my head. “She said, ‘That was a very powerful evening. The arguments were very persuasive. I wonder what he is like in his private life.’”

The answers were intellectually and existentially satisfying, but she still needed to know, did they really make a difference in the life of the one proclaiming them? G.K. Chesterton said, “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.” The Irish evangelist Gypsy Smith once said, “There are five Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some people will never read the first four.” In other words, the message is seen before it is heard. For any skeptic, the answers to their questions are not enough; they look deeper, to the visible transformation of the one offering them.

The Christian message is a reminder that our true malady is one that morality alone cannot solve. A transformed heart by God’s grace is the efficacious power that lifts us beyond mere morality. It is the richness of being right with God. His grace makes up for what our wills cannot accomplish.

Here we must bring a different caution. Christianity is definitively and drastically different from all other religions. In every religion except Christianity, morality is a means of attainment. No amount of goodness can justify us before a sovereign God. The Christian message is a reminder that our true malady is one that morality alone cannot solve. A transformed heart by God’s grace is the efficacious power that lifts us beyond mere morality. It is the richness of being right with God. His grace makes up for what our wills cannot accomplish.

At its core, the call of Jesus is a bountiful invitation to trust and freedom to live in the riches of that relationship. I am only free in as much as I can surrender to God and trust Him to give me the purpose for which my soul longs. This is the wonder and power of a redeemed heart. If I cannot surrender and trust Him, I am not free. We must know to whom we belong and who calls us all to the same purpose. Only when I am at peace with God can I be at peace with myself, and only then will I be at peace with my fellow humans and truly free.

I remember meeting a doctor from Pakistan several years ago. He was a Muslim by birth and practice. He was invited to go to hear a Christian speaking on the meaning of the gospel. He told me he didn’t really care much for what was being said, until the final two statements. The speaker said this: “In surrendering one wins; in dying one lives.” In surrendering to Christ we have the victory over sin. In dying to self, Christ then lives within us.

When that crucified life is seen, men and women are drawn to the Savior because they see what the gospel does in a surrendered heart. That witness lives within the boundaries our Lord set for us and takes us beyond mere morality to the life of the soul that is set free.

Warm Regards,

Ravi

Ravi Zacharias

Syria in Crisis: Ravi Zacharias on Turmoil in the Middle East

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Ravi Zacharias was recently in studio to record a radio interview for “Let My People Think”.

At the end of the program, Bob Ditmer asked him about the conflicts and turmoil in the Middle East. What’s the big picture? What is it that we’re not seeing?  What is happening to Christians and the church during these times?

Ravi answers these questions and paraphrases Winston Churchill’s remark, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all other forms of government.” Watch Ravi as he answers these timely questions.

Posted by Ted Burnham on September 13, 2013 RZIM

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Great Unknowns

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The re-releasing of the movie E.T. on its 20th anniversary brushed the dust off that magical alien story loved by so many. But as one movie critic observed, the storyline has never really retired in the first place. A quick overview of Hollywood’s handiwork over the years shows a consistent fascination with the possibilities of life in outer space.

Scientist Carl Sagan, author of the book on which the movie Contact was based, hosted the first Television program dedicated to the great unknowns of space. The show was an instant hit, viewed by half a billion people. Of the show’s success, Sagan once made the comment: “I was positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in space and in many kindred scientific topics—the origin of life, the Earth, and the Cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with the universe.”

Sagan indeed names things of global curiosity. Where did we come from? Are we alone? Throughout each generation, a hunger to know is often matched in force and voraciousness with a hunger for the unknown. The mysteries of our universe can fascinate us, compel us, and give hope. They can also become a point of misperception if sought in and of themselves.

As Ravi Zacharias has observed, there are minds for which no matter how many peripheral questions are answered, the vital ones still elude. The great unknown can be a point of gratitude, a powerful force on the imagination that compels us to seek its giver. It can just as easily become a fixation, the meaning and not the means to finding what is real and true. But the great unknown itself, however great, still begs for a source that is known.

To the Athenian thinkers many years ago, the Apostle Paul spoke words quite fitting for present times. As his eyes scanned that culture, he saw their fascination with knowing—so strong they even ventured to know what was unknown to them. A sign over one of their many altars read, “To the unknown god.” Seeing this, Paul declared to them on Mars Hill that what they were worshipping as unknown, this could be proclaimed to them as known.(1)

The universe is indeed vast and fascinating and there is unmistakably something to our yearning to know we are not alone. As Ted from the movie Contact and Sagan himself noted with curiosity, “If we were alone in this vast universe, it would all be an awful lot of wasted space…”

But what we worship in this world as unknown, Jesus gives us the chance to know, while powerfully reminding us that we are not alone. His notable life, painful death, and jarring resurrection allow us to encounter beauty and mystery, assurance and truth at once. “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,” professed Paul, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.(2) We can approach the good mysteries of outer space and inner space with gratitude, for our creator has revealed his face and we are not alone.

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

(1) See Acts 17:23.

(2) Acts 17:24-27.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unsearchable Things

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

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

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

Whatever we see, there is almost always more. It is probably the one thing we can count on—and the one thing we do not. Christian philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek writes, “We labor under the misimpression that we see what we see, that seeing is believing, that either I see it or I don’t.”(3) Perhaps seeing is not always about 20/20, and seeing God is something else altogether.

Christianity and its stories introduce a God who makes known God’s surprising presence again and again, a God whose revelation is both piecemeal and profound. “O LORD,” proclaims David, “for your servant’s sake and according to your own heart, you have done all this greatness, in making known all these great things. There is none like you, O LORD, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.”(4) God is well worth our efforts in learning to see. Whether in Jacob’s dream or in Hagar’s distress, God seeks to be known and seeks to gather. The Spirit seeks to surprise and comfort. The Son seeks to be near. Says the LORD, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”(5)

There is something relieving in knowing that there is much that we do not know. It keeps us grounded in reality. It keeps us with a grateful eye toward things of mystery and beauty and kindness. It keeps us looking to the one who wills to be known. When Job was confronted by God with the great thunder of 62 questions about the foundations of the world and the inner workings of life, he realized that he might have spoken out of turn. Confronting the reality of all that he did not know brought Job to a deeper certainty of God and himself. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you,” he said. There is no more grateful, honest cry before the God who sees.

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

(1) Genesis 28:16.

(2) Genesis 16:13.

(3) Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003), 99.

(4) 1 Chronicles 17:19,20.

(5) Jeremiah 33:3.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Bodies of Evidence

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Dr. Paul Brand was an orthopedic surgeon who chose his patients among the untouchable. With his wife, who was also a physician, he spent a lifetime working with the marred and useless limbs of leprosy victims. In fact, he transformed the way in which medicine approached the painful and often exiled world of the leper. Whereas the disfigurements of leprosy were once treated as irreversible consequences of the disease, Dr. Brand brought new hope to sufferers of leprosy by utilizing the body’s capacity to heal. “I have come to realize that every patient of mine, every newborn baby, in every cell of its body, has a basic knowledge of how to survive and how to heal that exceeds anything that I shall ever know,” wrote Brand. “That knowledge is the gift of God, who has made our bodies more perfectly than we could ever have devised.”

Philip Yancey was a young journalist when he first met this dignified British surgeon in an interview. He recalls the teary-eyed Brand speaking of his patients, describing their disease as if first hand—their unremitting suffering, experimental surgeries, and societal rejection. Many memorable conversations later, Yancey would recall the healing presence this physician was to his own crippled and weary belief in God. To Yancey, Brand represented faith and hope in action, in reality, amidst suffering and death; his belief in Christ caused him to live in a very particular way. Thus, Dr. Brand, who worked to restore the image of God in lives marred by disease, helped restore the face of God in the doubt-ridden world of a young author. As Yancey later would write, “You need only meet one saint to believe, to silence the noisy arguments of the world.”(1) Such lives are certain reminders that God is real and worthy to be followed.

Such lives also remind us that one of the key elements in considering the arguments of any truth claim is actually not an argument at all. Rather it is a question of pragmatics. Is this worldview livable? Can this philosophy be carried out? Stories of believers who are broken and persecuted but somehow beautifully alive with the hope of Christ suggest that Christianity is not only a livable worldview, but a worldview that gives meaning to life as it really is and not simply ideal pictures of life. Yet as Ravi Zacharias notes significantly, the Christian hope is not true because it is livable; it is livable because it is true. The message of Christ is a reality that can carry men and women through death and darkness; it is also a truth that compels being carried to the ends of the earth.

In a 1990 sermon titled The Wisdom of the Body, Dr. Paul Brand said, “I pray that when my time comes I may not grumble that my body has worn out too soon, but hold on to gratitude that I have been so long at the helm of the most wonderful creation the world has ever known, and look forward to meeting the designer face to face.” In flesh and blood such as ours, God silences the arguments of a noisy world. Jesus stood before the masses to show the world that our bodies and our hearts were meant to know healing. Perhaps we can be like the one leper of the ten that Jesus healed, the one who recognized the significance of the man behind the miracle. Falling on his face at Jesus’s feet, he saw the Son of God. And Jesus said to him: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”(2)

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

(1) Philip Yancey, “The Leprosy Doctor,” Christianity Today (November 2003), 112.

(2) Luke 17:11-18.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Learned Craft

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Many people, including those within the church, are wrestling with the fundamental character and nature of God, with questions concerning his goodness and trustworthiness. So how do we who identify ourselves as Christians help others see the hope of the gospel and persevere in hope ourselves in a world where the biblical view of a loving and good God is constantly challenged?

I attempted to suppress my stunned disbelief with a question: “What do you mean?” I listened as a dear Christian friend of more than 25 years shared with me that she was considering moving in a direction that was a reversal of what she had long held true and what the Scriptures clearly proscribe. Over the days that followed I tried to refrain from continually pointing her to numerous Bible passages that would challenge her intentions—after all, she knew them well. Rather, I spoke about God’s compassion in our brokenness and the Holy Spirit’s transformative work in our lives, and encouraged her to talk with a counselor who could help unravel her deep and knotted burden. Sadly, a few months later, she chose to leave her church home and move in the direction she expressed.

“I’m happy,” she told me—and how does one counter that?1

I have had the privilege of working with Ravi Zacharias for over twenty years. If my experience with my friend and the emails and letters we receive are any reflection of the wider evangelical culture, there has been a noticeable shift in the questions raised by those who would identify themselves as Christians. Less than ten years ago, the predominant questions were, if you will, intramural ones: “What is your view of predestination?” “Which version of the Bible is most accurate?” “What is the unpardonable sin?”

More recently, however, many questions resemble ones we usually receive from skeptics or seekers at university engagements: “How can God be morally good if He ordered genocide in the Old Testament?” “Why should I believe in a God who sees my suffering and doesn’t answer my prayer?” As such, I would suggest that many people, including those within the church, are wrestling with the fundamental character and nature of God, with questions concerning his goodness and trustworthiness. 2

Think, for instance, of the confusion generated by Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. Yes, numerous pastors, scholars, and bloggers revealed its flawed exegesis and arguments. Yet the book created profound cognitive dissonance for some readers and accomplished its purpose: to stir an emotional response to a depiction of an angry God and unfair judge.

Even we who may seek to hold fast to what we cognitively affirm—that God is sovereign and good—sometimes struggle to make sense of our emotions when we encounter a difficult passage of Scripture or an experience such as betrayal or loss that challenges our view of an all-loving and powerful God. Indeed, consider bewildered Job under the scourge of suffering, or Joseph or John the Baptist languishing in prison, or faithful but barren Elizabeth and Zechariah, and countless others in the pages of Scripture who strained to discern God’s presence and purpose.

So how do we who identify ourselves as Christians help others see the hope of the gospel and persevere in hope ourselves in a world where the biblical view of a loving and good God is constantly challenged?

A Deeper Question

As we seek to address tough questions, Ravi Zacharias has observed that it is critical to understand there is often a deeper question behind the one being posed. Hence, we must listen carefully to hear and respond to the actual question raised. He recalls how a young couple came to him after a speaking engagement in a church and asked how God could allow suffering and evil. As he began to offer a reply, he noticed that the woman was holding a child with a severe physical deformity. He surmised that the couple’s theological inquiry masked a deeper existential struggle and so he set aside the standard arguments of theodicy to consider the pain and confusion they were experiencing.

This is not to suggest that many people do not wrestle with the philosophical arguments for the problem of evil or God’s existence, but rather, that we need to take time to listen to our questioners so that we might truly hear their concerns. Sometimes, as with my longtime friend, we might even ask, “What do you mean?” In apologetics, this approach uses the law of identity, which involves identifying unspoken assumptions and presuppositions. This law states that everything that exists has a specific nature; for example, “A = A” or “A sheep is a sheep” (and not a cow). Thus, if someone remarks, “Sure, I believe in Jesus,” we rely upon the law of identity when we ask the person to tell us more about who this Jesus is. Is this the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament or The DaVinci Code?

Or, we might follow up by asking the person to tell us what he or she means by “believe.” Does the individual’s understanding of belief amount to reasoned confidence or “blind” faith?3 A common misperception is that science involves facts and evidence, whereas religious belief is based on myth, feelings, or a wish-fulfillment for a benevolent God. And yet, science is unable to answer basic metaphysical questions such as “Why are we here?” or “Why is there something rather than nothing?” And atheism itself can be seen as a wish-fulfillment for no God and no absolute foundation for morality.

In such conversations, we may discover that “belief in Jesus” may be radically different from what the Bible presents. Thus, it is critical to listen carefully to those we seek to engage so that we might hear their underlying questions and unspoken assumptions. The art of listening and responding to questions is a learned craft honed with humility, patience, and careful study. As my colleague Alister McGrath writes, “Apologetics is not a set of techniques for winning people to Christ. It is not a set of argumentative templates designed to win debates. It is a willingness to work with God in helping people discover and turn to his glory.”4

Learning To See

Like those we encounter who struggle with questions, sometimes our own unsettled questions and unexamined assumptions can cloud our hope in God and our confidence in the gospel. When relationships fail, health deteriorates, or vocations are lost, our understanding of God can be tested to the core when we, as philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek suggests, “labor under the misimpression that we see what we see, that seeing is believing, that either I see it or I don’t.”5 The evidence for God’s existence and Christ’s uniqueness looks quite clear to me in light of the historical Scriptures, the pattern of the universe, and conflicting worldviews. But there are times when I have questioned God’s goodness because I perceived Him to be unresponsive and unmoved by my troubled heart. Studying the Scriptures didn’t lead me to this misperception; rather, my experience of loss did.

And when our view of God is misguided, doubt eclipses hope and we may be tempted to take the seemingly “happy road” rather than trust in his sovereign but unforeseen plan. Yes, God is consistent and faithful to his Word, but He is not predictable. If He were, there would be no place for grace or mercy.6 He sends rain to the just and unjust. He rewards a prostitute’s shrewd deceit with a secure place in the Promised Land, while barring his prophet Moses from it because of a rash act of rage.7

In such places of doubt and discouragement, we need the fellowship of other believers to help us see what we cannot see, to pray when we cannot pray, and to hope when we struggle to hope. As Meek contends,“Sometimes, apart from someone else’s insistence and guidance, we don’t even get it right about the thoughts in our own head. We need to be taught how to see.”8

I ran a trail half-marathon recently. I have competed at this distance and longer on roads but never on the trail, so the first couple of miles I was careful to note every root and rock as I tried to run fast. By the third mile, I felt at ease dodging obstacles and began to settle into a competitive pace. I turned a corner and descended a hill with a massive rock just below its crest, and Wham! Suddenly, I was sailing headlong and my splayed body hit the ground. I had seen the rock but somehow its presence didn’t prompt me to alter my stride. With ten miles left to the finish, my throbbing, bloody knee suddenly sharpened my focus for the rest of the race.

The evidence for God’s existence and Christ’s uniqueness looks quite clear to me in light of the historical Scriptures, the pattern of the universe, and conflicting worldviews. But there are times when I have questioned God’s goodness because I perceived Him to be unresponsive and unmoved by my troubled heart. Studying the Scriptures didn’t lead me to this misperception; rather, my experience of loss did.

Like listening, seeing is a learned craft. For example, experienced trail runners can fly down a hill with seeming ease, nimbly dodging small and large obstacles on their path. Their bodies have a heightened sense of proprioception (literally, “one’s own perception”), which is the ability to orient to an environment with limited visual clues. “The special balance that is so key to trail running is … proprioception,” writes elite endurance runner Adam Chase. “Proprioception comes through muscle, joint, tendon, and inner ear sensory nerve terminals that respond to and adjust posture and positioning through stimuli originating from within the body. When trail runners complain that they are bad at running down rocky or otherwise sketchy descents, it is usually a testament to the fact that they need to work on their proprioceptive abilities.”9 Trail running is an art that requires keen awareness and practice.

The prophet Daniel and the apostle Paul overcame obstacles in their pagan, foreign environments by a resolute focus on a sovereign God who alone “changes times and seasons” and “reveals deep and hidden things” (Daniel 2:21-22). Both were given the gift of vision, but they were “taught how to see” through persistent prayer, a community of friends, and a humble understanding that all wisdom and ability come from God. “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,” wrote Paul, “in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18-19a).

A Gift to All

This hope to which God has called us is a “living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Like any living substance, hope must be nurtured and exercised for it to grow. Isaiah tells us that “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31). Hope can expand even as we endure trials, for “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4).

Like the fine art of listening and seeing, I am discovering that persevering in hope is a learned craft. This is not to suggest it is something we must earn. No, hope is a gift to all who call upon God. Yet just as an Olympic sprinter gifted with speed must sharpen her skills consistently to succeed, so our hope matures when we “run in the path of [God’s] commands” and “feed on his faithfulness.”10 “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis observes that we must be taught both to recognize and to exercise hope:

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.

Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.11

Ultimately, hope grows as we sit before the mirror of God’s Word, for it is the one true and trustworthy reflection of who God is and who we are becoming. Here we are exhorted and comforted, chastened and encouraged by the One who loves us and can speak into our lives like no other. Here we can bring our longings, fears, and questions before his throne of grace and let the light of Jesus’s presence shine into every dark and confusing place in our lives, “for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”12 This is the hope of the gospel. And God promises that all “who hope in him will not be disappointed” (Isaiah 49:23).

Hope is a gift to all who call upon God. Yet just as an Olympic sprinter gifted with speed must sharpen her skills consistently to succeed, so our hope matures when we “run in the path of God’s commands” and “feed on his faithfulness.” “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

 

Danielle DuRant is director of research and writing at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, GA.

1 This question is intended merely to be rhetorical. There are several approaches one might use as a follow-up depending on the person’s struggle and faith commitment.

2 In his conversations with Christians wrestling with doubt, philosophy professor Gary Habermas has observed a similar trend. See his chapter “Evil, the Resurrection and the Example of Jesus” in God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain, eds. Chad V. Meister, Norman Geisler, and James K. Dew (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 163-174.

3 For a fuller discussion of reasonable belief and so-called blind faith, see chapters 3 and 4 of Alex McLellan’s A Jigsaw Guide to Making Sense of the World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012).

4 Alister E. McGrath, Mere Apologetics: How To Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2012), 41.

5 Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing To Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003), 99.

6 I am indebted to Roslyn Harden Scott, Ph.D., for this insight.

7 Of course, a close reading of Joshua 2 and Numbers 20 reveals that Rahab’s act of deception (risking her life to harbor the spies) was precipitated by her faith in the God of the Israelites, whereas Moses’s display of anger grew out of his lack of trust in God. Hebrews 11:31 commends Rahab for her faith and James 2:25, for her works (faith in action).

8 Meek, 99, emphasis added.

9 Adam Chase, “On the Trail …Core Strength” (November 1, 2003), accessed on February 19, 2013 at http://www.runnersworld.com/trail-running-training/trail-core-strength.

10 See Psalm 119:32 and 37:3 (NASB).

11 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1960), 118-119, emphasis added.

12 1 John 3:20.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Bigger Story

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From Think Again Magazine –  May 30, 2013

The story is told of a man who was fishing.  Every time he caught a big fish, he threw it back into the water. Every little fish he caught went into his bag. Another big one, back into the water; a tiny little one, into his bag. Finally, a man who had been watching him and was very perplexed by his unorthodox manner of fishing asked, “Can you please explain to me why you are throwing the big ones away?” The fisherman did not hesitate: “Because I only have an eight-inch frying pan and anything bigger than eight inches does not fit my pan!”

We may chuckle at someone who throws away a fish too big for a pan or someone else who just explains away anything that doesn’t fit his or her own prejudiced opinions. Yet we see this repeatedly: the Naturalist that describes the “origins” of the universe as “unrepeatable” (Stephen Gould) or “almost a miracle” (Francis Crick) or “mathematically impossible” (Fredrick Hoyle) but will simply fight off any possibility of agency or cause or the supernatural. The question that always demands an answer and that each one of us must pause to ask ourselves is whether our paradigm of the world really matches reality. Does it fit? Is there explanatory power for the unshakable questions of life? Is it coherent? Is it rationally livable?

But there is a rub. We must recognize that every worldview can leave us with questions that we cannot exhaustively resolve this side of eternity. Every worldview has gaps. The question is, Does my paradigm fit reality and have enough reason behind it to explain how these gaps might actually be filled and remain consistent?

What do I mean by gaps? Let me borrow an illustration from Francis Schaeffer. Suppose you were to leave a room with two glasses on the table, Glass A and Glass B. Glass A has two ounces of water in it, and Glass B is empty. When you return at the end of the day, Glass B now has water in it and Glass A is empty. You could assume that someone took the water from Glass A and put it into Glass B. That, however, does not fully explain the situation, because you notice that Glass B now has four ounces of water in it, whereas Glass A had only two ounces in it when you left in the morning.

You are confronted with a problem that at best has only a partial explanation. Whether the water from Glass A was poured into Glass B is debatable. But what is beyond debate is that all of the water in Glass B could not have come from Glass A. The additional two ounces had to have come from elsewhere.

The Christian worldview presents a powerful and unique explanation of these other “two ounces.” Naturalism may be able to explain the two ounces in Glass B. It cannot explain the four ounces in it. The theistic framework is not only credible, but also far more adept than atheism or other worldviews in dealing with the real questions of life: questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. Whichever starting point we take—either the philosophical followed by the biblical or the biblical by itself, which for many is sufficient—the cogency and convincing power of the answers emerge very persuasively. The original “two ounces,” as well as the additional “two ounces,” are best explained in a Christian theistic framework. The arguments range from the simple to the intricate, depending on the question and its context.

I have said often that God has put enough into the world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing. But He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone.

You will recall, for example, that the resurrection of Jesus caught even the disciples by surprise. They did not believe at first that Jesus had risen from the dead. Their understanding of reality was foundationally challenged. All of life and destiny would now have to be reinterpreted. They thought that perhaps Jesus’s resurrection was some fanciful story conjured up by hallucinating people. Their entire hope in him was politically based — that Jesus would somehow overthrow Rome. But a political victory would have only been a superficial solution, for Jesus came to open the eyes of the blind and to transform hearts and minds. I wonder whether multiple evidences that Jesus had risen from the dead would make any difference to modern-day atheists or would they be tossed away because of an “eight inch” measuring container?

You see, the problem with evidence is that it is very much limited to the moment and creates the demand for repeated intervention of some sort. I have seen this in my own life over and over. Today it may be a failing business that is in need of God’s intervention. Tomorrow I may want to be healed from cancer. The day after that, I may even want a loved one to be brought back from the dead. There is an insatiable hunger for the constancy of the miracle.

The gospel is true and beautiful and has enough of the miracle to ground it in sufficient reason. But it is also sometimes a hard road because of the intertwining of reason and faith.

When we come to those places in the road when we long for another “proof,” I pray that we might know that rising beyond reason (to be sure, not violating it) is the constancy of trust in God, and we might sense his presence, for that is really the greater miracle within us. Only through exercising that trust can the moment be accepted and understood as a small portion of a bigger story. For some of us, that individual story may entail a journey that may be long and arduous, but it will be accomplished one moment at a time, one day at a time, each moment and day undergirded by the strength of the indwelling presence of God. Even Peter realized that the delight of the Transfiguration had to be transcended by “the sure word of God.” He believed that word even on the road to martyrdom. This is the hope of gospel: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Warm Regards,

Ravi

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Ravi Zacharias – Of Isms and Rabbit Trails

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Among my toughest audiences in apologetics are undoubtedly my two little boys. From the time words started forming on their lips, questions of various kinds have been a staple around our home—the most formidable one being, “Why, daddy?” More than any other of our appetites, I strongly suspect that thirst for knowledge and the occasional thrill of discovery have played the greatest role in shaping history. From the vast machinery of the news media to the intricate systems of the educational enterprise, from specialized research institutions to the multifaceted world of religious devotion, human hunger for knowledge is the oil that greases the mill of civilization.

So pervasive is this drive for knowledge that it can become an end in itself, opening up a rudderless detour along even the journey to God. This is true in religious systems that claim knowledge for a select few, with secretly guarded rituals forever hidden from the uninitiated. Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge, was built upon the premise that there exists a category of knowledge privileged to a select few. Most Eastern religions insist that the problem with humanity is not sin but ignorance; hence, their solution to the human predicament is enlightenment, not forgiveness. Similarly, scientific naturalism stakes its fortunes on the bare, cold facts of particles and quarks; to know them is to know ultimate reality—never mind the minor detail that, logically, there is a gaping missing link between knowing how something works and the conclusion that it was not made.

But according to the Bible, at the end of our incessant pursuit of knowledge lies a Person, not an ideology or impersonal reality. God is not only the beginner of all that is; God has also shown his face in the earthliest of terms. Jesus was born in circumstances accessible to the lowliest of the shepherds as well as to the most majestic of kings. He spoke to large crowds in public places and was crucified outside the city walls, thereby silencing forever the voices of self-appointed guardians of alleged esoteric knowledge. In biblical terms, no pursuit of knowledge is ever complete without the discovery of the one who is the truth; to know this one is to know not only ultimate reality but also ourselves.

For the Christian, then, it is a solemn thought to remember that reducing apologetics to a contest in the abstract can actually keep us from knowing God. Determined to demonstrate the consistency of our beliefs, Christians can easily find themselves on endless rabbit trails—pursuing every form of ism, striving to tie each and every loose end in one’s belief system, finding comfort when we succeed and frustration when we fail—all the time unaware of the beckoning arms of our loving Father who is Himself the treasure we so diligently seek and hope to show others. Like Jewish leaders of old who diligently searched the scriptures but failed to recognize the one to whom they point when he stood before them in human flesh, we can perfect the art of dissecting biblical and philosophical truths with little progress in our knowledge of God—so enamored with the map that we never take a step towards the destination. As C.S. Lewis observes, “There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist!“(1)

The God we meet in apologetics is mostly a subject to be studied, a case to be argued, a conclusion to be drawn—a far cry from the God who has been revealed both in the scriptures and ultimately in the Person of Jesus Christ. When the pursuit of knowledge becomes an end in itself, the conclusions we accept are decidedly driven by our most cherished passions. Just as it is possible to pursue knowledge simply to satisfy our belief in God without much concern for God, it is also possible to seek it passionately precisely because we disbelieve in God. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: In our thirst for knowledge, “intent is prior to content.”(2) Our finitude guarantees that there will always be gaps in our knowledge which only omniscience can fill, but God has put enough content in the world to satisfy any honest intent to find God.

Is it pointless then to pant for knowledge? Far be it from me to suggest such a thing! This very piece of writing is an attempt to convey knowledge! And, besides, “It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them” (Proverbs 25:2, NLT). Whenever I am tempted to disparage the passion for painstaking attention to the seemingly minutiae, I am reminded of the faithful souls who have labored for years to sift through ancient manuscripts and translate them into a language that I can read. We are all beneficiaries of the dedication of others in almost all areas of our lives. Worshiping at the altar of ignorance is no more pious than worshipping at the altar of mental abundance. But those whose pursuit of truth is infused with the purity of spirit discover that, all along, the Father has been seeking such to worship Him.(3)

J.M. Njoroge is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 71.

(2) Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 98.

(3) See John 4:23.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – To Seek the Light

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In the book Megatrends 2000, authors Naisbitt and Aburdene outlined trends they anticipated would be transformational as we moved into the new millennium. Among their calculations was the New Age movement, which in 1990 was quickly gaining momentum. They wrote: “In turbulent times, in times of great change, people head for the two extremes: fundamentalism and personal, spiritual experience… With no membership lists or even a coherent philosophy or dogma, it is difficult to define or measure the unorganized New Age movement. But in every major U.S. and European city, thousands who seek insight and personal growth cluster around a metaphysical bookstore, a spiritual teacher, or an education center.”(1) This is all the more an accurate picture for today.

New Age seekers, who today are unlikely to call themselves by this name, may not share a cohesive focus or an organizational center, but there are certainly consistent and underlying tenets of thought among them. The movement is syncretistic, in that it incorporates any number of spiritual and religious ideologies at one time, but it is consistently monistic and pantheistic. New Age seekers are informed by the belief that all of reality is essentially one. Thus, everything is divine, often including themselves; for if all is one, and there are no distinctions, then all is God. Or, in the words of Shirley Maclaine in Dancing in the Light, “I am God, because all energy is plugged in to the same source….  We are individualized reflections of the God source. God is us and we are God.”(2)

Seven hundred years earlier, medieval Christian mystic Julian of Norwich spoke in what some may consider a similar tone: “[O]ur substance is our Father, God almighty… [O]ur substance is whole in each person of the Trinity, who is one God.”(3) Early Christian mystics are known for their fervent seeking and spiritual awareness of the oneness of life. Thus, there are certainly similar melodies to be found within the songs of Christian mysticism and the growing chorus of New Age spirituality. But so there are marked differences among them.

Within its historical context, mysticism, like many other Christian movements, was an expression of faith in response to faithless times. In this regard, New Age seekers are not entirely different. Some New Age seeking is, I think, a legitimate reaction to the comfortable and shallow religious life we find within our society. But as New Age seekers long for the depth and freedom to believe in everything, the result is often contrary to what they seek. Their theology and spirituality are entirely segregated. The quest for illumination is a quest that can begin and end anywhere; thus, they find neither depth nor freedom. On the contrary, Julian of Norwich and other early Christian mystics sought an authentic experience of faith as a result of an already dynamic understanding of that faith. Their theology in and of itself is what led them to spirituality.

For the Christian today, illumination still begins with Light itself, God unobscured, though incomprehensible, revealed through the glory of the Son. Starting with light and standing beside Christ, the Christian begins his or her journey as a seeker knowing there is one unique being who hears our prayers and cries and longings. There is a source for all illumination, and that God is light of the world.

Those for whom New Age thought seems attractive would perhaps be helped to know there is a great tradition of seeking within Christianity, a tradition that began with the recognition that we could not fix what is wrong, and a tradition that continues because there is one who can, one who also longs to find and to be found. The human heart is ever-seeking, showing the longing of a soul to be known. In the words of Julian of Norwich, “We shall never cease wanting and longing until we possess [Christ] in fullness and joy… The more clearly the soul sees the Blessed Face by grace and love, the more it longs to see it in its fullness.”(4) For the Christian seeker, communion with God is far more than self-discovery or personal freedom; it is theology that has become doxology, which in turn becomes life.

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

(1) J. Naisbitt and P. Aburdene, Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1990), 11.

(2) Shirley Maclaine, Dancing in the Light (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1991), 339.

(3) Julian of Norwich, Showings, ed. and trans. by James Walsh in “The Classics of Western Spirituality” (New York: Paulish Press, 1978), 129.

(4) Ibid.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – What Is Fair?

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“Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic” rails Ivan Karamazov against God in Dostoyevsky’s classic work The Brothers Karamazov.(1) Those who encounter—or are encountered by—the parables and stories of Jesus often feel a similar sentiment. For the parables of Jesus are often exceptional in upsetting religious sensibilities, are sometimes vague, and are many times enigmatic in their detail and content.

The parable of the laborers, as told in Matthew’s gospel, serves as a case in point. A landowner hires laborers to work in his vineyard. They are hired throughout the work day and all the workers agree to the wage of a denarius for a day’s work. The enigmatic and exceptional punch line to this story occurs when those who are hired at the very end of the day—in the last hour—are paid the same wage as those who worked all day long. The long-suffering laborers cry out, “These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.” Those workers that were hired first are not paid any additional wage. The first are not first, in this story. Instead, the landowner replies with a radical reversal: The last shall be first, and the first last.

Not only is the conclusion to this story exceptional and enigmatic, it also seems wholly unfair. For how could those who worked so little be paid the full day’s wage? Yet, this upending of any sense of fairness is a recurring theme in other parables of Jesus as well. Indeed, the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, while a familiar story for many, functions in a similar manner and upsets all expectations of what is fair and right, just as in the parable of the laborers. A careful reading presents an extravagant display of grace towards all wayward sons and daughters, even as it illuminates a human frugality with grace.

Jesus presented this story as a crowd of tax-collectors, sinners, and religious leaders gathered around him. All who listened had a vested interest in what Jesus might say. Some hoped for grace, while others clamored for judgment. “A certain man had two sons,” Jesus begins. The younger of the man’s two sons insists on having his share of the inheritance, which the father grants though the request violated the Jewish custom that allotted a third of the inheritance to the youngest son upon the death of the father.(1) With wasteful extravagance, the son squanders this inheritance and finds himself desperately poor, living among pigs, ravenous for the pods on which they feed. “But when he came to his senses” the text tells us, he reasons that even his father’s hired men have plenty to eat. Hoping to be accepted as a mere slave, he makes his way home. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him.

The Pharisees in the crowd might have gasped at this statement. How could the father extend such grace towards a son so wasteful and wanton? Yet, this father is the true prodigal, extending grace in an extravagant way. His prodigal heart compels him to keep looking for his son—he saw him while he was still a long way off. And despite being disowned by his son, the father feels compassion for him. With wasteful abandon, he runs to his son to embrace him and welcome him home. The father orders a grand party for this son who has been found, “who was dead and has begun to live.”

The older brother in Jesus’s story provocatively gives voice to a deep sense of outrage.(2) In many ways, his complaint intones the same complaint of the laborers in the vineyard. “For so many years, I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours… But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with harlots; you killed the fattened calf for him.”  We can hear the implicit cry, “It’s not fair!” The text then tells us that the older son was not willing to join the celebration. He will not hear the entreaty of his gracious father both to come into the celebration and to recognize that “all that is mine is yours.” Thus again, the last shall be first, and the first last.

While not vague in their detail or content, these two parables of Jesus are both exceptional and enigmatic. If we are honest, they disrupt our sense of righteousness and our sense of fairness. Both portraits of the prodigal father and of the landowner present the radical fairness of God. God lavishes grace freely on those we often deem the least deserving. But perhaps we feel the exceptional and enigmatic aspects of these parables most keenly when it is we who are seeing ourselves beyond the need of grace.

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

(1) Cited in Mary Gordon, Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels (New York: Pantheon, 2009), x.

(2) Fred Craddock, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 187.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – My Brother’s Shoes

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In 1969 Simon Wiesenthal penned his thought-provoking book, The Sunflower, which captured the agony he personally experienced in one of history’s darkest moments. Relating one encounter with the Holocaust, Wiesenthal described how he had been taken from a Nazi death-camp to a makeshift army hospital. He was ushered by a nurse to the side of a Nazi soldier who had asked to have a few private moments with a Jew. Wiesenthal warily entered the room and was brought face to face with a fatally wounded man, bandaged from head to toe. The man struggled to face him and spoke in broken words. Wiesenthal nervously endured the anxious monologue, finding himself numbed by the encounter. At the hands of Nazi soldiers like the one now dying before him, Wiesenthal had lost 89 of his own relatives. Here, the soldier confessed to the heinous act of setting ablaze an entire village of Jews; at his whim, men, women, and children were burned to death. With great anxiety, he described his inability to silence from his mind the screams of those people. Now on a deathbed himself, the man was making a last desperate attempt to seek the forgiveness of a Jew. The man begged him to stay, repeating his cry for forgiveness, but Wiesenthal could only walk away.

Yet even years later he wondered if he had done the right thing. Should he have accepted the man’s repentance and offered the forgiveness so earnestly sought? Had he neglected a weighted invitation to speak or was silence the only appropriate reply? Seeking an answer, Wiesenthal wrote to thirty-two men and women of high regard—scholars, noble laureates, psychologists, and others. Twenty-six of the thirty-two affirmed his choice to not offer the forgiveness that was sought. Six speculated on the costly, but superior, road of pardon and mercy.

I don’t know what it would take to absolve anyone of so monumental a crime. I don’t know if it is possible to offer forgiveness for something so far beyond our moral categories. But I know that even in the most unfathomable places, the God of Scripture somehow carries the burden of prodigal grace. Who can fathom the Son of God on the cross pleading with the Father to forgive the guilty for killing him? Who can conceive of a God who comes among his people, trusting himself to the hands of a fallen world, even knowing the troubling outcome? Who can grasp the heart of a God who chooses to love an undeserving people? To live as one marked by this disruptive grace is not easy. It is easier to forget that the command to forgive is thoroughly unsettling; in fact, sometimes haunting. To persist in love when we are tired or overwhelmed, or even rightfully angered by injustice, is a massive and costly request.

I have often found it easier to fit into shoes of the prodigal son than the shoes of the remaining older brother.  Yet in this well-known parable of Jesus, both sons are invited to celebrate and rejoice. To the prodigal child who has squandered and defamed, God’s grace is lavish. It is extravagant and poured out on those who neither expect it nor deserve it. The celebration is thrown in the honor of the run-away, in honor of the return of just one lost sheep. When these shoes are ours, we are both humbled by the Father’s attention and compelled by God’s mercy.

Yet to the child on the other side of justice, the Father’s grace is jarring and disruptive. It is lavish, but wastefully so. His invitation to the feast is both awkward and demanding, a seeming call to overlook the potential of our reckless brother to strike again at our expense. These shoes are much harder to walk in. The Father’s call to forgive the one whose sincerity is questionable is often agonizing; his command to love the habitual prodigals in our midst is both costly and exhausting.

But it is Christ’s request. “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” asked Peter. But Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22).  God’s grace disrupts our sense of righteousness and summons us to respond in similar kind. Whether we find ourselves in the shoes of the prodigal or treading the difficult ground of the older brother there is good reason to rejoice and celebrate the unveiling love of the Father. God’s unfathomable grace and mercy shatters our sense of who is worthy to enjoy the benefits of God’s kingdom, inviting us to the celebration regardless of where, and in whose shoes, we stand.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unhindered

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My high school band director was adamant about many things, but none so much as what he called the obligatory rule of good musicianship. That is, the two most important notes in any musical composition are the first and the last. “The audience might forgive you for what comes in the middle,” he would say, “but they will forget neither your very first impression nor your final remark.”

The last word of the book of Acts in the Greek New Testament is the word akolutos. The word literally means “unhindered,” though many translations render it with multiple words. Others move the word from its final position for the sake of syntax. In both cases, I think something is lost in translation. Luke was intentionally making a statement with this last word of his two volume testimony to the life of Jesus Christ. I think he intended readers to pause at the conclusion of his words, leaving us with the provocative thought of a gospel that is unhindered. After the stories of Jesus’s ministry were told, after recollections of his death and ruminations of his resurrection, after Jesus’s ascension and the church’s beginnings, after all the resistance, disappointment, and surprises along the way, Luke concludes, “Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, unhindered” (Acts 28:30-31).

Through prisons and angry crowds, the book of Acts traces the birth and growth of the early church. The book begins with a few hundred believers in Christ and a collective will to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth. Opposition to this witness is described at every turn. Persecution, beatings, death, and imprisonment all threatened the voice of the early church and ultimately the spread of the gospel itself. But in spite of all this, Luke epitomizes the history of the early church and the spread of the gospel by boldly describing the progression of God’s kingdom as going forth without so much as the slightest of hindrances. The Good News of God to all the world, he seems to want the world to remember, goes forth in power.

For any man or woman who will hear his testimony, Luke wants to conclude his eyewitness account with the dimension of the gospel that is most striking—namely, that these evidences are far from the end of the story. Luke wants hearers to be well aware that eyewitnesses to the power of the kingdom will go well beyond his own eyes, his stories, his lifetime; your eyes, your stories, your lifetime. Though variant theologies and distorted gospels will abound, though the world will delight in yet another conspiracy theory that promises to be the downfall of Christianity, the great narration of God’s kingdom will go forth unhindered. For the Christian, this means we need not live defeated by every emerging plot to undermine Christ. And for the one who has yet to accept him, it is continually and powerfully an invitation. Won’t you consider living into a victory like his, walking further up and farther into the great unhindered kingdom of God?

Luke begins on a note intent on crescendo: “Many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us” (Luke 1:1). He sets out to sing the beginnings of the early church and the work of God from the very start to the ends of time. He wants to be clear that we are invited to be a part of a story that will not fade away. Despite all appearances, despite dim turns in melody, the gospel was and will continue to be Good News that resounds without hindrance. No person or power can thwart the resonant sounds of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed, for it is moved by a Spirit who presses it ever-onward, ringing invitingly into the unexpected places of the world. The redemptive song of Christ and the Spirit who enables creation to add its praise will continue to move forth, unhindered.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Is Our Future Determined or Free?

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Questions of freedom and destiny have been raised in every generation. Do we exercise choice, or has everything already been decided? Is our future determined or free? The resultant mental gymnastics leave many feeling confused and others feeling disappointed. Christians insist that nothing takes God by surprise. On the other hand, Christians throughout the ages reject the kind of fatalism that is seen in some parts of the world.

The problem with the question as it is presented is that it is not nearly difficult enough. In order to truly appreciate the magnitude of what we are discussing, we must first deal with an even greater question. And it is this: Imagine if I were able to stop time right now. What would you be thinking? What would you be feeling? The answer is nothing.

In the absence of time, we cannot think or feel or do. Everything is frozen. People sometimes complain that I speak too quickly—the problem being that there is not sufficient time for them to think about what has been said. I always try to cheer myself by saying that at least something has been said for them to think about! But it is a fair criticism because in the absence of sufficient time we cannot think things through. In the absence of time altogether, however, we cannot even begin to think, as there is literally no time to think in.

The Christian understanding is that we live and have our existence in a space-time continuum. “[We] belong to eternity stranded in time,” observes Michael Card.(1) This also means that before God created there was no time; in other words, time is not co-eternal with God. But Christians also attest that God was a thinking, feeling, doing Being even before God created. Can you imagine a Being who is able to think in the absence of time? Of course not, but the God Christians profess not only exists outside of time, God can think and act in the absence of time.

Just reading this may be enough to make us feel overwhelmed. And so it should. Whenever we think about the person of God, we should rightly feel that we have come across something truly awesome. And maybe this is part of the problem. We are not faced with a logical contradiction here. Rather, we are faced with the reality of what it means for God to exist, for God to be God. You and I are only able to think in time, and thus, God confronts us with choices: “Choose this day whom you will serve,” “choose life” and so on (Joshua 24:15; Deuteronomy 30:19). But God, as Christians believe, who is outside of time, sees all of history stretched out before Him. The problem comes, therefore, when the attempt is made to confine God within time. But this needn’t be the case. For Christians, a proper understanding of the tension drives us back both to God’s divine nature and to our knees, acknowledging how wonderful God is.

This understanding also helps Christians with the issue of eternal life. Many people when confronted with the idea of eternity find the idea frightening, tedious, or absurd. What could one possibly do with all of that time? Once again, the dilemma arises because we are captive both to the passage of time and too small a view of who God actually is. People also then ask: if God truly knows all things, then why did God create knowing that we would experience pain in a fallen world? But here Christians attest that God did not create the world and then think of a plan to rescue it. The book of Revelation depicts that the Lamb was slain before the foundations of the world were laid. This does not mean that the crucifixion took place in our space-time history before creation (there was no space-history for it to take place in). What it does mean is that even before God created, God also knew the cost—the suffering of his own Son—to redeem creation and unite us with the Father. God didn’t count that cost too great—and hence Christians sing of God’s amazing grace.

Let me conclude with the following. The Christian God is big enough to be able to say, “I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). There is no hope without a secure future, and the future is frightening in the absence of hope. Only God is big enough to bring these two things together—hope and a future—and this is what God has done for us.

Michael Ramsden is European director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in the United Kingdom.

(1) Lyrics from “Joy in the Journey” by Michael Card, 1986.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Breaking Time

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“Uncanny” was one of the vocabulary words on my sixth grade vocabulary list, which was to be found within the book we were reading as a class. I remember thinking Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was exactly that—uncanny, peculiar, and uncomfortably strange. Yet I also remember that it stayed with me—the story of a quirky girl named Meg, her overly-intelligent little brother, and their time-transcending journey to save their physicist father with the help of three mysterious beings. L’Engle’s book, which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, invites readers to see time itself differently. Her stories will no doubt continue to perplex sixth graders, and stay with us long after we have set them aside.

L’Engle is the writer who first showed me the incredible difference between two words in Greek, which we unfortunately translate identically. To the English reader, chronos and kairos both appear to us as “time.” But in Greek, these words are vastly different. Chronos is the time on your wrist watch, time on the move, passing from present to future and so becoming past. Kairos, on the other hand, is qualitative rather than quantitative. It is time as a moment, a significant occasion, an immeasurable quality. In the New Testament, kairos is God’s time, it is real time—it is the eternal now.

Thus, when Jesus stepped into time to proclaim the kingdom of God among us, he came to show us in chronos the reality of kairos. “Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily chronos,” writes L’Engle. “Yet during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in kairos.”(1) With this story in mind, L’Engle describes kairos as that time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, time where we are completely unselfconscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are continually checking our watches. “Are we willing and able to be surprised?” L’Engle asks. “If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.”(2) For the Christian, the thought is particularly consequential. We must have the courage to see counterculturally beyond ourselves and our self-importance. We must have the courage to live aware that the kingdom of God is close at hand.

I imagine Jacob discovered this difference between chronos and kairos when he set aside both the past that was about to catch up with him and his paralyzing fear of the future only to find himself living in “none other than the house of God” (Genesis 28:17). The prophets and others describe similar moments of waking to the present and finding the eternal dimensions of time. The shepherds in Bethlehem were going about their ordinary work when an angel appeared before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.  ”Do not be afraid,” the angel announced. “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you” (Luke 2:13-14).  At this invasion of kairos into the routine of chronos, the shepherds chose to respond with action: “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about” (2:15).

In the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, where eternity steps into time and invites us to see far beyond our watches, we are presented with a similar decision. Are we willing to be surprised again by Christ’s coming? Are we willing to act on it? Are we able to release the nervous control of our daily schedules in order to stop and see the resurrected Christ, the eternal now in our midst? With every prophet who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah in history, the apostle calls out today, “Behold, now is the time (kairos) of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Whether we are ready for our sense of time and self to stop at such an invasion, Christ has come. He comes quietly and unexpectedly; he comes and upsets our very notions of time and all we discover within it. The eternal Word steps into flesh, into our bounded realm of time, and literally embodies the reality that time is meaningful because of the eternal one in our midst. His presence reminds us that kairos is breaking into chronos and transforming it, transforming us. It proclaims, “The kingdom of God is close at hand”—and invites us to join the world breaking in along with it. In moments of life and death, present fears and plans for the future, might this radical invasion move us and our vantage points, as we find ourselves continually surprised by the one who comes so near.

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

(1) Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1982), 93.

(2) Ibid., 99.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God of Hope

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“Do not be afraid,” my instructor encouraged me as my horse continued to back up getting closer and closer to the edge of the trail. The “edge” once crossed would certainly mean that horse and rider would tumble down an eight foot embankment. “Do not be afraid” sounded silly and naïve to me as my horse continued to ignore my increasingly anxious prodding with my arms and legs. “Watch out; beware; don’t ever ride a horse” would have sounded more apropos given these circumstances. I was afraid, terrified even, as my horse backed right over the edge.

Fear is an entirely appropriate and indeed necessary emotion when facing danger. Proper fear ignites the “fight or flight” response in the animal world. And for human beings, we too experience a “fight or flight” response to danger, or harm to life. But our response is much deeper than simply the instinct to survive. Author Scott Bader-Saye argues: “We fear evil because it threatens the things we love—family, friends, community, peace, and life itself.  The only sure way to avoid fear, then, is to love less or not at all. If we loved nothing, we would have no fear, but this would hardly be considered a good thing.”(1) We are afraid of losing that which we love.

Interestingly enough, more than any other command in the Christian bible, Christians are commanded to “fear not,” and to “not be afraid.”(2) In fact, the admonition to not be afraid is offered up 366 times (one for every day of the year and for Leap Year). And just like my instructor, who uttered those words right in the middle of a crisis, so too, the writers of Scripture record these words in the midst of a crisis, or prior to one’s life being turned upside down. In the birth narratives of both John the Baptist and Jesus, for example, Zacharias and Mary are told “do not be afraid” even though they are being visited by an angelic being, not a likely or typical visitor. Furthermore, Mary is unmarried, just a young girl. Surely, she must have feared the repercussions of an unplanned pregnancy, including the possibility of her betrothed, Joseph, rejecting her. In the very midst of their worst fears, these and other biblical figures are told not to be afraid.

For many living in today’s world, do not be afraid evokes images of ostriches with their heads in the sand as the world collapses around them. In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon and the mayhem that followed, the residents of Massachusetts can attest that uttering these words sounds just as naïve and perplexing as my instructor’s words to me right as my horse backed me off the eight-foot embankment. We have many, many reasons to feel afraid largely because we feel we have so much to lose. Do not be afraid echoes in our heads, whether or not we claim the Christian faith, and we wonder how to live courageously in a world filled with jagged edges and eight-foot embankments that would seek to claim all that is near and dear to us.

While there are no explicit references to hope in the teaching of Jesus, he too encouraged his followers to “not be anxious” but to trust in the God who could be trusted even in the face of our anxieties. Hope, contrary to what many of us might believe, is not the absence of fear but often arises in the midst of fear. It is both that which anchors us in the midst of the storm, and that which compels us to move forward—however ploddingly—towards goals, others, and the God whom the apostle Paul names the “God of hope” in his letter to the Romans. We hold on to hope, just as I held on while my horse slid backwards with me on her back, down the embankment that seemed without bottom, down to what I feared would end her life and my life. It is a desperate clinging to the God who is mysterious, and of whom we do not have control. There is a mystery in hope because we do not know how God will intervene.

I lived to tell about my horse-riding adventure without even a broken bone—not my own bones, or the bones of my horse. I couldn’t see the wide trail below me that would hold me, and would offer sure footing for my wayward steed. Our lives are often this way; we are often afraid because we cannot see where we will land. In the midst of broken bodies, maimed or decimated limbs, and in the loss of life itself fear can blind, disorient, and dismantle all that was normal before. But hope longs to hold us and to ground us in the midst of our fears. Hope is like a broad place, a wide trail underneath us. And though we know of those who fell and were not caught, though we all know that eventually life will end for all whom we love and hold dear, though we often fear a world destroying itself, the God of hope is at work raising the dead to life. Do not be afraid.

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

(1) Scott Bader-Saye, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007), 39-40.

(2) Lloyd Ogilvie cited in John Ortberg, If You Want To Walk on Water You Have to Get Out of The Boat (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 118.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Opposite of Presence

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In a poem titled “Moments of Joy” Denise Levertov tells the story of an old scholar who takes a room on the next street down from his grown children—”the better to concentrate on his unending work, his word, his world.” And though he comes and goes while they sleep, his children feel bereft. They want him nearer. But at times it happens that a son or daughter wakes in the dark and finds him sitting at the foot of the bed, or in the old rocker—”sleepless in his old coat, gazing into invisible distance, but clearly there to protect as he had always done.” The child springs up and flings her arms about him, pressing a cheek to his temple and taking him by surprise: “Abba!” the child exclaims, and Levertov concludes:

“And the old scholar, the father,

is deeply glad to be found.

That’s how it is, Lord, sometimes;

You seek, and I find.”(1)

Though many would like to say that the majority of our lives have been spent searching for God, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we have been sought.  Even so, like the children in Levertov’s poem, time and again I know I find myself bereft of God’s presence. Sometimes it just feels like I am sitting in the dark.

One of my seminary professors once told me that God’s presence is not the opposite of God’s absence. At first glance this didn’t seem the least bit encouraging. And yet, maybe I have seen this notion lived out after all. For even when I am most stirred by God’s nearness—when God’s presence seems an undeniable truth—am I not also simultaneously stung by the ache of longing to be nearer or the reality of not quite yet being at home? Even in our best encounters with God, presence and absence remain intertwined. What might this then mean for the moments when I am feeling tormented by God’s absence?

The Christian Scriptures seem to suggest of the dark what children learn of their parents. Namely, the dark does not imply the absence of a caring person. “Though an army besiege me,” says David, “my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident” (Psalm 27:3). David’s confidence was not in the absence of darkness, but in the knowledge of the one who watched over him in the dark. “I am still confident of this,” he concludes. “I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (v. 13).

Though we might struggle when God seems far off, perhaps it need not be without hope. When the land was dark with the death of Christ weighing on its shoulders, God exhaustively sought despairing hearts in the thick of that darkness. And the risen Christ is still today the certainty of God’s nearness and the promise of his care in the dark. “Thus,” writes Os Guinness, “Christians do not say to God, ‘I do not understand you at all, but I trust you anyway.’ That would be suicidal. Rather, they say, ‘Father, I do not understand you, but I trust you’—or more accurately, ‘I do not understand you in this situation, but I understand why I trust you anyway.’ It is therefore reasonable to trust even when we do not understand. We may be in the dark about what God is doing, but we are not in the dark about God.”(2)

Perhaps you have spent much of life bewailing the one who stood silent as you cried, disoriented in the dark and desperately reaching for something to make it better. What if God was there all along? Maybe there is reason to be awed by the God who says, “Follow me!” and expects us to trust that we won’t be left or forsaken. Maybe we should fear this one who won’t let go, whose persistence we might even find exhausting and whose faith in us we find terrifying. Maybe there is reason to be humbled by the God who refuses to leave despite the words we shout in unawareness and our unrelenting waywardness. And perhaps we do better to marvel at the God whose hand we can see clearly through the blinding pain of life. Though uncertainty may surround us and the darkness bid us to see that no Father is there, perhaps we can trust Him nonetheless.

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

(1)Denise Levertov, This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (New York: New Directions, 1999), 60.

(2) Os Guinness, Unspeakable (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 150.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Clinging to Straw

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On a routine trip through well-worn streets, I found myself pulled out of the fragmented consciousness of a mind captive to the day’s worries with the jarring lyrics of a song. Up until that point, the song itself was much like the familiar patterns of scenery, an external factor impervious to the siege of my own fears; I was seeing but not seeing, hearing but not really hearing. But then I suddenly took in the artist’s abrupt words: “Hoping to God on high is like clinging to straws while drowning.”(1)

The stark image of clinging to straw cleared everything else from my mind. It also set me thinking about the descriptive words of a friend hours earlier. Encouraging me in the midst of a difficult place, a friend simply reminded me that I was not alone. She was intending to assure me of her friendship and support, but I also knew she was assuring me of the presence of God. “The LORD is near to all who call on him,” declares the psalmist; and I needed to hear it.

There are many who take comfort in the thought that God is among us, comforting our fears, quieting our cries of distress, standing near those who call, moving in lives and history that we might discover the God who is there. As a following of Christ, knowing that he is with me in struggle and darkness is one of the only reasons I don’t completely surrender to my fears and stop moving forward. Knowing that there is a kingdom of grace, beauty, and mystery is the hope I remember when I fear death, my console when I fear uncertainty, the picture that somehow makes sense of a strand of DNA and quiets my fear of being uncared for and alone. I can relate to the resolution of the psalmist in a world of many and distant gods: “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge” (73:28).

But what good is it if there is a throne but it is empty, a kingdom without a king, a god who is close but like straw?  Who is it who is near us? If god is an impersonal force, or a tyrant, or a distant, semi-interested being, the kingdom is no refuge. If the hope we cling to is like straw that cannot save us from drowning, we have good reason to live in fear, “huddled,” as the musician later described, “afraid if we dance we might die.”

The image that brought my distraction to a grinding halt forced me to think graphically about the hope to which a Christian really clings, that promise that is so often on the mouth of God in Scripture: Do not be afraid, for I am with you.(2) If God on high is merely straw and fairytale, then emptiness is inevitable, fear is certain, and hope is futile, for we are ultimately alone. We all cling futilely to fantasy and drown in delusion. Could there really be one both graceful and near enough to answer the cry of a lonely heart, the fears of an entire nation, the uncertainties of the world around?

Throughout Scripture that very divine vow “I am with you” is made with sovereign confidence, but also in stirring circumstance. Speaking into the fears of exile, God said to the prophet Isaiah, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.” To the apostle Paul who was struggling with uncertainty and weakness, the divine voice encouraged him in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” And Jesus even as he anticipated the nearing cross gave his closest followers a promise that remains comforting today:  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”(3)

The promise of God’s nearness is one that Christians rightfully utter as encouragement and cling to in joy, in fear, and in sorrow, knowing the face and character of the one who is near. When God assures of with a self-revealing presence, it is more than just a promise of proximity and intimacy. There is a purpose for God’s nearness, the pledge of relationship, the promise of community. It is not an empty or superficial presence, having taken on the things humanity itself to draw intimately near. As the Father reminded the prophet Jeremiah so God attests, the promise of proximity may well be far more profound than we even fathom: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…Do not be afraid…for I am with you to deliver you” (1:5-8).

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

(1) Dave Matthews Band, “What You Are,” Everyday, 2001.

(2) Genesis 26:24, 2 Chronicles 20:17, Isaiah 43:5, Daniel 10:12, Matthew 1:20, John 14:27, Acts 18:9-10, and Revelation 1:17 among many others.

(3) Isaiah 43:5, Acts 18:9-10, John 14:27.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Cries of the Heart

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Some time ago my wife, Margie, returned from an errand visibly shaken by a heartrending conversation she had experienced. She was about the very simple task of selecting a picture and a frame when a dialogue began with the owner of the shop. When Margie said that she would like a scene with children in it the woman quite casually asked if the people for whom the picture was being purchased had any children of their own. “No,” replied my wife, “but that is not by their choice.” There was a momentary pause. Suddenly, like a hydrant uncorked, a question burst with unveiled hostility from the other woman’s lips: “Have you ever lost a child?” Margie was somewhat taken aback and immediately sensed that a terrible tragedy probably lurked behind the abrupt question.

The conversation had obviously taken an unsettling turn. But even at that she was not prepared for the flood of emotion and anger that was yet to follow, from this one who was still a stranger. The sorry tale quickly unfolded. The woman proceeded to speak of the two children she had lost, each loss carrying a heartache all its own. “Now,” she added, “I am standing by watching my sister as she is about to lose her child.” There was no masking of her bitterness and no hesitancy about where to ascribe the blame for these tragedies. Unable to utter anything that would alleviate the pain of this gaping wound in the woman’s heart, my wife began to say, “I am sorry,” when she was interrupted with a stern rebuke, “Don’t say anything!” She finally managed to be heard just long enough to say in parting, “I’ll be praying for you through this difficult time.” But even that brought a crisp rejoinder, “Don’t bother.”

Margie returned to her car and just wept out of shock and longing to reach out to this broken life. Even more, ever since that conversation she has carried with her an unshakable mental picture of a woman’s face whose every muscle contorted with anger and anguish—at once seeking a touch yet holding back, yearning for consolation but silencing anyone who sought to help, shoving at people along the way to get to God. Strangely, this episode spawned a friendship and we have had the wonderful privilege of getting close to her and of praying with her in our home. We have even felt her embrace of gratitude as she has tried in numerous ways to say, “Thank you.” But through this all she has represented to us a symbol of smothered cries, genuine and well thought through, and of a search for answers that need time before that anger is overcome by trust, and anguish gives way to contentment.

Of all the stories in the Scriptures, none so reflects those varied needs of humanity as the story of the woman at the well in her conversation with Jesus. In the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel we read of the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman. The disciples had left him to get a little rest while they went into town to buy some food. When they returned they were astounded to see him talking to this Samaritan woman, but they were afraid to ask why he would talk to her or to question what prompted this curious familiarity.

The woman represented all that was oppressed or rejected in that society. She was a woman, not a man. She was a Samaritan burdened with ethnic rejection. She was discarded and broken from five different marriages. She identified God with a particular location, not having the faintest clue how to reach this God. Was it possible to have any less self-esteem than in her fragmented world? Jesus began his tender yet determined task to dislodge her from the well-doctored and cosmetically dressed-up theological jargon she threw at him, so that she could voice the real cry of her heart. Almost like peeling off the layers of an onion, he steadily moved her away from her own fears and prejudices, from her own schemes for self-preservation, from her own ploys for hiding her hurts, to the radiant and thrilling source of her greatest fulfillment, Christ himself. In short, he moved her from the abstract to the concrete, from the concrete to the proximate, from the proximate to the personal. She had come to find water for the thirst of her body. He fulfilled a greater thirst, that of her soul.

In the Psalms, David described himself as one wounded and crying in his bed at night. This same David spoke of the happiness that came when he took his cry to the Lord. With that same confidence, let us begin our journey toward a response to the cries of our hearts. We might be surprised to know how much bottled-up sentiment will be uncovered. When God speaks we will not respond by saying, “Don’t say a thing;” rather, we can rest in God’s comfort, knowing that God has bothered to hear our cries, to know our tragedies, and to come near in our need.

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