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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Prayer for Bread

November 28, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Huckleberry Finn first heard about prayer from Miss Watson, who told him that prayer was something you did everyday and that you’d get what you asked for. So he tried three or four times praying for hooks to complete his fishing line, but when he still didn’t get what he asked for decided that “No, there ain’t nothing in it.”

Prayer is a curious activity. It is one we seem, at times, regardless of belief or creed, almost inclined naturally toward, while other times, like Huck, almost as naturally conclude we either can’t make it work or conclude there ain’t nothing in it.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say:

‘Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.’”(1)

*The Lord’s Prayer, which Christian’s still hold and practice today, comes out of this context—that is, out of a plea for help with prayer and out of the praying of Jesus himself. It is not just the good advice Jesus had to offer about praying; it is his praying. In fact, giving his followers this prayer, Jesus, like John, was following a common rabbinic pattern. When a rabbi taught a prayer, he would use it to teach his disciples the most distinctive, concise, essential elements of his own teachings. Thus, disciples would learn to pray as their teacher prayed, and from then on, when a disciple’s prayer was heard, it would sound like that of his teacher’s prayers, bearing his own mark and posture before God.

As this suggests, when Christians pray the Lord’s Prayer today, it is simultaneously an offering of the voice of Jesus, a declaration of belonging to him, and a pronunciation of the lessons he wanted his followers most to learn.

Somewhat different than fishing hooks, the prayer for daily bread is foundational; a literal need. News of world food shortages, urban food deserts, the prevalence of malnourishment, and volatile food prices remind us with repetition that cries for basic provision are appropriate and necessary. Fifteenth century theologian Martin Luther spoke of the prayer for daily bread as the plea for “everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”(2) In other words, bread is not merely the private concern of those who need something to eat. It is far broader than this, including far more than bread, and far more than isolated individuals before God. Our daily bread is something friends, neighbors, communities, economic situations, and governments affect collectively. Christ’s prayer for daily bread, then, is a prayer for food and clothing, but also for good neighbors, good rulers, and good conscience as we face need and want and hope together.

As such, a prayer for daily bread can be a reminder that we do not live in a vacuum before God or the world. Rather, we live in communities where we are responsible for one another. So if we pray for daily bread, like Jesus, we pray for God’s care and provision. But subsequently, we are praying against the things in life that prevent God’s provisions. This may well be corruption or systems of social injustice; it may also be our own hardened hearts, fearful dispositions, or a self-consumed and consuming living. When our neighbor prays for daily bread, our neighbor prays for our help.

To pray the words Jesus invited us to pray means we pray out of the same paradox in which Jesus prayed himself. He was both the Son who knew he would need the Father’s provision to get through the days before him and the Son who poured out his life for the crowds and individuals that needed him. Praying for daily bread, we are simultaneously the wealthy who can respond in gratitude for all that God has given us and the impoverished who cry out for the daily bread we need and the God who sustains all things. We are both the rich and the poor, united to our neighbors in ways we are constantly invited to imagine. We join ancient ancestors who prayed for physical nourishment in the desert, and with them know that we are still hungry. In difficult days, in plentiful days, the invitation of Christian prayer is the invitation of the Spirit to join in a united cry—”Give us this day our daily bread”—placed before the bread of life who comes to give life to the world.

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

(1) Luke 11:1-4.

(2) Martin Luther, “The Small Catechism,” The Book of Concord, 357.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Indignity of Giving Thanks

November 27, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The spirit of thanksgiving runs against the temptation we face as human beings to assert our self-sufficiency. Few of us enjoy the feeling of indebtedness; a fact easily demonstrated by our oft-unsolicited readiness to return a favor once someone has expressed kindness to us. I owe you one, I will return the favor, and I am in your debt are some of the ways in which we express this attitude. Such responses, together with the more modest one, please let me know what I can do for you, allow us to express gratitude without acknowledging the chronic shadow of dependence that so rudely dogs our entire threescore and ten.

Not only does this inability to express gratitude without our own autonomy stealing the show sometimes rob of us of the joy of affirming the contribution of others to our wellbeing, it also shrivels up our desire to worship God. An unexamined sense of self-sufficiency instills in us a subtle but false attitude of entitlement, thus making it difficult for us to accept the sense of vulnerability that is part of true gratitude. Ever since the tempter said to Adam and Eve in the Garden, “You will be like God,” human beings have never given up the temptation to either elevate ourselves to the level of God or pull God down to our level, so we can deal with God as equals. We are always looking for a chance to say to God, “I can take it from here.”

Such an attitude of entitlement, I believe, occupies a central role in the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17. While all ten are healed by Jesus, only one of them returns to express gratitude. In his editorial comment, Luke informs us that the one who returned to give thanks was a Samaritan, and Jesus refers to him as a foreigner. Undoubtedly, this implies that the other nine were Jews. Could it be that the Jewish lepers felt entitled to the services of this Jewish prophet and their God? If God were to begin to right wrongs in the world, wouldn’t the most logical place to begin be among his own chosen people? Judging by Jesus’s expression of surprise in the passage, it seems the only words one would have expected from the mouths of the nine lepers would have been, “It’s about time!” Without a clear sense of how little we are entitled to, we cannot really come to terms with the need for gratitude—for an attitude of entitlement is an effective impediment to gratitude.

But everything we know about ourselves and our world speaks loudly against this tendency to self-sufficiency. As human babies, we all begin our lives at the highest level of dependence, and none of us really outgrows all degrees of dependence. We depend on parents, teachers, peers, coaches, and others to open doors for us in life. Even in places where commitment to personal autonomy is likely to produce more martyrs than religious conviction, dependence on others is still a living reality whose attempted concealment is gradually unveiled by the onset of old age. From the inventions that give us comfort in this world to the young soldiers who give their lives in the battlefields to protect our livelihoods, an unobstructed view of our lives reveals the fact that we all owe debts that we can never repay. We will never begin to worship God until we recognize that we are bankrupt debtors, for an attitude of gratitude is an indispensable impetus to worship.

Like skilled gourmet chefs spicing up their delicacies, Scripture writers sprinkle their words with admonitions and exaltations regarding gratitude, frequently tying it together with worship. For example, in the midst of a dark catalogue of humanity’s journey away from God, the apostle Paul lays the blame on our unwillingness to glorify God or give thanks to God. Similarly, the author of Hebrews grounds our worship of God in gratitude. He writes, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). It is impossible to worship God without gratitude, and it is impossible to be grateful while clinging to self-sufficiency and entitlement at the same time. Yes, there is some vulnerability in gratitude sincerely expressed, but that is because we are relational beings whose deepest needs can only be met in partnership with others and ultimately with God. While an attitude of entitlement is an impediment to gratitude, an attitude of gratitude is an indispensable impetus to worship. Show me a person whose life is characterized by gratitude, and I will show you a person whose soul is poised to worship God.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Embodied Song of Lament

November 26, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A sales receipt long tucked between the pages of a book can tell a story of its own. I am known for using the receipt handed to me at checkout as a bookmark for the purchase I don’t wait long to read. Discovered years later, it often seems like a clue, giving away a snapshot of a former day—the date of the transaction, the location of the store, the other books I bought along with the one I chose to read first. Something more seems to be said about the book itself and the thoughts going through my head at the time—a memoir chosen on a road-trip far from home, a hardback on spirituality acquired during a transition in college majors. It is a glimpse at myself in time, a day in the past speaking to the present one: I was here. I was searching. I was alive.

A receipt fell out of a book I was rereading not too long ago. It was tucked in the pages of a small book depicting the fragmented thoughts of a grieving father. Written by a professor of philosophical theology, Lament for a Son relays the beating heart and exasperated soul of a man forced by a tragic accident to bury his son at 25. The sales receipt that marked the pages furthered the illustration of grief therein. The book was purchased exactly a year after my father died.

There is a language of loss that we share as humans, though many of us need help remembering how to speak it. Rediscovering the memory of sitting in a bookstore on an anniversary that almost seemed offensive, I am struck with this thought. We need the language of lament–not a language that simply tries to transport us elsewhere. We need permission to voice the broken hope within our wary bodies.. We need to know lament is a song we are allowed to sing presently, as is.

In the preface of Lament for a Son, author Nicholas Wolterstorff relays a brief interchange with a friend who told him that he had given copies of the book to all of his children. Confused, Wolterstorff asked why he would want to give away a book of so much despair and pain. “Because it is a love-song,” came the reply. Returning to the preface, the author writes, “Yes, it is a love-song. Every human lament is a love-song.” And then he asks a question that begins not the escape, but the outpouring that is the entire book: “Will love-songs one day no longer be laments?”

I remember a story recounted by a Christian counselor that utters a similar sentiment. A woman who had a history of abuse and a difficult past had been coming for treatment and had been showing signs of healing. Yet one day the woman came in and announced what she felt was another sign of her brokenness that needed to be worked on. She described her recent tendency to cry in the presence of her physician as he showed concern for her as a person with significant health problems. She felt her tears were an indication of something more that needed to be examined.

The counselor immediately thought of the woman in the gospels who responded to Jesus with weeping, even washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. Luke writes, “[A]s she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them” (Luke 7:38). Her tears seem at once an expression of life, marking in gratitude the feet of the one who gave voice to the lament within her—in the context of a love-song. The woman in counseling identified immediately with this physical reaction to Christ, eventually learning to see her own tears as a lament of a world that is marked by suffering, and a sign of the God who knows all too well this sting.

The message of a human and wounded Jesus Christ is powerfully relevant to a hurting world. We live before a God who gives us reason to utter the words of loss in the pits of our stomachs, even as we are given the gift a God who physically bore our sorrow. If every human lament is a love-song, Jesus is the embodied hope that God is singing in the midst of it, perhaps at times using our own tears to call us toward his own broken body and the stripes that mercifully, thankfully heal.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Gifts and Giver

November 25, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Over two hundred years ago during the heart of the Methodist revival in England, Christian minister John Wesley recorded his deep reservations about the movement’s ability to sustain itself. Even as thousands and thousands were responding to Christ, he wrote about the inevitable decline and dissolution of this Christian revival. What would prompt his despairing prediction in the throes of revival’s raging fires? His journal records his answer:

“I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore, I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger and love of the world in all its branches.”(1)

Contemporary reports of declining numbers of those who identify as “Christian” and a parallel decline in church attendance seem to affirm Wesley’s worst fears. Indeed, Christian leaders speculate that if current trends continue in England, for example, Methodists will cease to exist in that country in less than thirty years.(2) And while Wesley’s identification of wealth might be only one factor of many that has contributed to a decline in a robust Christianity, the decline has happened and is happening nevertheless. Corroborating the seemingly inverse relationship between wealth and faith, historian Philip Jenkins documents the rapid rise of Christianity in the Global South where material wealth is often much less in comparison to Western nations.(3) In light of Wesley’s fear, it seems reasonable to ask if the growth of Christianity in the Global South is related to relative poverty, and the decline of Christianity in the Global North is related to relative wealth?

Of course, Wesley’s concern was firmly rooted in the teaching ministry of Jesus. Long before Wesley issued his warning, Jesus warned his own followers: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and riches” (Luke 16:13). Jesus leaves little room for interpretative maneuvering or middle ground. There is always a choice, but one master will prevail.

In fact, Jesus had more to say about money than almost any other subject. Prior to issuing this warning about the inability to serve two masters, he tells a story about a shrewd money manager having to account for his use of money before his very wealthy boss. Initially, he is squandering what has been entrusted to him, and it is his careless ways that prompt the call to account for his use of another’s possessions. He quickly goes and collects a portion of what is owed by those who were in debt to the wealthy owner. And the wealthy owner, even though he does not collect all of what is owed to him, praises this man for his shrewd action.

So how do the hearers and readers of these stories connect a story of commendation for shrewd action on the part of the steward and this warning of not being able to serve two masters? Perhaps it is in the message to utilize resources—regardless of whether or not we feel we are in the relatively wealthy or relatively poor category—in a way that is wise. And what is that wisdom? We are entrusted with gifts and opportunities by someone else. Whether one comes to these stories through the eyes of faith or not, all who work were given a first opportunity, or that first open door by someone else. We might think we are making our own way in the world, but someone has provided an opportunity for us whether directly or indirectly. And that opportunity can be squandered or stewarded. Whatever one might count as personal ‘wealth’ is never something that is possessed, but something that is entrusted for good use in this world.

For Christians, the stewardship of our lives is a gift and a responsibility from God. The temptation to serve the gift, rather than the Giver is ever-present. Wesley’s words are haunting: As riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. The riches of life, when not viewed from the perspective of a steward can ensnare one in the worst vices. Sadly, as Wesley understood, the very blessing of wealth grown and nourished through frugality and diligence could equally become a curse. Our own individual lives are often microcosms of this struggle. We far too often worship wealth rather than the God who gave it.

For those who live in the United States, the season of Thanksgiving can prompt us to ask: how might rich, Western Christians escape the perils of loving money more than God? The answer is not necessarily in the abolition of wealth, but rather in wealth’s proper stewardship in our world as a blessing for others. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”(4)

John Wesley understood this, and in the spirit of Jesus re-iterates the same idea: “If those who gain all they can, and save all they can, will likewise give all they can, then the more they gain, the more they will grow in grace, and the more treasure they will lay up in heaven.”(5)

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

(1) Cited in an article by Philip Yancey, “Traveling with Wesley” Christianity Today, November 2007, vol 51, No. 11.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). See also, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

(4) Cited from The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. XV (London: Thomas Cordeux, 1786).

(5) Luke 12:33-34.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Blind or the Liars

November 24, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In Atlanta, the blind are leading the blind, quite literally. In an exhibit that hopes to promote understanding between people with and without eyesight, Dialog in the Dark takes small tour groups through a variety of environments in complete darkness, inviting them to rely on senses they are far less used to trusting. For approximately one hour, visitors are led by visually impaired guides like George Pinon, who has been blind since age 3. Along the way, visitors can ask questions of their visually impaired guide, whose face remains unseen until the end.(1)

Such a scenario challenges every negative connotation associated with this turn of phrase, “the blind leading the blind.” The idiom is, of course, not meant to depict actual visual impairment like Pinon’s, but rather the far more common impairment of insight, knowledge, and vision of reality. Typically, the saying is applied in situations where the person (or people) in charge knows no more than those whom he is leading. The phrase is one used in antiquity, most notably used by Jesus in Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6:39. “Let them alone,” Jesus said of the Pharisees; “they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”

Like Jesus seems to do of the scribes and Pharisees of his day, the non-religious sometime describe every religious person in such terms. They reason that the anatomy of faith in general promotes a culture of the blind leading the blind. Moreover, Christianity in particular, they argue, is founded on such a blindness. The deluded disciples, blind by their love for Jesus or perhaps simply their need to be right, perpetuated a story that continues to delude the world. In his Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris writes that nonbelievers like himself are thoroughly dumbstruck by the pervasiveness of Christian blindness, by the Christian “denial of tangible reality,” by the suffering these Christians create “in service to religious myths” and their wholehearted “attachment to an imaginary God.”(2)

While blindness to reality is a common accusation among the nonreligious, their accusations typically extend well beyond the charge of blindness. Charles Templeton, for instance, describes the resurrection story as a fable put forward by followers hoping to keep the dream alive. He insists that resurrection is first of all implausible, and that the story must be false because there are no secular histories which mention it. What’s more, he describes the discrepancies within the gospel accounts themselves as evidence of dishonesty or tampering of the storyline. Like many, he ends with the sharp conclusion that though Christians embrace it with blind eyes: “The entire resurrection story is not credible.”(3) In such a scenario, however, it would be far more accurate to accuse Christians of being “the deluded following the liars” than “the blind following the blind.”

In fact, I think most Christians would vigorously agree that the resurrection is indeed unfathomable. In the same way that Mary and Joseph understood that pregnancy among the virginal does not make sense, the resurrection flies in the face of what we know to be true of dead bodies: they do not rise. On this point, no one is blind. If by some way a body did happen to rise, it would have been a miracle unparalleled in history. On these details, I think most Christians and atheists can, in fact, agree!

But the claim that resurrection is implausible cannot be accurately bolstered by the claim that secular histories make no mention of it. Secular writers of the time, including Pliny, Josephus, and the Roman historian Tacitus, in fact affirm the biblical accounts in matters of historic detail. Christ’s life, his reported miracles, his sentence under the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, his crucifixion, and his reported resurrection are all well documented by the historians of the era. Templeton’s insistence that a miracle of resurrection proportions would have convinced the entire population in a matter of hours is optimistic at best; there are far too many who prefer to watch from afar or to keep their eyes closed entirely.

Further, the oft-mentioned claim of discrepancies in the biblical accounts of the resurrection story cannot be used to logically discount the story itself. First, error must not be confused with imprecision. It makes sense that Paul mentions men as the first witnesses of the risen Christ because in that historical context women (who are named as the first witnesses in other accounts) were not considered valid witnesses. Second, falsity must not be confused with perspective. The minimal differences between the gospel accounts actually assure there was legitimate conveying of perspective going on and not simply a memorized story they needed to keep straight.

Finally, the theory that the story was conjured up by disciples who simply believed what they wanted to believe is not quite plausible. If the disciples had agreed to propagate a story, it serves to follow that they would have known to conceive something far less remarkable, a story that would accommodate the arguments they would undoubtedly face. With even the slightest bit of intelligence, one could see the claim that Jesus had only “spiritually” or “figuratively” risen again could not be proven false by antagonists. Furthermore, when standing up for these falsified claims was a matter of life or death, it seems likely that at least one of them would have buckled; far more likely than an entire group—and many others—being willing to die for a lie. A far cry from “the blind leading the blind,” such a scenario would call for “the liars following the liars.”

On the contrary, the disciples took the dangerous and difficult road—the inconceivable road—and they went to great lengths to proclaim it. Unlike those who might call them “blind” for conceding to the unfathomable, I find it far more difficult to examine the bigger picture and yet refuse to see.

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

(1) Elizabeth Landau, “Being blind, ‘You Have to Be Adventurous,’” http://CNN.com, May 12, 2009, accessed May 12, 2009.

(2) Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 91.

(3) Charles Templeton, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996), 122.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – What’s the fuss about Zeitgeist?

November 22, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Questions and Answers seeks to address today’s frequently asked apologetic and theological questions. RZIM staff writers will present resources for further study, and concise responses for specific questions. RZIM envisions Questions and Answers as a first step in pursuing further study, resources, and responses to many challenging questions concerning the Christian faith.

Zeitgeist, The Movie is one of the latest installments of internet media out to debunk Christianity. Zeitgeist has created a furor with over one million viewers tuning in on Google. The movie claims that Christianity is simply one among many of the “dying god” myths.

In addition, the book Shattering the Christ Myth deals specifically with the “dying god” myths on which Zeitgeist is based. An online apologetics site, Tektonics, provides additional bibliographic resources for further study, as well.

With regards to the claim that all religious systems essentially believe the same thing or have the same origin, one simply needs to examine world religions to know that is not true. World religions make very different claims about the nature of reality, why we are here, where we are going, and what is the nature of all the evil in the world. For a comprehensive look at World Religions, you may want to take a look at any or all of the following resources:

Winfried Corduan, Neighboring Faiths (InterVarsity Press).
2. Dean Halverson, Compact Guide to World Religions (Bethany House).
3. Stephen Neill, The Christian Faith and Other Faiths (InterVarsity Press)
4. Harold Netland, Dissonant Voices (Eerdmans)

Finally, if you want to explore more, some have found Nicholas Perrin’s book, Lost In Transmission: What We Can and Cannot Know about the Words of Jesus, to be a helpful resource. Perrin discusses the “Christ myths,” and provides an excellent defense of the New Testament as a trustworthy and reliable source for knowing the real Jesus.

An excellent critique of the Zeitgeist movie can be found on Dr. John Stackhouse’s blog and at the Centre for Public Christianity

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Image and Ill-Repute

November 21, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

While many industries confess to struggling during times of economic downturn, the identity management industry, a trade emerging from the realities of the Internet Age, is one gaining business regardless. As one company notes in its mission statement, they began with the realization that “the line dividing people’s ‘online’ lives from their ‘offline’ personal and professional lives was eroding, and quickly.”(1) While the notion of anonymity or the felt safety of a social network lures users into online disinhibition, reputations are forged in a very public domain. And, as many have discovered, this can come back to haunt them—long after posted pictures are distant memories. In a survey taken in 2006, one in ten hiring managers admitted rejecting candidates because of things they discovered about them on the Internet. With the increasing popularity of social networks, personal video sites, and blogs, today that ratio is now one in two. Hence the need for identity managers—who scour the Internet with an individual’s reputation in mind and scrub websites of image-damaging material—grows almost as quickly as a high-schooler’s Facebook page.

With the boom of the reputation business in mind, I wonder how identity managers might have attempted to deal with the social repute of Jesus. Among officials, politicians, and soldiers, his reputation as a political nightmare and agitator of the people preceded him. Among the religious leaders, his reputation was securely forged by the scandal and outrage of his messianic claims. Beyond these reputations, the most common accusations of his personal depravity had to do with the company he kept, the Sabbath he broke, the food and drink he enjoyed. In two different gospels, Jesus remarks on his reputation as a glutton. “[T]he Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’”(2) In fact, if you were to remove the accounts of his meals or conversations with members of society’s worst, or his parables that incorporated these untouchables, there would be very little left of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. According to etiquette books and accepted social norms, both from the first century and the twenty-first, the reputation of Jesus leaves much to be desired.

Ironically, the reputation of those Jesus left behind does not resemble his reputation much at all. Writing in 1949 with both humor and lament, Dorothy Sayers describes the differences: “For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian churches have labored, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the communion table, founded total abstinence societies in the name of him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatergoing….[F]eeling that the original commandment ‘thou shalt not work’ was rather half hearted, [they] have added to it a new commandment, ‘thou shalt not play.”(3) Her observations have a ring of both comedy and tragedy. The impression Christians often give the world is that Christianity comes with an oddly restricted understanding of words such as “virtue,” “morality,” “faithfulness,” and “goodness.” Curiously, this reputation is far more similar to the law-abiding religion of which Jesus had nothing nice to say. “Woe to you, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 23:23).

When the apostle Paul described the kind of fruit that will flourish in the life of one who follows Jesus, he was not giving the church a checklist or a rigid code like the religious law from which he himself was freed.(4) He was describing the kinds of reputations that emerge precisely when following this friend of tax-collectors and sinners, the drunkard, the Sabbath-breaker: the vicariously human Son of God. This is no mere niceness, an unfeeling, unthinking social obligation to keep the status quo. Jesus loved the broken, discarded people around him to a social fault. He was patient and kind, joyful and peaceful in ways that made the world completely uncomfortable. He was also radical and intense and unsettling in ways that made the religious leaders and others in power completely uncomfortable. His disruptive qualities of goodness and faithfulness were not badges that made it seem permissible to exclude others for their lack of virtue. His unfathomable love for God and self-control did not lead him to condemn the world around him or to isolate himself in disgust of their immorality; rather, it moved him to walk to his death for the sake of all.

There are no doubt pockets of the world where the reputation of the church lines up with that of its founder and their presence offers the world a disruptive, countercultural gift. The prophets and identity managers of the church today pray for more of this. Until then, in a world deciphering questions of reputation like “What does it mean to be socially reputable?” or “What is the best way to distinguish oneself?” perhaps we might ask instead, “Who was this human Christ?”

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

(1) From the website ReputationDefender.com/company accessed Jan 15, 2009.

(2) Luke 7:34, Matthew 11:19.

(3) Dorothy Sayers, “Christian morality” in The Whimsical Christian (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 151-152.

(4) “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God and Pain

November 20, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“How do you expect me to believe in God,” asked Woody Allen, “when only last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of my electric type-writer?”

For a while now, at least in the Western world, the existence of any form of pain, suffering, or evil has been regarded as evidence for the non-existence of God. If a good God existed, people reason, these things would not. But they do and, therefore, God does not.

My job takes me around many different parts of the world in order to answer people’s questions about the Christian faith. I find it fascinating that I have never been asked this question in India, a country that certainly knows a lot more about suffering than many of us in the West. I find it even more intriguing that Christians who write books in situations where they have known unspeakable torment because of the gospel do not normally raise this as an issue for themselves either. Why?

There are so many ways in which questions concerning pain can be raised. It can be raised because of personal loss and suffering or because of a personal interest in the issue of theodicy, to name but two. However, regardless of the way the question is raised, it normally comes down to a moral complaint against God. “How could you allow this to happen?” The complaint is against God’s moral character. “Can I really trust God if I see this happen?” But if you are sure that you can trust God, regardless of the pain you find yourself in, there is no temptation to turn you away, as you realize God is the only one who can help.

Firstly, let’s deal with the argument against God’s existence. Ravi Zacharias has dealt with this thoroughly in his book Can Man Live Without God. If you argue from the existence of evil to the non-existence of God, you are assuming the existence of an absolute moral law in order for your argument to work. But if there is such a law this would also mean that there is such a God, since God is the only one who could give us such a law. And if there is such a God to give us this law, then the argument itself is flawed, since you have had to assume the existence of God in order to argue that God doesn’t exist. It is an attempt to invoke the existence of an absolute moral law without invoking the existence of an absolute moral law giver, and it cannot be done.

Secondly, we must also ask the question: What would it take to create a loving world void of evil? A world in which love is capable of meaningful expression and experience would also imply a world in which there is choice. If someone tells you that they love you, those words mean something because they are freely given. If you learned that someone had told you they loved you but that they had been forced to say it, their words would not mean very much. Thus, if we want to speak of a loving world, we must also speak of a world in which choices are exercised. And in such a world, there is also the possibility of choosing a course of action that is not loving, i.e. evil.

While these observations are helpful in getting at the heart of contradictions often behind the questions of God and suffering, I do not think they get at the heart of the questions as people most commonly ask, namely: Can I trust God even when faced with great evil? Is God morally trustworthy? Can I trust God even if I don’t understand what is happening?

These are profound questions, and whole books could be written about them. But I will offer one more thought. Maybe the reason we question God’s moral character when bad things happen is that we live our lives largely independent from God on a daily basis. In other words, we struggle to trust God in times of trouble because we do not really trust God when things are going well. Maybe we struggle with suffering so much in the West because we are so comfortable most of the time that we feel we don’t need God. We do not rely on God on a daily basis, and so we do not really know God. When suffering comes along, therefore, it is not so much that it takes us away from God, but that it reveals to us that we have not really been close to God in the first place.

As I said earlier, I have never been asked questions about God and suffering when I am travelling in countries riddled with the realities of it. In fact, when I visit churches in parts of the world where they are faced daily with horrific affliction, I normally leave inspired. They trust God in everything, even when things are going well. When times are hard, they cling to God because they have already learned to trust. They have learned that God does not change, even when our circumstances have.

Michael Ramsden is international director of ministries at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Selective Hearing

November 19, 2014 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

We may live in a world full of individualists and individualism, but when it comes to reaching the individual conscience and the individual ear, it is often not so simple. For the one in the crowd, for the individual among the masses, any appeal for moral action or ethical change is likely to be heard more with one’s neighbor in mind than oneself. Whether rooted in human nature or simply another form of individualism, it seems our neighbors’ flaws are far more worthy of commentary. F.W. Boreham noted this tendency in any congregation with more than one member. “[I]n a congregation of two, each auditor takes it for granted that the preacher is referring to the other.”(1)

True to form, it is on rare occasions that the words of ancient prophets, who cried out at injustice and wept loudly for repentance, seem like they are talking to me. Most of the time, they seem very clearly to be talking to a people and situation well in the past, or at best a wayward culture, or a particular philosophy, policy, or party. This is perhaps why the prophets had to weep and yell so loudly. Though the great command of Israel assumes that the crowd is listening—”Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”—often, we are not. Or rather, we might be listening, but we are listening for someone else.

With every fiber of their unique beings, the prophets attempt to counter our selective hearing. The last prophet, the prophet who cried for the world to recognize the savior among them, was no different. John the Baptist came bounding through the wilderness with an immensely personal message, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and calling the masses to see their collective and individual need for the one who could make all things new. This is where Mark begins his gospel: with the cry of a prophet to open the ears of all. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, he tells us, begins with the call of John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”

Somewhere along the path to Christmas, many Christians revisit these words first recorded by the prophet Isaiah and later described as the message of John. It is a message that perhaps seems easiest to hear for someone else; after all, John’s words were aimed at the “Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” who responded by coming to the Jordan to be baptized. Or maybe the prophet’s call for universal preparation just seems an all too familiar part of a familiar story. Regardless, it is likely that all the many years of hearing the prophet’s cry for someone else has dulled the command in our minds.

Yet in fact, no matter whom we hear that message for, it is actually quite a radical suggestion. How does one prepare roads for God? How does anyone make the paths of God straight? What does that even mean? When you remember the story of Christmas, do you picture men and women preparing the road that brought God to earth, human beings taking an active role in shaping the paths and highways of God’s coming?

Now, how much more radical is this image if you hear the command for yourself? Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight! Beginning his gospel with the cry of the prophet, Mark attempts to open ears to this very thought. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ involves you. How are you preparing the way of the human Son of God, paving roads and clearing paths for the sake of God among us? It is a question every bit as much aimed at your ears and your life as it was the first audience who heard it—or your neighbors who might need to hear it.

The story of Christ’s coming as an infant in Bethlehem marks the beginning of the great promises and reversals we anticipate because of his presence with us—beauty rising from ashes and mourning turned to dancing, waters breaking forth from the wilderness and streams from the desert. But this story is not finished. John continues to call us to prepare the way for the one who shares our own humanity, to join in the restoration that God has started. All of the prophets, in fact, continue to cry out with inviting and challenging images of God’s countercultural movement: swords made into plowshares and spears to pruning hooks, wolves lying down with lambs, cows and bears grazing together, justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like ever-flowing streams, the desert blossoming, the blind seeing, the lame leaping, the lowly lifted up, and the hungry filled with good things. How are you participating? How might your life change, if the prophets are talking to you?

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

(1) F.W. Boreham, “The Ideal Congregation,” Dreams at Sunset (London: Epworth Press, 1954), 88.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Of Kings and Thrones

November 18, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The book and television series Game of Thrones has brought the mythical mediaeval world of kings and kingdoms back into the contemporary imagination. The world it depicts is a brutal world of despots and power-hungry individuals who will make any alliance to secure their way to the throne. While there are some characters who place the good of the realm over family or individual ambition, most of the characters are a despicable lot maniacally driven towards power.

For those who hail from king or queenless countries, the language and images of kings and lords may seem at best outdated and the stuff of Arthurian legend, or at worst oppressive. Dominant images of kings and kingdoms as overlords, like those portrayed in Game of Thrones, conjure up images of tyrants living ancient feudal societies who will stop at nothing, nor think twice about stepping over anyone who gets in their way. As a result, for some the word ‘king’ can hold fairly negative images and feelings. My British colleagues, of course, would see things a bit differently!

Regardless, for Christians, the word is inescapable. “Christ, the King” Sunday is the beginning of the Christian Advent Season. This special Sunday marks the end of the church year, and celebrates and recalls the rule of Christ over all creation. The day is captured by the apostle Paul’s words to the Philippian church: “God highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”(1)

In contrast to the images of despots and oppressive tyrants, the biblical imagery for the kingship of Christ offers a very different picture than what is typically envisioned. The ancient Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, both describe a coming king who presents an alternative vision to the stereotypical understanding of kingship:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I shall raise up for David a righteous Branch; and he will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is his name by which he will be called, ‘The Lord our righteousness.’”(2)

In addition to this prophetic vision, the way in which Jesus lived radically alters typical visions of kingship. For the earthly ministry of Jesus was not one of power, military might, or oppression. Indeed, Jesus turns the whole concept on its head in a discussion with his followers:

“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to become great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.“(3)

Jesus argued before Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world. He understood all too well the popular images of kings and lords and he specifically sought to undermine them. Jesus demonstrated that as king and as ruler of all, he would be the servant of all. The Incarnation that is celebrated by Christians on Christmas day is an example of this: God the Son, King of all creation, humbled himself to become human, even sharing the ultimate fate of his would-be captive subjects: human death.

For those who care to see and hear in a new way, the Christian gospel presents an entirely different kind of king than those who simply play the games of thrones. King Jesus ruled by becoming a subject and reigns by serving even those subjects who would reject him. This Sunday of Christ the King presents one who emptied himself, one who took the form of a servant, and one who was made in the likeness of humans. It is this sort of king that seems worthy of the accolade that one day all shall bow.

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

(1) Philippians 2:9-11.

(2) Isaiah 65:17, 25; Jeremiah 23:5-6.

(3) Mark 10:42-45.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Books and Bibliophiles

November 17, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

There comes a time in the life of an over-due library book when its return is met less with fines and looks of disapproval and more with wonder and news-worthy attention. Like the Royal Australian Navy Lieutenant Commander Ron Robb who returned a rare book he had borrowed in London 30 years earlier from the other side of the world.(1) Or Julie Geissler, a New Hampshire resident who stunned library staff members by returning an eighty year overdue copy of Charles Darwin’s popular work.(2) The rare first-edition copy of On the Origin of Species was one of 1,250 originally printed; a similar copy sold the previous year for $194,500.

In the world of rare and missing books, Robb and Geissler’s openhandedness is commended. Robb’s borrowed book was part of a 1928 set estimated to be worth £200. Researchers for Darwin Online estimate that many of the remaining copies of the 150 year old work are in private hands, which may or may not know what they are holding. Conducting the first known census of the first edition, these researchers are hoping to discover the whereabouts and the stories of many others. Science journalist Peter Dizikes discovered of one such copy acquired by the Boston Public Library that it was once owned by Robert Gordon Tatham, a “much respected London doctor who lived from 1829 to 1895, according to his obituary in The British Medical Journal.”(3) Another label indicates the book also belonged at some point to Charles and Mary Lacaita. Charles Lacaita was a member of Parliament in the 1880s, as well as a botanist who lived in West Sussex and came from a family of noted bibliophiles. It is unclear how the book made its way across the Atlantic, but the rich history of ownership and appreciation is clear.

I quite like the idea of a census and family history for books. First editions long distributed from bookstores have no doubt made their winding ways in and out of the lives of readers, lenders, and borrows. Perhaps for some it was a book that simply sat on a shelf or in an attic box, like On the Origin of Species did for Julie Geissler until her mother happened to discover it or Ron Robb until he was in the process of moving. Other copies may have been dearly loved and well worn by one reader, only to be loved all over again by the next.

Looking at the shelves of books that surround me, I wonder what clues will be gleaned of my ownership years after they have all left my hands. There are some indeed that evoke a rich history: a book of sermons written by my great-great-reverend grandfather inscribed to my mother and later inscribed to me on my graduation from seminary, a book on lament purchased on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, text books marked up and down in agreement and disagreement, several first-editions from favorite authors, Bibles filled with epiphanies, occasions, questions, and funeral liturgies. Of course, there are also those books on my shelves that also appear rather homeless, void of marks and underlinings, with bindings that accuse me of never having read them in the first place.

Glancing through my shelves at the rich history that is present, I am also sorely aware of all the history that is conspicuously not present. My most beloved books tend to be books I encourage as many people as I can to read, and again and again I loan them out at the forgotten risk that they will never return and often do not. Of this history, wherever these books might end up, whichever lives they might come to influence, I hold on to the clever thought of C.S. Lewis:

“Yes,” my friend said. “I don’t see why there shouldn’t be books in Heaven. But you will find that your library in Heaven contains only some of the books you had on earth.”

“Which?” I asked.

“The ones you gave away or lent.”

“I hope the lent ones won’t still have the borrowers’ dirty thumb marks,” said I.

“Oh yes they will,” said he. “But just as the wounds of the martyrs have turned into beauties, so will you find that the thumbmarks have turned into beautiful illuminated capitals or exquisite marginal woodcuts.”(4)

Of writing and reading books there is no end, observed King Solomon, admitting a different sort of “unending” about the words of the God who speaks. There is, however, an end to our opportunities with books in this lifetime. If a life can be read in the margins of the books once loved and shared, what stories will your library continue to tell of you? What books will clearly be seen as your most beloved, influential, troubling, full of life? What works, long missing from your library, will continue to influence the lives of those with whom they were shared? On the excited occasions of influential books long forgotten and finally returned, it is curious to imagine with the same fervor which books are far more influential, which words will last well beyond their bicentennial anniversaries, beyond your lifetime and the lifetimes of others long after the book has left your hands.

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

(1) Matt Watts, “Rare Book returned to Wallington Library 30 Years Late,” Local London, March 12, 2011.

(2) Peter Dizikes, “Digging for Darwin” The New York Times, May 15, 2009, BR23.

(3) Ibid.

d(4) C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, 9Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1970), 216.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Confessions of a Churchgoer

November 14, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

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

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

Perhaps like many of us in our own confessing, Charles Templeton’s 1996 book, Farwell to God, and the confessions of a former Christian leader, is filled with moments of confession in both senses of the word—honest commentary and easy scapegoating. In his thoughts that deal with the Christian church, it is particularly apparent. Pointing near and far and wide, Templeton observes that the church indeed has a speckled past: “Across the centuries and on every continent, Christians—the followers of the Prince of Peace—have been the cause of and involved in strife. The church during the Middle Ages was like a terrorist organization.”(2) He admits that some good has come from Christian belief, but that there is altogether too much bad that has come from it. He then cites the church’s declining numbers as evidence that the world is in agreement; people are losing interest because the church is failing to be relevant. Pews are empty; denominations oppose one another; the church is floundering, its influence waning—except perhaps its negative influence, according to this confessor.

Of course, many of these confessions regarding the church are indeed riddled with difficult truths that someone somewhere must indeed own. Other assertions are not only difficult to posit as relevant, but are simply dishonest attempts to point blame and escape the more personal, consistent answer. As Templeton determinedly points out the steady decline of attendance in the church as reason to disbelieve, it is unclear how this supports his personal confession that Christian beliefs are untrue. Does the claim of the church’s decline (the veracity of which is debated) say anything about whether Christianity is based on lies, lunacy, or fact? Jesus spoke of those who would turn away, churches that would grow cold, faith that would be abandoned. Moreover, if one is truly convinced that Christianity is an outlandish hoax, isn’t it odd that so much energy is taken in criticizing the church in the first place—as if one had a vision of what the people of God should look like?

Of course, responding to Templeton’s darker admissions regarding the church, I am at times tempted to make a scapegoating confession of my own. Specifically, if I could reasonably judge God by some of God’s followers, I would surely say farewell as well. Like Templeton, I have seen so many lives badly wounded by the pulpit, people trampled by those who call themselves Christians. I have been more disillusioned within the church than I ever have outside of it. Templeton confesses in his book that the church “has seldom been at its best,” and on this point, I couldn’t agree more.(3) But I would also have to add a critical addendum; namely, that I am rarely at my best. I am a part of this church who fails to love well, who says things that hurt, and falls short of its best on a regular basis. But if the church is truly meant to be the place where followers learn to become more like Christ, then I also can’t imagine a better place to be holding such a confession. Failings and all, it is the community that communes with the one who longs most for our human flourishing, who embodies God’s hope for humans at our best. Of the one who meets us in this human place, it was once confessed: “The righteous one shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:12).

It was with such a conviction that G.K. Chesterton responded to a newspaper seeking opinions on the question “What’s wrong with the world?” in one sentence. “Dear Sirs,” he replied, “I am.” In confessions of dark or disappointing realities, can our own hearts really be excluded? It was with visions of war and brokenness around him that David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”(4) It was before the cross scarred body of the human Christ that Thomas confessed, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” This, I believe, is humanity’s best confession.

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

(1) Sathnam Sanghera, “Confessions of the Man Who Caused the Credit Crunch,” The Times Online, April 20, 2009, http://timesonline.co.uk, accessed April 21, 2009.

(2) Charles Templeton, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996), 129.

(3) Ibid., 127.

(4) Psalm 51:10.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Love and Rules

November 13, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Christianity is nothing more than a set of rules! Have you ever heard or argued this before? The question or objection, depending on how it is phrased, comes from both Christians and skeptics. So what does Christianity have to say to this?

It is helpful first to acknowledge that the Bible is indeed full of commands and instructions. But the role that the rules play is often misunderstood. Rules, even going back to the Ten Commandments, were not meant simply to tell us what to do and what not to do. They were intended to be a means by which humanity could come close to God and relate to God. If we think of how rules are applied in other areas of life, it is quite easy to understand how this works. Discipline, guidelines or putting deadlines in place are not an end in themselves; they are the means by which we achieve what we want to accomplish.

While I was doing undergraduate studies in Toronto I worked for the Toronto Blue Jays ground crew. While working there I noticed that the elite players would always be the ones to arrive at the ballpark early and leave late. They would come in early for strength and conditioning purposes, then perhaps look over strategies or game plans. Then they would join the rest of the team once the normal daily routines began. This was hard work and made for long days. Here is the point: the discipline of getting to the stadium early, doing an extra work out, working over game plans were not the goal. These were the means by which this player would attain the ultimate goal: victory.

The rules set out in Scripture were never meant to inhibit pleasure or desire, but to do the exact opposite. Desire gave birth to commands, but somehow we have understood it the other way around, as if the commands were meant to create desire.

There is actually a moment documented in the Old Testament in which the people of Israel say that they would like to follow God’s commandments. However, Joshua, their leader at the time, turns them down. Effectively, he says, ‘You don’t have what it takes. You will turn away from God. So, please, don’t commit to it.’ They push back and insist that they truly want to follow God. Joshua reluctantly gives in and grants them their desire to form a covenant binding them to follow God’s rules.

The rules and statutes implemented into the life of Israel stemmed from a desire to serve the Lord. Rules were not put in place to prevent desire from finding its fulfillment. Rather, the rules were put in place to fulfill desire and avoid destruction.

A question that we need to ask ourselves is, ‘Where do rules find their starting point?’ In the Christian sense, does obedience come from a sense of duty or from a desire for God? If the drive to live for God comes from a sense of duty, our faith will become one long arduous journey. But duty is not where the gospel asks us to begin. We begin with a love and desire for God.

Imagine that I have just been away from home on a long business trip. When I return home I decide to stop off at the florist’s near my home because I want to get flowers for my wife. I purchase the flowers, then walk up to the door with flowers behind my back and knock on the door. My wife opens the door and I reveal the flowers to her. She says, ‘Nathan, you shouldn’t have done this! Why did you get me these flowers?’ I reply, ‘Because it is my duty!’

What do you think her response will be after she hears this? What if I respond to her question by saying that I got her those flowers because I love her—that there is nothing more I love than the sweet fellowship I have with her.(1)

This gets at the heart of Christian discipleship. Christianity does not start with rules, but the rules do make sense. They are put in place to fulfill our desire for God; not to coerce us into loving God.

Nathan Betts is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

(1) Story as told by Michael Ramsden, director for the European office of RZIM.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Dark Shalom

November 12, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In the early 80s, an image campaign began in the city of Atlanta with the hopes of encouraging Atlantans to see their city with pride and hope—despite some of its darker plaguing issues of race relations, violence, poverty, and unemployment. The jingle was endearing, if cheesy, chirping birds in the background and all:

There’s a feeling in the air, that you can’t get anywhere… except in Georgia. I taste a thousand yesterdays and I still love the magic ways of Atlanta.

The lyrics stayed mostly the same for years, though they came out with a country version, as well as a version featuring the Commodores in the mid 80s. The accompanying pictures were all hometown, feel-good scenes: firm hand-shakes, hot dogs in the park, a couple blissfully showing off their engagement with the city skyline behind them. All of it was meant to inspire nostalgia, loyalty, and camaraderie—and to counter some of the more negative images and present uncertainties at that time. Those who remember it speak of the “Hello Atlanta!” song quite fondly, attesting to its convincing look at Atlanta’s unique brand of urbanism and the pride that the song actually did drum up for their city.

Makes no difference where I go, You’re the best hometown I know. Hello, Atlanta. Hello, Georgia. We love you on 11 Alive!

The song served as something of an anthem for the city, so much so that Ira Glass recently featured it on his program This American Life.(1) He interviewed people who remembered the song. And then he completely burst their unique sense of city-pride by playing for them the exact same song and lyrics with “Milwaukee” or “Calgary” substituted out in chorus and pictures. As it turned out, this “image campaign” was a syndicated campaign that took place in 167 different cities worldwide. There’s a feeling in the air, that you can’t get anywhere, except… fill in the blank.

In the chapters of Isaiah, the ancient prophet presents a complex meditation about the destiny of Jerusalem into the crises of exile and the promise of Jerusalem out of exile into new well-being. This city of intense promise that he lauds in poetry, in lament, and public proclamation is not a song like Hello Atlanta (or Hello Any City, USA as it turns out). Isaiah’s is not an image campaign meant to play on a syndicated sense of nostalgia for the masses, pie in the sky images of life meant to erase the darker scenes of their present reality. Nor is it the sort of meditation that one can substitute a different city or a different set of people and still hold onto any semblance of his bold and hopeful lyric.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he proclaims, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted…to restore faint spirits, to give gladness instead of mourning.(2) For a people who had been through the darkness of captivity and exile and the loss of everything they loved and held near, this is exactly what they had longed to hear from the God they suspected had abandoned them and the city they loved: Through Isaiah, God says, I have not forgotten you. In fact, I am sending good news for you in darkness. I am going to comfort you who mourn and care for you who are grieving. I will bestow on you a crown of beauty instead of the ashes you have been sitting with. And I am bringing garments of praise for you to put on, instead of the spirit of despair you have been carrying.

Isaiah paints in stirring metaphor and image the potent Hebrew concept of Shalom. We translate this word as “peace” in English, but this misses far too much. While it is possible to consider peace abstractly, shalom cannot be extracted from its multi-level application to every part of life as we know it. Shalom is closer to human flourishing. It is God’s gift of peace, but it is also God’s enacting of good news, God’s offering of well-being in such a way that we are able to hold it, to take it in, and taste it—like the great wedding feast Jesus uses to describe what it looks like to be gathered together in God’s care and comfort. Shalom is beauty for ashes and comfort for the grieving. It is not an abstract, inaccessible picture of life as it could be or life simply as it will be one day. It is not an escape vehicle from the harsh realities of life. Surely God’s promise of shalom involves dimensions beyond time as we know it. But the Hebrew word Shalom very profoundly aims at the flourishing of bodies and souls and life as we find it presently, dark though it is.(3) Beauty and comfort and release and gladness and joy are indeed proclaimed, but it all comes as the promise of a God who is somehow present in the midst of Israel’s complicated, difficult, dark and beautiful realities.

In a time when religion is often viewed as an opiate or an escape from reality, Isaiah presents a clear challenge. His description of life renewed is not at all like an image campaign to help us forget the harder realities of life, to woo us with images that simply erase our earlier recollections of despair. If we were going to put it in terms of an image campaign, in fact, Isaiah’s promising words and the gospel that brings these promises to life sing a rather unflattering, enigmatic song about a very meek Son of God who appears on the scene of a fairly unimpressive city: not the Jerusalem of royalty and fanfare, but the back streets of Bethlehem where we are given not easy answers but a baby who embodies something far different.

The promise of God’s shalom is not a thin attempt to distract us from our own darkness or a flimsy pat on the back for the profound brokenness of the world. It is not an image campaign to make us feel better, but the unexpected gift of one who, somehow, can hold it all.

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

(1) “No Place Like Home,” This American Life, episode 520, March 14, 2014. Ira Glass tells the story from the point of view of Calgary.

(2) See Isaiah 61, particularly 61:1-3.

(3) “Dark though it is” is a line from the W.S. Merwin poem, “Thanks,” written in 1927

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Practice of Grace

November 11, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

I have always been mesmerized by dancers. I suspect it is because of the nearly annual visit to the theater to see the Nutcracker as a child. The fluid movement, the spinning on toes, arms floating around as if in flight, the dancers made the most difficult technical movements seem natural and easy. I remember one friend speaking of the dancers’ expertise as being filled with grace. The dancers had taken complicated and physically demanding choreography and infused it with simple elegance and refinement.

The concept of grace has a long history within the Christian tradition. In theological terms, grace is described as God’s unmerited favor toward human beings and our not getting what we deserve—both in terms of God’s wrath against us for our sin, and in terms of the abundance of God’s blessing towards us. Grace is also understood as a way of life towards others. Since God gives grace freely, humans ought to extend grace towards one another. Like the well-seasoned dancer, the grace extended toward others should be characterized with an elegance and refinement.

Easier said than done. For one like me, who is by nature clumsy and lacking in balance, extending grace to another can often feel like the most excruciating physical practice. What often results is not a refined and elegant performance, but the proverbial dancer with two left feet. So how does one, like the dancers in the Bolshoi Ballet, live in ways that are full of grace?

I asked this question to a friend as we conversed about living in ways that were permeated with graciousness. He shared a story with me about his children’s karate instructor. The instructor was a black-belt in karate and very skilled in his movements and technique. Like the dancers I saw in the Nutcracker, my friend marveled at both the fluidity and gracefulness of his movements as he demonstrated karate. Afterwards, my friend asked the instructor if he always moved with such grace and ease—was that something that just came naturally and that one had to possess inherently in order to succeed at karate? The instructor laughed and took him into his office. He took out a video tape. The tape was recorded when the instructor was a student. My friend was amazed by what he saw: jerky, clumsy kicks and punches, falling down as he missed his target, defeat against one opponent after another. Was it really the same person he saw before him? Indeed, it was. So what was the instructor’s secret?

Becoming a black-belt in karate didn’t happen instantaneously; becoming anything in life doesn’t happen instantly! Instead, each day offers multiple opportunities to practice whatever it is we want to become. Those dancers who move with an elegance that would almost seem commonplace were it not so extraordinary generally spend over ten years practicing and then several more years laboring in the ranks of a company. Days are spent dancing 10 to 12 hours per day, six days a week.(1) And while fame and prestige are certainly motivators in this rigor, the grace of movement and the ability to make art with one’s body surely ground the need for this kind of disciplined practice.

If the grace-full life of Christ is the intended goal for those who claim to follow him, each day presents the opportunity to practice—to grow in the very grace Christ embodies. Instead of fear, there is empathy and hope. Instead of pride, there is humility and hospitality. Instead of bitterness and resentment, there is forgiveness and laying down one’s life. There is always a choice. And thankfully, there is always one who extends flawlessly the very grace we need ourselves.

For only those who see their own need can grow in grace themselves. In Jesus’s day, ironically, those who saw themselves as the most religious were often the very ones who missed out on grace. When a woman of questionable reputation came and anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume, the Pharisees criticized both the woman and Jesus. How could he allow this sort of woman—a sinner—to touch him, especially as he claimed to be the Son of God? Jesus’s reply is instructive for all who seek grace: “Her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47). Without recognition of the human need for a forgiveness and the sort of grace that reaches far beyond anything we can offer, there is a failure to practice grace-full living with others.

Mercifully and demandingly, the sort of grace offered in the person of Christ is both a startling, necessary gift and the remarkable, difficult invitation to go and do likewise.

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

(1)”Those Undulating Swan Arms? Not So Easy to Do,” by Julie Bloom. The New York Times Online, November 26, 2010.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Too Many Gods

November 10, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“I am a former Christian minister who is now an agnostic—not an atheist, not a theist, not a sceptic, and certainly not indifferent.(1) So begins the story of Charles Templeton, one time rousing evangelist, friend and counterpart of Billy Graham, turned renounced believer, professed agnostic. He is quick to clarify the meaning of such a title. “The agnostic does not say, as is commonly believed, ‘I do not know whether or not there is a God.’ He says, ‘I cannot know… He asserts that a combination of historic circumstances has made Christianity the dominant religion of the Western world but that it is not unique, there being a host of other religions and a variety of other deities worshipped or revered by millions of men and women in various parts of the world.”(2)

In his final book, Farewell to God, Templeton describes the unraveling of more than twenty years of ministry and a faith that was steadily besieged by doubt. His objections range from scathing frustrations with biblical stories to pained confusions with the ways of the world and the God who supposedly cares for it. One question in particular remained with me throughout the book: “If God is a loving Father, why does he so seldom answer his needy children’s prayers?” he asks. The question isn’t new to me, and like Templeton, I can rattle off an explanation based on a scriptures I know by heart. But the picture that comes to life within this question is far more personal than any routine answer would satisfy. Many wrestle through this question similar to the way we had to wrestle with the presence and absence of our own parents.

Elsewhere, Templeton critiques the world and what he sees as its “abundance of gods,” though he treats each one with the curious requirement of unquestioning obedience as if it was the only god that mattered. He describes it a point of contention—even a point of absurdity—that in the vast sea of divine beings on this planet, Christianity proposes the idea that there is only one God. Across history, there are more gods than any of us can keep track of, and they seem to come with as many descriptions as the people who created them. On top of this, he argues, a great number of these gods come with qualities that leave much to be desired in the first place; they are jealous, hierarchical, vengeful, and demanding—and very much a product of our predecessors.

Many of these observations are troublingly undeniable. I was listening recently to a collection of interviews on the subject of spirituality. They asked hundreds of people the same question: simply, “Who is God?” But the answers were as diverse as the patches on a quilt, and the finished product was not at all a comforting blanket of great divinity, but little more than a mat of troubled chaos, gapping holes, and contradiction. Coming to the end of that message, I sighed deeply—how can anyone muddle through such a mess? We seem to make gods in our own images as fast as we can get them off the assembly line.

Templeton and the many who echo him are absolutely right to point out as troubling the sheer number and seeming characters of these divinities, who “hate every people but their own…[who] are jealous, vengeful…utter egotists and insist on frequent praise and flattery.”(3) In fact, the prophet Jeremiah made a similar point. He called it a “discipline of delusion” to chase after these gods and their demands, but particularly as if it were all a matter of preference and not a matter pertaining to what is real. “They are altogether stupid and foolish,” he wrote of these individuals. “In their discipline of delusion—their idol is wood” (Jeremiah 10:8). The world of gods is indeed a chaotic place. And yet, isn’t it somewhat hasty to reject every divinity in the room simply because there is more than one? In doing so, it would seem we use our own complaint against Christianity (it is arrogant to say there is only one God) as the reason to reject it (it is ridiculous that there is more than one god).

But the description of angry gods in abundance brings me back to the question raised at the beginning. “If God is a loving Father, why does he so seldom answer his needy children’s prayers?” The reason this question demands more than a pat answer is because it deals with disappointment, neglect, silence, and heartache. The question pulls on the very shirtsleeve of a vital relationship. Perhaps it is subtle, but the question itself seems to point to something inherently different about this God—something that sets this Father significantly apart from the sea of divine and impersonal chaos. The gods Templeton and many others describe do not at all seem like gods we would miss if they were far away. They are not the kind of gods we would be saddened by if they were silent, or dare to be angry with if they disappointed us. Like all children with parents that we do not always understand, sometimes we ask questions that aren’t entirely fair (or even sensible). And sometimes we ask questions that give away the relational presence of the one we wrestle with under the surface.

I believe it is more than helpful to recognize the human capacity to create gods and chase after delusion. But so I think it is vital to recognize that not all gods are created equal, and there is reason to believe there might be one who isn’t created at all.

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

(1) Charles Templeton, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996), 18.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid., 22-23.

A note from Ravi Zacharias

Dear Friend,

Hello to all our friends and supporters. I have a special prayer request for two programs I have been invited to do with commentator and broadcaster Glenn Beck at his studios in Dallas, Texas, on Monday, November 10. I met with Glenn recently, and he is a delightful person to know and talk with. He is on his own spiritual journey. He would like to interview me on my latest book, Why Suffering?, and also on my spiritual journey.

I am grateful for this unique opportunity, but it will be a tough one. I am a deeply committed evangelical Christian. Glenn is a member of the LDS church. So in that sense we have deep distinctives. I firmly believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ and his exclusive claim to be the way, the truth, and the life. I believe in the Old and the New Testament as the sufficient and final word for faith and conduct. So any addition or detraction from those truths would be in contravention of our Lord’s words.

Therefore, the challenge when I am speaking with another from a different belief (a situation I find myself in often) is to navigate carefully and wisely. At the same time, as a Christian apologist, I must be in arenas where there are counter-perspectives and clearly present what I believe. That is our field of calling, whether talking to skeptics or those of other beliefs. Unfortunately, in this day of mass communication, my words and my presence can be taken out of context or misrepresented. So please pray for me as I handle a worthy opportunity with wisdom to present the truth and the book that touches on the most painful malady facing all of humanity: “Why Suffering?”

One of the most important purposes in such interviews is to talk to people about the slow moral death of our culture. A moral soil is needed for anything worthy to flourish. With that goal in mind I talk with those who share that common concern. Moral soil and truths in our worldview are not the same. But that moral soil is indispensable for truth to stand a chance. It is that soil that I seek to prepare so that the truth of the gospel may be planted.

Thank you for your prayers. Need I say that a lot of conversations in such settings are very private? I will honor that and pray that the truth will triumph and that which was come to terms with in private will come to public fruition. I will never compromise my belief in the final and sufficient work of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. May every conversation bring others to that same conviction. Only the Holy Spirit of God can bring that change in any heart.

As RZIM celebrates our 30th year as a ministry, we are reminded that our goal must always be the glory of God. Please do pray for wisdom for me and for our team as we navigate these challenging times in our culture. We are grateful for your continued support as we seek to articulate the beauty and credibility of the gospel of Jesus Christ in influential settings across this country and around the world.

With gratitude,

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias will be interviewed by Glenn Beck on Monday, November 10, at The Blaze studios in Dallas, Texas. You can listen to Ravi on The Glenn Beck Radio Program from 10:00am-11:00am CST. Check your local listings or listen online at: http://www.glennbeck.com/. You can watch Ravi on Glenn Beck’s TV show at 5:00 p.m. CST on various cable networks and online at: http://www.theblaze.com/tv/.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Last Faint Spark

November 7, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“April is the cruellest month…” begins the first line of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The poem is thought to be a portrayal of universal despair, where we lie in wait between the unrelenting force of spring and the dead contrast of winter, and the casualty of the warring seasons is eventually hope. In the bold display of life’s unending, futile circles, one can be left to wonder at the point of it all. Does everything simply fade into a waste land? Is death the last, desperate word? Perhaps it was somewhere between the war of winter and spring when the prophet reeled over life’s abrupt and senseless end. “In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years? For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise. The living, the living—they praise you as I am doing today.”(1)

Though differing in degree and conclusions, literature is unapologetically full of a sense of this deep irony, at times expressing itself in futility. Euripides, writing in the fifth century, remarks,

“…and so we are sick for life, and cling

On earth to this nameless and shining thing.

For other life is a fountain sealed,

And the deeps below us are unrevealed

And we drift on legends for ever.”(2)

Shakespeare, on the lips of Macbeth, is struck by the monotonous beat of time and the futile story it adds up to tell.

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”(3)

Nietzsche further determines that there is nothing distinct about life at all. “Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species…”(4) And in the face of this certain futility, Bertrand Russell explains that we must somehow build our lives boldly upon this “firm foundation of unyielding despair.”(5)

Is this the only fitting response to such a familiar anguish? Must the human lament over fears of death and the uncertainty of life go unanswered—with only our brave, but futile, attempts to face them?

During the Second World War in the midst of her own unyielding despair, Edith Sitwell wrote of a very different foundation. Hers was not a simple-minded declaration of a better place, a billowy picture of a heavenly home and an escape vehicle to get there; nor was it a picture of a particularly powerful Christendom, hope built up by the armor of control and certainty. Her foundation was not the scaffolding of wishful thinking, a psychological hope made into a practical or power-wielding crutch. It was, on the contrary, a picture entirely unpractical, a weak and beaten man, a defeated God crying with her. She wrote:

Still falls the Rain—

Dark as the world of man, black as our loss—

Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails

Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain—

Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:

He bears in His Heart all wounds, —those of the light that died,

The last faint spark

In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark

The cross reminds us that it is permissible—in fact, deeply human—to speak the words at the very depths of our questioning souls. We are at times overwhelmed by abrupt glimpses of life’s finitude, the darkness of suffering, the cruelty of April or November and the pained limbo of waiting for something different. We are at times devastatingly aware that we are human, we are dust, and we are easily overwhelmed, assailed by fear and death and uncertainty with what is beyond. On these days it is not Christendom that can console us, not an image of God in the highest, but an image of Christ in the lowest. In the midst of human despair, we are given the cross to cling to, the picture of Jesus in his own unyielding, human despair, suffering both with us and on our behalves. If we choose to follow him as savior, we must follow him to the cross, where we find, in his life cut short, hope for our own wounds and our own brief lifetimes, life where death stings and tears flow.

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

(1) Isaiah 38:10, 18-19b.

(2) Euripides, Hippolytus, Lines 195-199.

(3) Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, 19–28.

(4) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader (New York: Penguin, 1977), 201.

(5) Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship” Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), 46.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Beyond Thoughts

November 6, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

I would like to begin by telling a story about an event that took place some years ago when I was beginning my studies, an event that has had a major impact on my approach to the ministry to this day. I had a neighbor who was deeply committed to a version of the New Age movement. He and I had many conversations about God in the course of several months. He was a highly educated man with a couple of PhDs to his name, and so he provided me with an opportunity to test my training. But the training I was receiving in apologetics was good, and I soon realized that I could not only answer the questions he was asking about my faith in God, I could also poke holes in his worldview in a way that forced him to check books out of the local library to try and put his worldview back together. And I was feeling very good about myself. I was actually getting it!

Finally I decided to challenge him to consider giving his life to Christ. His reaction surprised me; he did not seem to care at all about what I was telling him. So I said to him, can you please explain to me what is going on? You don’t seem to care about what I am telling you. His answer was even more baffling to me. He said to me, “Listening to you asking me to become a Christian is like listening to a naturalist asking me to become a naturalist.”

I said to him, “What in the world do you mean. I just asked you to consider giving your life to the God who created you, and you are accusing me of being an atheist? What do you mean?”

He said to me, “All you Christians have are statements and creeds. You think that if people accept those statements and creeds, everything will be okay. When I pray, I get in touch with powers that you know nothing about.”

And that was one of the most convicting things anyone has ever said to me. Because what this man was saying to me was essentially this: “Yes, you can say a lot of very convincing things about your faith, but does your faith really rise beyond well-argued propositions?”

In his book, Beyond Opinion, Ravi Zacharias says that the greatest obstacle to the reception of the Gospel is not its inability to provide answers; it is the failure on the part of Christians to live it out. J. I. Packer writes similarly in his classic book, entitled, Knowing God: “From current Christian publications you might think that the most vital issue for any real or would-be Christian in the world today is church union, or social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other faiths, or refuting this or that -ism, or developing a Christian philosophy and culture… it is tragic that….so many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is, and always will be the true priority for every human being—that is, learning to know God in Christ.”(1)

Whatever your position of faith, it is helpful to occasionally step back and ask a similar question of priority. Whatever your calling in life, what is the ultimate goal of all that you do?

The Bible addresses this question in many places, in both the Old and New Testaments, but none so much as in the person of Christ himself. If there is a message we hear loudest in his coming to earth it is this. The primary call of God is to know God, to be near God, not to serve God or to argue on God’s behalf. The end is knowing God. Even the scriptures were given to us a means to that end. For when all is said and done, when the dust settles, it is the eternally incarnate Son of God who lies behind the hauntingly inescapable question, “Who do you say that I am?” It is a question we must answer, with our words and with our lives. There is no neutral ground.

No, Christians don’t have only statements and creeds on which to stand. We stand on holy ground, before a holy God. And how wonderful it is when the curtain is pulled back, and we see God for Who God truly is, and we are able to say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God?”

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

(1) J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 279.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Shelf Life of an Idea

November 5, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The concept of “shelf life” has always intrigued me. It is an expression that describes exactly what it attempts to define. For instance, Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty-five days, after which, their existence on the shelf as something edible expires. But shelf life is also an expression that is metaphorically full. One might say of the American “Cabbage Patch Kids” that they were once a quite a phenomenon; shoppers were injured as the dolls were pulled off the shelves and seized by anxious crowds. But the craze was relatively short-lived; as far as fads go, the shelf life was fairly brief.

In high school chemistry we took in the ponderous thought that everything has a shelf life. In fact, in many substances this is an incredibly important number to watch. A variety of compounds, particularly those containing certain unstable elements, become more unstable as they approach their shelf life. Chemical explosives grow increasingly dangerous over time and with exposure to certain factors in the environment becoming liable to explode without warning.

There is a tendency to view ideas and thoughts as having a similar aging process. When something is deemed ancient or even slightly “behind the times” it is often accordingly considered obsolete, needing to be removed from the shelf. As if it has become out-dated like a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, the aging thought or idea, in many minds, grows more unusable with time. And in many cases, history has shown this to be an accurate picture. Certain philosophies might come to mind as movements that rendered themselves useless over time and exposure to the world. Like compounds approaching their shelf life, their collapse was inevitable and they eventually imploded without warning.

Ideas undeniably have consequences and some approach their shelf lives more dangerously than others. While some have not fully burst at the seams, signs of instability appear. Grumbles of discontent from within their own ideological camps may hint at incoherence. Even so, the noticeable shelf life of specific ideas should cause us to question the cause of their expiration, rather than assume it is time alone that moves an idea to expire.

This is no doubt well-studied in science. Factors that increase and decrease the shelf life of a product move well beyond time itself. When certain compounds are stored at decreased temperatures, their shelf life is increased significantly. Likewise, the development of preservatives dramatically set back the expiration dates on food in our pantries. Like compounds and breakfast items, all ideas do not expire equally. We are thus badly mistaken to dismiss a thought solely because it is old.

The Christian story speaks of the promising hope of Father, Son, and Spirit as something that does not expire, but rather, continues to transform generation after generation. “Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them,” writes the psalmist. “I have learned from your words and acts that you established them to last forever.” Personally I know how often I have lived with quite a different assumption, thinking that surely modern thought has improved this or that idea, only to find myself returning to things generations old with new intrigue. The story of one who takes creation so seriously that he joins us within it is one such idea I cannot seem to remove haphazardly from the shelf because it seems to defy the notion of shelf life. A God who can come that near and be that available, while remaining really God, is a gift that won’t be outdated. It is the sort of thing that rearranges everything else on the shelf.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Beyond Thoughts

November 4, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

I said to him, “What in the world do you mean. I just asked you to consider giving your life to the God who created you, and you are accusing me of being an atheist? What do you mean?”

Whatever your position of faith, it is helpful to occasionally step back and ask a similar question of priority. Whatever your calling in life, what is the ultimate goal of all that you do?

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

(1) J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 279.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Practice of Grace

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Beyond Thoughts

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Beyond Thoughts

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