Tag Archives: Ravi

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A NOBLE FOUR LETTER WORD

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

by Ravi Zacharias on June 12, 2014

My father-in-law had a great impact on my life. He was father to four daughters and always considered me the son he never had. We were quite close and the world lost a great person when he passed away in 2005.

One of our last few conversations before he died took place as we sat across the dining table from each other at his home in Toronto. He had been diagnosed with cancer and was given no more than a few weeks to live. It came as a shock to him and to us. In this, one of our “farewell” conversations, I’ll never forget a particular word he used because he used it often in moments of reflection.

A little background will help. When the Second World War began, he dutifully enlisted to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force as a navigator. He navigated brilliantly by the stars. He served his country and a cause for the world with duty and honor at a perilous time in history. His use of that word “duty” epitomized his own life.

I heard him utter it again as he faced death. He was downcast as he worried that he had not left his finances in better shape for his wife. The truth is that he had provided for her, but with his sudden diagnosis, he suddenly felt so uncertain about it all. I said to him, “Please don’t worry about it, Dad…we’ll be there to take care of her.” He paused, overwhelmed by the weight of the limited time left to him, and said in somber tones, “But it was my duty to do so…” and the tears ran down his face.

There was that word: “duty.” In fact, I almost never heard him speak publicly without somehow bringing it in as a reminder to his audience. He would often quote Lord Nelson’s famous call to his countrymen before the battle of Trafalgar, “England expects every man to do his duty.” So prone was my father-in-law to quote that line that when he wrote his first book, about six hundred pages in length, I asked him with an amused expression, “Where in the book is Nelson’s line?” He looked so sheepish and dodged the question, so I opened the book and there it was: the opening line of the first chapter. I smiled and applauded that he had made my search so easy.

Duty. The two extremes towards this call miss the mark. The materially minded don’t like the word because they think it somehow handcuffs us—why place a burden of compliance that is self-made and mere convention, they insinuate. That venting is understandable, because materialists often miss the essence of many things as they go for form rather than substance. The spiritually minded don’t like the word very much either because they think it diminishes a greater demand, the demand of love. They mangle the form by isolating the substance. Their mistake is in putting asunder what God has joined together.

In his conclusion to the Book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon said that “the whole duty of man is to fear God and to keep his commandments.” So I ask, is it one’s duty to keep the commandments? Yes, indeed. Jesus positioned two commandments as the greatest: to love God and to love our fellow human beings. Making the love of God and of man our duty is surely not making them opposite sentiments.

Whatever the reasons, we are discomfited by the multiple illustrations of failure to do one’s duty that are everywhere, from political leadership to academic responsibility, and so often in the place of the arts. Offices of responsibility are more often sought for the power they bring, rather than for love of duty. Educators think character can be ignored in favor of letters against their names. In the world of entertainment, programs are aired with monetary goals in mind rather than for building up that which is good. Perish the thought that television executives might bear a responsibility to society! The living color that brings entertainment to us reflects only the color of green to its purveyors…dollars that can sacrifice sense. But that’s another topic for another day.

The worst effect from the failure to do our duty is evidenced in the home. The situation is dire. I know of those who have walked away from their wives and children and even their grandchildren to pursue selfish ambition. I find that heart-wrenching. I have seen those grandchildren longing to see their grandfather but he’s not there. He has turned his back on the minimal requirement of love: his duty.

Those who walk away with such callousness think duty and love are at odds because they often subsume love under their own personal need and ignore the greater commitment of duty. That misreading has cost our society so much. China flirted with a one-child policy and realized a generation later the costly mistake they had made in raising a whole generation of children with no siblings. How much more costly is it that multitudes are raised with no father?

What is scary about this scenario as I write about it is that to even address the need for a father is to run the risk of being accused of making a veiled attack on the culture of progressive thinking. That is not the point I am making. I am simply acknowledging that many men over the years have opted for selfishness over duty, for professional accolades over nurture, for image rather than substance, for temporal gain over an eternally defined profit, for sitting in the board room rather than standing by a crib. There is the old saying that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. We are seeing now that the cradle is ruling the world as we rock ourselves into the arrogant belief that not only is an earthly father unnecessary, there is no need for a heavenly Father either.

Contrast these two stories: Some years ago, an Air Canada flight from Dallas to Toronto met with an emergency. A fire had broken out in mid-flight in one of the restrooms. The pilot began a dramatic and sudden descent, knowing he had but a few moments to land if any were to survive. He descended at a furious speed and when he touched down emergency crews were on hand. As soon as they opened the door for rescue, the whole aircraft, sucking in the oxygen, turned into an inferno. There were some fatalities and some suffered burns, but because of his skill and the crew’s commitment, many were rescued. The captain was the last one to leave the burning airplane as he was literally pulled through the window with his uniform afire. It was a story of skill and heroism, and the captain deserved the tearful and heart-filled commendation he received as someone who had done his duty.

Switch scenarios. We move to April 2014. A ferry in Seoul, South Korea, capsizes and a large number of passengers are killed, most of them high school students who, waiting for instructions to abandon ship that never came, were swallowed up by the water and drowned.

 

One of the reasons the instructions never came is that the captain himself had fled the sinking ship and made sure he was safe on dry ground. The chorus of condemnation from the loved ones of those lost, tormented because of a captain who betrayed his trust, is not surprising. The teacher who had organized the trip took his own life, feeling that he had no right to be alive while most of his students perished. Even the prime minister of South Korea offered to resign because of the ripple effect of the tragedy. No celebration here, no commendation of a brave man; just a series of wrong decisions that resulted in the ultimate wrong decision of a man who put himself first and failed to do his duty.

Duty is the handmaiden of love and honor. It is doing that which is right rather than that which is convenient. In fact, failure of duty generally amputates somebody else’s right. Duty recognizes a cause greater than one’s self. As men and as fathers we have a duty before God and man to do what is right, honorable, and sacrificial.

On this occasion of Father’s Day, I call upon every man to do his duty: his duty to those who are in his care and his duty toward whatever task is in his trust, regardless of the personal cost. I pause, myself, to reflect upon ways in which I could have served my family better. I wish I had done that in more ways than I did. Watching our children live out their lives for God is a thrill that cannot be gainsaid.

My concern at this stage is for our youth. They live in a world akin to a tantalizing buffet line of seductions. How do they have the wisdom that enables restraint and discipline? Institutions seem accountable to nobody but themselves. That needed wisdom must come from within the home. That’s where instruction and the impartation of love, responsibility, and duty must begin. This will be a far better world if every man would do his duty to our young.

The hymn writer put it well:

Put on the Gospel armor

and watching unto prayer,

When duty calls, or danger,

be never wanting there.

(Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus)

My father-in-law was that kind of man and that’s why his last words at the end of his life were incredible. As he neared death, with his wife and children standing by his bedside, he uttered two statements. Looking toward the heavens he said, “Amazing, just amazing!” Turning to his wife of 62 years, he said, “Jean, I love you.” Those were his last words before meeting his heavenly Father.

Love had at last wedded beauty to duty, the enrichment of the here and the enchantment of the hereafter. It was the finest and the most soul-affirming of farewells. Doing your duty before God and man is ultimately welcomed in the embrace of love and commendation from whom it really matters. What more could a wife and children have asked for?

God places before us a call to the most rewarding service:  to love that knows its responsibility and that will reap the fitting reward of children who honor their parents. Out of such homes society can build a better future. That in itself would truly be amazing. To be sure, the path to that end is fraught with obstacles, perils, disappointments, and heartaches. But we cannot fail in our duty. The first step is defining, that we might know God who sent his Son who, in turn, fulfilled his duty and laid down his life so that you and I might know the love of our heavenly Father. Duty and love came from heaven to earth so that earth might reflect that splendor.

Happy Father’s Day, Gentlemen. And to families that are missing their father today, my prayers are especially for you. May God our heavenly Father be your strength.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God’s Weakness

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

“I don’t believe in God,” begins Julian Barnes in his book Nothing to Be Frightened Of, “but I miss him.” Though he admits he never had any faith to lose (a “happy atheist” as an Oxford student, Barnes now considers himself an agnostic), he still finds himself dreading the gradual ebbing of Christianity. He misses the sense of purpose that the Christian narrative affords, the sense of wonder and belief that haunts Christian art and architecture. “I miss the God that inspired Italian painting and French stained glass, German music and English chapter houses, and those tumbledown heaps of stone on Celtic headlands which were once symbolic beacons in the darkness and the storm.” Such are the thoughts that surface as Barnes attempts to confront his fears of death and dying in this memoir. He believes Christianity to be a foolish lie, but insists, “[I]t was a beautiful lie.”(1)

There is certainly room for beauty in the description the apostle Paul gave of the gospel. Like Julian, Paul saw its foolishness clearly as well: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). He also noted the weakness inherent in the Christian proclamation. At the heart of the Christian religion is one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form” (Philippians 2:7). On this much Paul and Julian agree: however beautiful, foolishness and weakness imbibe the Christian story.

But unlike Julian, Paul saw the foolishness of the gospel as a reason not to disbelieve, but to believe. “For God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). It is indeed difficult to explain why at the heart of the Christian narrative there is a child, why God would answer the dark silence of 400 years with the cry of a displaced and homeless infant, why God would take on the weakness of humanity in an attempt to reach humanity with power, dying as the Messiah. Most of us would know better than to create, or to perpetuate, a story so foolish. However beautiful, the story of Christ is difficult to explain; that is, unless it was not crafted with human wisdom at all.

The story of a Savior coming as an infant in Bethlehem is indeed astonishing, as astonishing an idea as the resurrection. That God chose to come into the world with flesh like ours, flesh that would suffer, is strange and paradoxical, beautiful and foolish. Perhaps it is also wise beyond our comprehension. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Though the word incarn is now used infrequently, it was once used medically, describing the flesh that grows over a wound. Applied to healing, the word refers to the recovery of wounded flesh due to the presence of new flesh.(2) The Incarnation, the astonishing event at the center of Christianity, the story that has inspired music, architecture, and hope, is God’s way of doing exactly that: Christ comes in flesh to cover our mortal wound. God comes near in body and in weakness to bring healing to weak and wounded bodies. Indeed, God’s own body is mortally wounded only to rise again in flesh and blood. This may seem a foolish mission, but to the blind who receive their sight, the lame who now walk, the diseased who are cleansed, the deaf who hear, the dead who are raised, and the poor who have good news brought to them, it is the most beautiful foolishness they never suspected.

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

(1) Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).

(2) Encyclopaedia Perthensis; Or Universal Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences, Literature (Edinburgh: John Brown, 1816), 53.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Face of Victory

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

On March 1, 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones stepped into the gondola of a hot air balloon and lifted off from the Swiss alpine village of Chateau d’Oex. Nineteen days, 21 hours, and 55 minutes later, traveling 28,431 miles, they landed in the Egyptian desert. Their journey successfully marked the first nonstop flight around the world in a balloon, earning them the distinction of a world record, a book deal, and a million dollars from the sponsoring corporation. Their victory photograph now rests in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum beside the “Breitling Orbiter III” itself.

As with all successes in life, the accomplishment of Jones and Piccard’s journey is memorable. Like the trophies on our shelves or the moments we remember as crowning, the successful passage of the Breitling Orbiter III is the story we celebrate—a story that seems to begin at Chateau d’Oex and ends in Egypt. But this trip, like most memorable achievements, was not quite the linear move from start to finish we imagine it to be. In fact, the journey that would end with a world record actually had three hopeful starting points and two frustrated finishes.

The often miry course of personal growth and human development is similar. There is a reason Jesus seems to insult the paralytic with the basic question of desire. We indeed must first want to be well; I have long understood this concept personally. But thinking of this call for help as being inherently present within the human developmental process has only recently entered my perspective. What if every pang of trust or mistrust, every cry for autonomy or cry of shame, was the call of the human spirit to that which is beyond it? What if our cries over mistrust or longings for trust exist explicitly because there is one who is trustworthy? Psychology and theology professor James Loder offers this perspective explicitly: “It is evident that human development is not the answer to anything of ultimate significance. Every answer it does provide only pushes the issue deeper, back to the ultimate question, ‘What is a lifetime?’ and ‘Why do I live it?’”(1)

Such are the questions we wrestle with in the twists and turns, stops and failures through the journey called life.  How incredibly helpful to suspect there is a reason we ask all along. What if God is not merely the God who comes near in the midst of the pain of adolescence or the cries of an adult for understanding, but is the very creator of the spirit that leads us to crisis and guides us through certain pains? What if it is not merely, as one developmental psychologist writes, the “capacities of the human psyche” that “make spirituality possible,” but it is the Spirit of God who makes the human psyche capable of knowing God?(2) “You did not choose me,” said Jesus, “but I chose you” (John 15:16).

As its name suggests, the success of the Breitling Orbiter III was built upon two previous attempts. The original Breitling Orbiter launched in January of 1997. Only a few hours after take off, the balloon was forced to land when the crew was overcome by kerosene fumes from a leaking valve. One year later, the Breitling Orbiter II stayed in the air 9 days longer than its counterpart, managing to navigate from Switzerland to Burma. To the dismay of all, their flight was cut short when they were refused permission to use the airspace over China. Yet from the finish line of 1999, there is little doubt that these early set backs contributed to the development of the system and strategy that would allow Piccard and Jones to finally pilot their balloon across the Pacific.

Whether our days are marked by victory or by crisis, by progress or the call to turn around and try again, the Spirit goes with us, reinforcing that God has been there all along. To discover that there is a face inherently present behind many of the failures we long to forget, a Spirit within the crushed and wounded scenes we try our best to put behind us, and a voice that speaks over and above the cries that have indelibly marked our journey, is to experience the restorative hope of the creator who intended us to discover him all along. The words of the psalmist describe waking to this knowledge:  ”It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them” (Psalm 44:3). What if our days are really marked with the intention of one who loves us? Our winding journeys are a means to the face of God.

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

(1) James Loder, The Logic of the Spirit (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, Inc, 1998), 106.

(2) Ben Campbell Johnson, Pastoral Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press: 1988), 26.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Faith in the Past, Present, and Future

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

What is the nature of faith? Is faith simply assenting to rational content? Or is faith an irrational leap into the dark? So often our understanding of the nature of faith swings widely between these two extremes; either faith is solely an assent to certain beliefs or it is ultimately devoid of intellectual content and consists exclusively of feelings of total dependence.

The author of Hebrews grounds faith in the “assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.”(1) The early Christians who received this letter were undergoing tremendous suffering and persecution, and the author reminds them that faith is assurance even in the midst of trouble.

The “assurance of things hoped for” is not merely wishful thinking about a yet to be determined future. Rather, it is a description of what true faith already has: the possession in the present of what God has promised for the future. In other words, faith is the response to the trustworthiness of God for what God has already promised and has brought to pass. So faith is confidence in God’s saving work done in the past, and hence a hopeful assurance that God will act in the future. To illustrate this point, the author recounts those who by faith believed God in the past in order to encourage the beleaguered recipients of this letter. Just like those who walked in faith before, we too may not see every promise fulfilled. The content of faith is in remembering God’s faithfulness in the past, so that we might trust in God’s goodness for our present, and in a future that is yet to come.

The writer of Hebrews even chose a particular word to illustrate this point. The Greek word that is used for “assurance” is hypostasis. This is the same word that is used to describe how Christ is the hypostasis, “the very being” of God. In the same way, faith is the “very being” of things hoped for; it is the reality that God’s promises will be fulfilled ultimately, and they are being fulfilled already, in the present time! While we often focus on the bad things that are happening around us, faith directs our gaze to see God’s work going forward in the midst of crisis and chaos.

Ultimately, the “assurance of things hoped for” is an assurance that comes in Jesus Christ. For Jesus is the promise fulfilled and the very substance of faith. It is to Jesus Christ and to him alone that the writer of Hebrews directs us as we look for the content of faith. We have faith because we look to Jesus “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” We look to Jesus, who endured in faith on our behalf, so that we might not grow fainthearted.

Assurance doesn’t come in well-ordered circumstances or trouble-free living. Nor is assurance found in having a rational answer for every question. Assurance comes in relationship with a trustworthy God who fulfilled promises in the past and who will fulfill them in the future. Faith is grounded on God’s faithfulness demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

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

(1) Hebrews 11:1.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Dead Don’t Bleed

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

For one family in Venezuela, the space between death and life was filled with more shock than usual. After a serious car accident, Carlos Camejo was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials released the body to the morgue and a routine autopsy was ordered. But as soon as examiners began the autopsy, they realized something was gravely amiss: the body was bleeding. They quickly stitched up the wounds to stop the bleeding, a procedure without anesthesia which, in turn, jarred the man to consciousness. “I woke up because the pain was unbearable,” said Camejo.(1) Equally jarred awake was Camejo’s wife, who came to the morgue to identify her husband’s body and instead found him in the hallway—alive.

Enlivened with images from countless forensic television shows, the scene comes vividly to life. Equally vivid is the scientific principle utilized by the doctors in the morgue. Sure, blood is ubiquitous with work in a morgue; but the dead do not bleed. This is a sign of the living.

Thought and practice in Old Testament times revolved around a similar understanding—namely, the life is in the blood. It is this notion that informs the expression that “blood is  on one’s hands” when life has wrongfully been taken. When Cain killed his brother Abel, God confronted him in the field, “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” For the ancient Hebrew, there was a general understanding that blood is the very substance of our createdness, that in our blood is the essence of what it means to be alive. There is life in the blood; there is energy and power.

This notion of blood and its power can also be seen in the language of sacrifice and offering found throughout Near Eastern culture. “And you shall provide a lamb a year old without blemish for a burnt offering to the LORD daily; morning by morning you shall provide it” (Ezekiel 46:13). Just as it was understood that the force of life exists in the blood, there was a general understanding of human need for the power of perfect blood, a need in our lives for atoning and cleansing. But the blood of Israel’s sacrifices was different in this sense than the blood shed by those attempting to appease and approach the gods they feared and followed. The prophets sent throughout Israel’s history were forever insisting that the God of Israel wanted more than the empty performance of sacrifice. God desired these offerings to exemplify the heart of a worshiper, one who yearns to be fully alive in the presence of the creator. The blood of a living sacrifice made this possible temporarily, but God would provide a better way.

When Christianity speaks of Christ as the Lamb of God, it is meant to be a description that moves well beyond symbol or metaphor. Christ is the Lamb whose blood cries out with enough life and power to reach every sin, every shortfall, every tear, every evil. He is the Lamb who comes to the slaughter alive and aware, on his own accord, and with his blood covers us with life, moving us forever into the presence of God by the Spirit. There is life in the blood of Christ, whose entire life is self-giving love; there is power, and he has freely sacrificed all to bring it near. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to a crowd that would understand the concept, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).

Mr. Camejo bled because he was living. His pain was equally a sign of life. The many ways in which we have bled, fragile and mortal, are signs of life, something shared with one who suffered as a human in every way. “When they hurled their insults at him,” writes Peter, “he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he…bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” The Christian story tells of a time when we will bow before the slain Lamb who stands very much alive, though bearing the scars of his own death. He is not dead and buried, but beckoning a broken world to his wounded side, offering love and life and power in blood:

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine

Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.(2)

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

(1) “‘Dead’ man wakes up under autopsy knife”, Reuters, 14 September 2007.

(2) George Herbert, “The Agony.”

 

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Mortal Thoughts

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

“Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”(1)

It is a rare gift, in this age of distractions, to have five minutes to rest and reflect. Recently, I had the opportunity to take an entire afternoon and do nothing. I was in the desert Southwest of the United States surrounded by brown, barren mountains, desert scrub and cacti, and a variety of small birds. As I looked out over the contrasting horizon of azure sky and brown earth, I was struck by my own insignificance—something I rarely allow myself to think about as I routinely fill my days with busyness. That topography of sky and soil, bird and flower had been there long before I arrived and would surely remain long after I had departed—both from my visit and upon my departure from this world.

Despite this more sobering thought, the gift of undistracted space nourished me. I could revel in the symphony of songbirds all around me, marvel at the cataclysmic forces of nature that formed the mountains and valleys around me. I could wonder at my place in the vastness of the creation and feel my smallness and my transience. Having this kind of time to sit and to reflect is a rarity, and is just as fleeting as the birds that flew around me.

Though writing hundreds of years ago, Blaise Pascal spoke prophetically about the spirit of our age. With the transience of life and the specter of death facing all, most seek lives of distraction. Whether or not we recognize that the fear of death is an underlying, albeit unconscious motivation, we nevertheless recognize how often we fill our lives in order to obscure these realities. Whether it is in the juggling endless priorities, the relentless busyness of our age, or perpetual media noise, our lives are so full that we rarely find the space or time to reflect honestly about anything. Particularly in Western societies, mindless consumption numbs us to the eventuality of our mortal condition and our finitude. The advertising industry is not unaware of our propensity to consumptive distraction.  Marketers spent over 295 billion dollars in total media advertising in 2007.(2) Perhaps they know that humans mistakenly equate vitality with the ability to consume.

It is easy to understand how the fear of death and suffering would compel human beings to live lives of distraction. Yet, the cost of that distraction is a pervasive and deadening apathy—apathy not simply as the inability to care about anything deeply, but the diminishment for engagement that comes from caring about the wrong things. Kathleen Norris laments:

“It is indeed apathy’s world when we have so many choices that we grow indifferent to them even as we hunger for still more novelty. We discard real relationships in favor of virtual ones and scarcely notice that being overly concerned with the thread count of cotton sheets and the exotic ingredients of gourmet meals can render us less able to care about those who scrounge for food and have no bed but the streets.”(3)

The ancient Hebrew poets, while meditating on the brevity of life, prayed, “So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). It was the inevitability of death that motivated this prayer for wisdom. This was a wisdom that didn’t try to hide from the realities of life—be they joys or sorrows—but rather sought to keep finitude ever before it. Indeed the poem ends with a cry for God to “confirm the work of our hands.” Numbering life’s days led to meaningful engagement in the world and in human work—and this was the mark of wisdom.

As I pondered the landscape around me, I thought of dear loved ones, both family and friends, who will not look on this earthly horizon any more. I was gripped by the pain of their loss and shaken by the fact that one day my own eyes will cease to behold earthly beauty. Yet rather than disengaging or distracting myself from the pain of these thoughts, I desire to number my own days. In dealing with significant loss and pain it is certainly understandable how one would long for escape, but facing the pain and attending to it is the way to develop a heart of wisdom and a life full of meaning and confirmation.

Sadly, the reminders of our own mortality lead some to distraction. Yet it can lead others to wise engagement.  Jesus, himself, faced his own death with intention and purpose. “I am the Good Shepherd…and I lay down my life for the sheep… No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative” (John 10:14a-18). The way of wisdom demonstrated in the life of Jesus gives flesh to the ancient psalmist’s exhortation. As he numbered his days, he calls those who would follow to engage mortality as a catalyst for purposeful living. While following Jesus insists on our laying down our lives in his service, it can be done in the hope that abundant life is truly possible even in the darkest of places. For the one who laid his life down is the one who was raised. He is the one who declared, “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in me will live even though he dies.”

 

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

(1) Blaise Pascal, Pensees, (Penguin Books: New York, 1966), 37.

(2) As referenced by Allan Sloan in “Fuzzy Bush Math” CNN Money, September 4, 2007.

(3) Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life, (Riverhead Books: New York, 2008), 125.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Where Do You Live?

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

Like many Generation Xers, I have spent a great deal of my life asking questions. In retrospect, it seems that more than a few of my plaguing inquires were probably the wrong inquiries. In fact, more than a few of my questions were probably even unanswerable. But it took me a while to be able to admit there existed such distinctions. When you are a child and inquiry is your way of gaining a handle on the world around you, you come to believe that every question is right, and every inquiry deserves an answer that satisfies. And there is some truth to that comforting thought: questions are valid and answers should satisfy. Later, when social pressure begins to stress conformity and asking questions carries the risk of embarrassment, we learn to repress our inquisitiveness, even as those who still see the value in inquiring minds offer the ready assurance, “There are no wrong questions!” And this may be true as well, particularly in a classroom. But it does not mean that one cannot ask an unanswerable question or inquire in such a way that simply fails to cohere with reality. Is your idea blue or purple? How much time is in the sky? I imagine a great number of the questions we ask along the way are in fact quite similar.

When it comes to faith, we are actually instructed in the Christian religion to carry into our discipleship some of the qualities we held as children. I suspect a child’s passion for inquiry is one of the traits Jesus intended in his directive: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” But the childlike expectation that every inquiry is capable of being answered to our satisfaction, that every question is capable of being answered now (or even answered at all) is likely not the quality he was encouraging us to keep.

Regardless, Jesus readily received the questions of those around him, whether they were asked with ulterior motive or childlike abandon; no inquiry was turned away. Of course, this is not to say that he always answered, or that he always satisfied the questioner. Actually, more often than not, he replied with a question of his own. “Who gave you the authority to do what you are doing?” the scribes asked. Jesus replied, “I will ask you one question; answer me and I will answer you. Did the baptism of John come from heaven or human origin?” Knowing they were stuck between conceding to Jesus’s authority and risking the wrath of the crowd, they refused to answer. So Jesus refused as well.

Hopefully, beyond learning that questions, like words, can be used as ammunition, we also learn as we grow from inquiring children to questioning adults that questions are not deserving of satisfactory answers simply because they are asked. Most of us can now admit that there are some questions that simply can’t be satisfied. And yet, we scarcely take this wisdom with us into the realms of faith and belief. Standing before a God whose wisdom is said to be many-sided, we somehow feel that God can and must answer our every inquiry. But questioning an all-knowing God does not presuppose that the question itself was even rational. In fact, Jesus’s reactions to the questions around him seem to verify the strong possibility that many of our questions miss the point entirely.

So what does it mean if many of our great questions of ultimate reality and theological inquiry are as unanswerable as the child who wants to know God’s home address? First, the question isn’t wrong in the sense that it has no meaning for the inquirer. Nor does a question’s unanswerability mean we must walk away from the inquiry entirely disheartened. On the contrary, even in questions that cannot be answered there rings the promise of an answerer who satisfies. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”(1) God may not have a physical address, but the fleshly dwelling of the Incarnate Son of God is nearer and greater than we imagine.

The desire to know, the curiosity that formed the question, and the assumption that someone indeed holds the answer, are all forces that compel a child to ask in the first place. This compulsion to know Jesus encouraged in every questioner, however he chose to answer them. Perhaps he knew that in becoming like children who long to see we would be moved further up and farther into the self-disclosing presence and communion of Father, Son, and Spirit. Inquiry is not in opposition to faith; it is faith’s road to the good answerer.

Interestingly, one of the first questions the disciples asked Jesus was, “Where do you live?” He simply answered, “Come and see.”

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

(1) 1 Corinthians 2:9.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Insult and Injury

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

For a moment I was completely confused. Wincing, I bent down to remove what I thought was a thorn between my toes when a wasp crawled out of my sandal. My immediate reaction was one of indignation. I hadn’t done anything to warrant this. But this train of thought was immediately derailed by a second sting on the opposite foot. The next thing I knew wasps were everywhere. They went after my head and continued to chase me regardless of how fast or far I seemed to run. By the time I made it home, I had been stung repeatedly.

I can’t remember the last time I had been stung by a bee. (I was probably five or six years old, and my mom was immediately there to medicate and console me.) By the time the adrenaline stopped rushing, I was overwhelmed with throbbing limbs and digits. I had forgotten how painful a bee sting can be and I had no idea how to soothe the hurt. My husband gave me a bag of ice and set off to the Internet for information. What we discovered was half-helpful, half-maddening.

On every website that offered information on treating bee stings, there inevitably seemed to be a few thoughts on what I should have done to prevent them. The lists were always very similar: Avoid wearing perfume and bright colors. Don’t work or play around beehives or hornet nests. Don’t provoke them or disturb them. Remember that bee stings are painful and can be dangerous. The words almost seemed to make the stinging worse; the burden of fault was unbearable.

Religious people sometimes make use of similar teaching opportunities. When a person is crumbling under the weight of his own failure, crying out over a life of brokenness, or agonizing over a certain sting of consequence, someone inevitably steps in to offer some after-the-fact instruction. This person’s objective may be well-meaning. There may even be nothing wrong with the words or wisdom offered. But there is undoubtedly a wrong a time to offer them. Before we give a lesson on all that makes us bleed, the wounded need to know there is a physician.

Jesus came onto the religious scene of Jerusalem with a method that bothered a great number of people. The experts of the law were proficient in the commandments of Scripture; they wanted people to know that sin bears consequence, that life is full of choices, and that the way to God is straight and narrow. The teaching of Jesus certainly echoed some of these ideas, and yet he called out the religious leaders repeatedly as those whose “teachings are merely human rules” (Matthew 15:9). “And you experts in the law,” he proclaimed, “woe also to you! For you load people down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them” (Luke 11:46).

Of course, the advice given to me about avoiding bee stings was obviously sound. And on some level, it seems reasonable to include these principles while discussing a treatment plan; prevention is clearly the best treatment. But each time I came across this “guidance” as my entire body throbbed in pain, I naturally wanted to scream. Of course I didn’t mean to disturb the wasps’ nest; I’m still not even sure where the nest was. To be fair, I didn’t see any of it coming. I wasn’t wearing bright colors and I wasn’t wearing perfume. I simply stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time and I was paying for those steps. Yet regardless: all of this was completely irrelevant at the moment I was looking for help.

There are times when sin or a wrong choice or life itself simply comes in and flattens us completely. In hindsight we may be able to see the wrong turns or reckless steps that might have brought us there, or actions that might have prevented the heartache altogether. But in the midst of our brokenness, Jesus isn’t the one pointing this out. To the wounded, he simply says, “Come.”

When we come to Christ asking for help, we are offered a person, not a list that adds insult to injury. To the wounded, he simply offers his own wounds. While Jesus indeed offered instruction that would load down the strongest among us, he was also offering himself up to help us bear the burden. In his presence the stinging may at first seem worse, but the wound, he assures us, will be healed.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Point of Exclusion

1 Comment

Ravi Z

With the numerous religions in the world, how can Christians claim exclusivity? I am often asked this question in different settings. But I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the Christian faith is the only one that seems to have this question posed. The truth is that every major religion in the world claims exclusivity, and every major religion in the world has a point of exclusion.

Hinduism, for example, is often represented as being the most tolerant and accepting of other faiths. That is just not true. All Hindus believe in two fundamental, uncompromising doctrines—the Law of Karma, and the belief in reincarnation. These will not be surrendered. In fact, Buddhism was born out of the rejection of two other very dogmatic claims of Hinduism. Buddha rejected the authority of the vedas and the caste system of Hinduism. The issue here is not who was right or wrong. The truth is that they were systemically different—both claiming rightness.

Islam, as you know, is very clearly an exclusive claim to God. A Muslim will never tell you that it doesn’t matter what you believe or that all religions are true.

But before we get upset with such claims, let us remember that it is the very nature of truth that presents us with this reality. Truth by definition is exclusive. Everything cannot be true. If everything is true, then nothing is false. And if nothing is false then it would also be true to say everything is false. We cannot have it both ways. One should not be surprised at the claims of exclusivity. The reality is that even those who deny truth’s exclusivity, in effect, exclude those who do not deny it. The truth quickly emerges. The law of non-contradiction does apply to reality: Two contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense. Thus, to deny the law of non-contradiction is to affirm it at the same time. You may as well talk about a one-ended stick as talk about truth being all-inclusive.

So where does that leave us? We must not be surprised at truth claims but we must test them before we believe them. If the test demonstrates truth then we are morally compelled to believe it. And this is precisely the point from which many are trying to run. As G.K. Chesterton said, the problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.

Christ is either the immeasurable God or one dreadfully lost. Apply the tests of truth to the person and the message of Jesus Christ. You see not only his exclusivity, but also his uniqueness.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Where Other Creeds Fail

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is one of the world’s largest maximum-security prisons, an eighteen-thousand acre habitat to people who have committed horrible crimes. It houses roughly five thousand inmates, more than half of which are serving life sentences. Death looms large at Angola; ninety-four percent of inmates who enter are expected to die while incarcerated. The fear of dying alone in prison, coupled with the reality that for many inmates their first encounter with death was committing murder, makes death a weighted subject, often locked up in anger, guilt, and dread.

For a few, however, the Angola Hospice volunteer program has drastically changed this. In 1998, equipped with a variety of staff trustees and inmate volunteers, the LSP hospice opened its doors to its first terminally ill inmate. Today it is recognized as one of the best programs of its kind. Giving inmate volunteers a role in the creation of the hospice and in the primary care during the dying process, inmates find themselves in the position to tangibly affect the lives of others by being present, by giving a hand, by offering dignity to the dying. Reckoning with death as a fate that awaits all of humanity as they care for dying friends and strangers, the men often gradually let go of hardened demeanors. As one man notes, “I’ve seen guys that used to run around Angola, and want to fight and drug up, actually cry and be heartbroken over the patient.”(1) Another describes being present in the lives of the dying and how much this takes from the living. “But it puts a lot in you,” he adds. A third inmate describes how caring for strangers on the brink of death has put an end to his lifelong anger and helped him to confront his guilt with honesty.

The Incarnation may seem for some an odd part of the Christian story. But in some ways it is the only story: broken, guilty souls longing for someone to be present. For the men at Angola who stare death in the eyes and realize the tender importance of presence, for the child whose mother left and whose father was never there, for the melancholic soul that laments the evils of a fallen world, the Incarnation is the only story that touches every pain, every lost hope, every ounce of our guilt, every joy that ever matters. Where other creeds fail, the story of the Incarnation, in essence, is about coming poor and weary, guilty and famished to the very scene in history where God reached down and touched the world by stepping into it.

The Incarnation is hard to dismiss out of hand because it so radically comes near our needs. Into the world of living and dying the arrival of Christ as a child turns fears of isolation, weakness, and condemnation on their heads. C.S. Lewis describes the doctrine of the Incarnation as a story that gets under our skin unlike any other creed, religion, or theory. “[The Incarnation] digs beneath the surface, works through the rest of our knowledge by unexpected channels, harmonises best with our deepest apprehensions… and undermines our superficial opinions. It has little to say to the man who is still certain that everything is going to the dogs, or that everything is getting better and better, or that everything is God, or that everything is electricity. Its hour comes when these wholesale creeds have begun to fail us.”(2) Standing over the precipices of the things that matter, nothing matters more than that there is a loving, forgiving, self-offering God who draws near as one of us.

The great hope of the Incarnation is that God comes for us in vicarious humanity. The Father offers the present gift of the Incarnate Son, having come in flesh, and it changes everything. “[I]f accepted,” writes Lewis, “[the Incarnation] illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die,…[and] covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected.”(3) The coming of Christ as an infant in Bethlehem puts flesh on humanity’s worth and puts God in humanity’s weakness. To the captive, there is truly no other freedom.

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

(1) Stephen Kiernan, Last Rights (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2006), 274.

(2) C.S. Lewis, The Complete C.S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 282.

(3) Ibid.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Trust in Crooked Paths

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Remembering How to Walk on Water

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

I always thought it bizarre that he asked me to remember something I never saw in the first place. It was a practical observation for a child. I wondered if it was a matter of oversight, sloppy facts, or just too many people to keep track of. I had no recollection. But he asked repeatedly that I try anyway, as if he knew better—and I wondered if maybe he did. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.‘ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.‘ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

With the help of a timeline and some background years later, it was of some comfort to learn that Paul, who remembered these words, had no personal recollection of that night with Jesus in the upper room either. He makes note of it just before he recounts the memory: ”For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). Even so, it seemed a difficult request. How can you remember something you did not witness? How do you remember someone you have never actually met?

Of course, the short of the answer is that we do it all the time. I have many fond memories of my great grandfather, though I was quite young when he passed away. In fact, most of my memories have been constructed by the memories of those who knew him best. Stories I have heard repeatedly make him a character I can visualize, whether or not I was present, or even born, at the time these qualities were visible or the memorable events witnessed. In this, there is a sense that our memories carry us beyond ourselves, and it is far from a solitary phenomenon. Remembering the stories of a particular time in which we were not present, we are in some sense made into participants nonetheless, lifted beyond our familiar, fleeting days by the communities that can reach past us and help us get there.

The one who remembers Christ is lifted similarly with the help of the Holy Spirit and the many witnesses who have gone before him, though it is a far more profound ascent. Remembering Christ in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we remember the last meal shared with the disciples in the upper room; we remember the death of Christ and his path to the cross; we remember these events in such a way that we are carried by the Spirit beyond our present lives to the events that changed all of history. But far more than this, Christians believe we are also lifted to the ascended incarnate Son as he sits today at the right hand of the Father—resurrected, living, and present. In this sense, it is far more than a static memory of a grandparent in history or a friend whose life was cut short. We are lifted with the great community of believers by the Spirit as we remember the one who stands with us yesterday, today, and tomorrow—here and now in the kingdom he died to proclaim. In this memory, we are further united with Christ and his church as adopted sons and daughters. In his presence, we are taught some of the ineffable things our present distractions would have us to forget, and some of the difficult things we are asked to endure, at the side of the one who endured the most. We remember Christ, and we remember who we are.

In fact, Plato spoke of all learning as remembering. Along with Socrates, he saw a world of students with the need to resurrect all that we have forgotten as souls from another kingdom. The biblical call for remembrance is not far from this. By remembering the acts of God in history, the people of God throughout time recollect what it means to be children pursued by the one who has so often tried to gather us, as hen would gather her chicks. As human beings united to the vicarious humanity of the incarnate Son, we recollect what it means to be human by following the one who is most fully human. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,” writes Paul, “we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Christians profess that Christ is not only at work redeeming a fallen humanity, transforming us with the self-giving love of God; he also came to unite humanity with God so that we can remember what it means to be who we are. It was in this spirit that Madeleine L’Engle said she hoped one day she would remember how to walk on water, and not continue on like Peter who remembered instead that humans cannot do what he was doing, and immediately began to sink.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Sigh of Relief

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

Most of us likely missed it. Couched between Wednesday’s building crescendo of assignments and Friday’s promise of their demise, Thursday hardly seems more than a means to an end. So even though it is every bit as holy as Easter Sunday, most of the world moved through it unsuspectingly—even those who have confessed the momentous lines of the Apostles’ Creed: “On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.”

Yesterday was Ascension Day, the day that marks the ascension of Jesus Christ. Forty days after the celebration of Easter and the resurrection of Jesus, the church around the world holds in remembrance this eventful day. The gospel writer records: “Then [Jesus] said to his disciples…. ‘See, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them.  While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”(1)

The ascension of Christ may not seem as momentous to the world as the resurrection or as rousing as the image of Jesus on the cross. In fact, after the death and resurrection, the ascension might even seem somewhat anti-climatic. The resurrection and ascension statements of the Apostles’ Creed are essentially treated as one in the same: On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. One might even think that the one miraculous act flowed immediately into the other: the death of the body of Jesus was answered in the resurrection of Christ, a presence who then floated on to heaven. Unfortunately, the result of this impression is that many think that the ascension somehow points to the casting off of Christ’s human nature, as if Jesus is now a presence that only used to be human, one we see far more fit to memorialize than we expect one day to see actually face to face.

But in fact, this is far from the experience of the disciples, to whom Jesus appeared repeatedly in the days following the resurrection. To them it was abundantly clear that Jesus was not any sort of spiritual ghost or remote presence. He ate with them; he talked with them; he instructed them as to the ministries they would lead and the deaths they would face because of him. He was in fact more fully human than they ever before realized, and it was this holy body, this divine person that they held near as they lived and died to proclaim his kingdom.

Moreover, the ascension they remembered was no different than the future they envisioned with him—he was raised as a human, fully human. As the disciples were watching and Jesus was taken up before their very eyes, a cloud hid him from their sight. The text then refers to them “looking intently up into the sky as he was going” when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them: “‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go’” (Acts 1:9-11). In this resurrected body, Christ ascended to heaven, fully human, fully divine, and entirely glorified.

For the Christian, no action of Christ is without weight, and this, his last action on earth, is weighed with far more hope than is often realized. On the day Jesus was taken into heaven, the work God sent him to accomplish was finally completed. The ascension was a living and public declaration of his dying words on the Cross: It is finished. Ascending to heaven, Jesus furthered the victory of Easter—the victory of a physical body in whom God had conquered death. Because of the ascension, the incarnation is not a past event. Because of the ascension, we know that the incarnate Christ who was raised from the dead is sharing in our humanity even now. And just as the men in white informed the disciples, so we carry in our own flesh a guarantee that Christ will one day bring us to himself.  It is for these reasons that N.T. Wright affirms, “To embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.”(2)

Truly, Ascension Day, a holy day falling inconspicuously on a Thursday in May, is the conspicuous declaration that we are not left as orphans. In the same post-resurrection body he invited Thomas to touch, Jesus invites us to full humanity even today. He ascended with a body, he shares in our humanity, extending his own body even now, and he is coming back for those in bodies. Christ is preparing a room for us, and we know it is real because he himself is real.

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

(1) Luke 24:49-53.

(2) N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 114.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unexpected Encounter

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

During my high school years, my friends and I would always attend church youth group on Friday evenings. More often than not, these events comprised of playing different games and eating food. After the games were done, we would be ushered in to a room where we would sing songs and then listen to a short talk given by the youth leader. I knew what to do in these moments. I had become an expert at tuning out religious or spiritual talk. I had fifteen years of growing up in a Christian home which consisted of attending church twice every Sunday, one midweek service in addition to another church club. I was a well-seasoned Christian, or at least I thought I was.

But on this particular Friday evening, something happened that I will never forget. I was in the chapel listening to people singing songs, but it all felt so different. I looked across the room and saw people singing as if they really meant what they were singing. People were not only singing about God. They were singing to God. They looked and acted as if God were really in the room. And I must confess that it was the first time, at least to my remembrance, that I felt that same reality. The only way I can describe this moment is to tell you that God was in the room.

I did not sing. I saw the words on the screen. I looked at the person leading the songs and stubbornly did not sing a word. But here’s where things became a bit complicated. The fact is, I did want to sing. All my life, my soul longed to sing out to God. It is hard to explain this tension, but let me put it like this. My soul longed to sing out a song to God, to God’s greatness, but I felt that up to that point, if I were to sing I would simply be singing a song for the sake of being in church. I had never felt the ‘Godness’ of God. It was in this moment that I first sensed the greatness of God all around me. I gave in and started singing.

And what pleasure I felt when I sang. I did not fully comprehend this God to whom I was singing, and I still don’t, but I knew that the one to whom I was singing was real. Deep down, I knew that God was real. Worship, in this case, came before I placed my utter dependence in God. As I tried to make sense of what I experienced that evening, I came across the writings of the late Abraham Heschel. He once wrote that “the secret to spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe. The fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith.”(1) My heart’s expression of worship at the Friday night youth event served as a means to knowing and understanding God more. Indeed, as Heschel pointed out, trust in God was obtained by first acknowledging and responding to the reality of God.

Christian conversion happens in many different ways. As it has been said, there is only one gospel but there are many ways to that gospel. In my case, on one particular evening while I was midway through high school I attended a church youth event not looking for God and was confronted with God’s presence. God’s presence was immediate and palpable. It was then that I encountered God for the first time. I was “overtaken with awe of God”(2) and in singing out, even raising my hands to God, I experienced a rich pleasure that I had never before tasted; pleasure because my voice and hands were finally able to express what my soul had so longed for.

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

(1) Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Man? (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), 116.

(2) Ibid.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Scene of Miracle

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(3) See Isaiah 6.

(4) Lewis, 117.

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Wholeness, Not Dichotomy

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

Most scholars agree that the Enlightenment or Age of Reason, which began in the early seventeenth century, set up a great dichotomy that persists in modern time.(1) The great “dichotomy” of the Enlightenment entailed the separation of the public and private realms. The public realm was the world of ascertained by reason alone.  Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains, “The thinkers of the Enlightenment spoke of their age as the age of reason…by which human beings could attain (at least in principle) to a complete understanding of, and thus a full mastery of, nature—of reality in all its forms. Reason, so understood, is sovereign in this enterprise.”(2) In the realm of reason, therefore, revelation from a divine realm was not needed. Human reason could search out and know all the facts about reality, and “no alleged divine revelation, no tradition however ancient, and no dogma however hallowed has the right to veto its exercise.”(3)

The realm of religious belief was now relegated to the realm of private value and private purpose. It wasn’t that the Enlightenment dichotomy cut out God. Rather, it created a distinction between “natural” religion—God’s existence and the moral laws known by all and demonstrable by reason—and “revealed” religion—doctrines as taught by the Bible and the church. The latter realm, dominant in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, came under increasing attack and was eventually relegated to private expression and personal feelings.

Fueled by scientific and philosophical discoveries, the view of the world as the venue of God’s providence and rule, shifted to the view that sovereign reason could discover all that was necessary to advance humanity toward its highest destiny. All of Christianity’s supernatural claims and all of its revelatory content were unnecessary in a world where the Creator had endowed human beings with enough reason to discern what was important simply by looking at the great book of nature. As such, the autonomous, rational human became the center of truth and knowledge, and that was enough.

What emerged from this dichotomy was the belief that the real world was a world of cause and effect, of material bodies guided solely by mathematically stable laws. It was believed, then, that to have discovered the “cause” of something was to have explained it. There was no need to invoke any supernatural “purpose” or “design” as an explanation any longer.

And yet, purpose remains an inescapable element in human life. Newbigin argues: “Human beings do entertain purposes and set out to achieve them. The immense achievements of modern science themselves are, very obviously, the outcome of the purposeful efforts of hundreds of thousands of men and women dedicated to the achievement of something that is valuable—a true understanding of how things are.”(4) Hence, persisting in the belief that science, for example, is value and purpose-free belies an intentional rejection of reality. The pursuit of science to find causes for effects devoid of any larger purpose will ultimately end in the elimination of all ideals. The very zeal that seeks to explain a world without purpose is a purpose in and of itself.

Proclaiming that purpose infuses human endeavor, and as such, that purposeful human endeavor points to purposeful design, and design to a Designer will not necessarily convince those who see a world only of mechanical cause and effect. Yet, scratch the below the surface of the most strident materialists, and one uncovers a yearning for something more than what can be understood by reason alone. As atheist Sam Harris wrote: “This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute….The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call ‘spiritual.’”(5)

The gospel of John suggests that reason and revelation need not be dichotomized. In this explanation of the significance of Jesus Christ, the objective and the subjective aspects of truth are revealed in a person: “The Word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us.” The divine principle that undergirds all things, as the Greeks understood the Logos, is embodied in the human person, Jesus, according to John’s gospel. And in the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus we have a new starting point for reason. The resurrection is indeed the very basis “for the perpetual praise of God who not only creates order out of chaos, but also breaks through fixed orders to create ever-new situations of surprise and joy.”(6) Ever-new situations of surprise and joy might involve breaking a false dichotomy between public and private faith and the objective and subjective aspects of reality, even between reason and revelation. This one who brings new life and new ways of knowing invites us to wholeness, and not dichotomy.

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

(1) Stanley Grenz and Roger Olsen, 20th Century Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 16-17.

(2) Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 25.

(3) Ibid., 25.

(4) Ibid., 35.

(5) Sam Harris, The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 227.

(6) Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 150.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Church of Amen

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Freedom and Dignity

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

Sometime ago, a prominent public figure phoned me. Both of us were overseas when he called. Perhaps being miles from home provided him some sense of protection and enabled him to be painfully candid. As I listened to him speak, nothing he told me was any different from what I have heard numerous times before. Perhaps the specifics were different, but the story was the same. He had climbed the pinnacle of success. He had experienced human emotions of the most exhilarating kind. Yet he was like a ship on the high seas without chart, compass, or destination. The conclusion of what he said was that he was at his wit’s end and felt lost. His impressive credentials and his level of despair were totally incongruent. He was living as an icon of success in a make-believe public persona. But privately, both he and his world were falling apart.

I dare say that he is really no different from any of us, if we will but admit it, for we are all totally lost within, despite our accomplishments. This is true for us both as individuals and as a community. Here is the question: Why do we see this so often and yet continue to deny its implications? It is as though we have to learn the same lessons over and over… and still never learn.

But here is the first point of tension with reason. There can be no rational argument against pain unless we assume human dignity, just as there is no reason for restraints on pleasure unless we assume human worth. Life is reduced to an inescapable monotony unless we assume a greater purpose to life; but there is no purpose to life unless we assume design, and death has no significance unless deep inside we seek what is everlasting. These tensions are true across the board in human experience—across cultures, languages, and backgrounds. This is what the Christian faith, in effect, reminds us. Absolute significance and purpose are directly linked to an ultimate design.

It is that subtle assumption of intrinsic worth and purpose that has kept the Western world intact and created the environment and the impetus for the success the West has known. Words like “providence,” “destiny,” “sacred,” and “creator” all carried a direction for life. Generations of men and women have drawn their strength from the Creator and believed in his ultimate purpose. Emergent generations built their successes and opportunities on the foundations others had laid before them. In the darkest moments of Western history, countless Christians have stood in humility before the Lord as representatives of their nations, calling upon God for hope and restoration. There was always a future hope linked to early aspirations and the longing of the soul.

But now in this brave new world, as Christianity is evicted in a culture, I have no doubt that there will not be a vacuum. Rather, a radical form of totalitarian religious belief will take over. The spiritual always tugs at the heart. When the true one is rejected, a spurious one replaces it.

I have sat with leaders in other parts of the world who have voiced their perplexity as to why we in the West don’t see this reality staring us in the face. The birthrate alone tells the future. We are being outnumbered in that category by nearly eight to one to inimical beliefs that seek the domination of the West. The handwriting is on the wall and a sterile secularism will not be able to withstand the religious assault of beliefs that take away our freedom. Only Christianity is strong enough to preserve our freedom and our dignity. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us the enormous privilege of sacred freedom without imposing faith on anyone. Those who mock this faith will find themselves before long under the oppression of an ideological domination that uses religion to gain political and cultural dominance and will not tolerate the mocking of their beliefs without cruel responses.

History is replete with examples that politics never has had and never will have the answers to ensuring the perpetuity of a nation and the freedom and dignity of our souls. From the feudal warlords of ancient Mesopotamia to the divine status of kings in Babylon and Persia, from the democratic and republican ideas of Greece to the empire building of Rome, from the theocracies of Islam and the state church of Europe to flirtation with the idea of freedom without responsibility in postmodern America and the materialism of Communism—what has remained? A world in turmoil.

Political theories come and go. Nations and empires rise and fall. Civilizations wax and wane. For this very reason, Jesus resisted any efforts to make himself an earthly king. The allegiance he wants is that of the heart, for the ultimate universal battle is that of the will against God. In Him alone are we truly made free. The truth of God’s Word that abides forever and results in coherence is first lodged in the heart of a person and then in society. To bring that coherence within takes the grace and the work of God. But it is the heart and will that must sense it and then respond to it. Failing to grasp this is a guarantee of alienation within and then in every outward direction. That is why Jesus said, “I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly” (see John 10:10). He is the author of life and the definer of what is true and good and beautiful. How our hearts hunger for those supremacies. That fulfillment can only come when we submit to his will and know that in Him we are to live and move and have our being. Our lives and our countries need this reminder in every generation.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At the Crux of History

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

In the film Hannah and Her Sisters, the character played by Woody Allen tries to tell his Jewish parents that he has difficulty believing in the God of their faith. His mother won’t hear such nonsense and locks herself in the bathroom. Allen’s character shouts after her, “Well, if there’s a God, then why is there so much evil in the world? Just on a simplistic level, why were there Nazis?” From behind the bathroom door the mother cries out to her husband, “Tell him, Max.” The father replies, “How in the world do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t even know how the can opener works!”

Evil confronts us in many ways, and demands some kind of an answer. Regardless of whether we believe God exists, that we are god, that everything is god, or that there is no god, some kind of answer is needed. To the Christian, the question is posed in light of the view of God that is presented in the Bible, but all beliefs and everyone has to come up with some kind of explanation. The problem of evil demands some kind of philosophical response, but also one that satisfies us existentially.

It has been fashionable of late to reject any and all notions of truth in place of taste and perspective.  Reality is merely what one clams it to be. Truth is merely as we see it, or as it is socially constructed. But even when posing the oft-asked questions, “Where was God when such and such an event happened?” or “Why did God allow it to happen?” some knowledge of what life is about is presupposed. Moreover, positing the questions of God’s involvement and whereabouts in the midst of evil presupposes some sense and notion of good.

But where does this notion come from? As the Twin Towers fell in New York City, many of the same voices which days earlier claimed the moral equivalence of all views suddenly seemed compelled to invoke evil as real, as different from something else, and that something called the “good” was both better and to be defended.

The biblical vision captured in the Westminster Confession in 1646 claims: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” To most modern people, the chief end of life is to provide freedom and as much pleasure as we can get forever. Interestingly, as we look back through the history of ideas, the question, “Where is God when it hurts” was not asked before the 17th century. The inquiry has a late pedigree in our making man the center and measure of all things in our considerations.

Yet the Bible clears up any ambiguity about who we are, who God is, what is wrong with the world, and what can be done. The possibility of freely chosen love means allowing conditions that permit freely chosen rejection, evil, or alternatives. Our lack of interest in God and our self-assured confidence excludes any normal or routine reflection on life. For many of us, pain is the platform from which the imperative questions of life are asked and answered. C.S. Lewis put it this way, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The question of God’s presence in the midst of evil is answered in the silhouette at the heart of a different question: Where was God at the crux of human history? As the disciples’ gazed at the cross, their expectations were dashed, their hopes shattered, and they could not see God in the midst of the turning point of history. But at the cross, what people at first could not see was the very triumph of good over evil.

Stuart McAllister is regional director for the Americas at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Detective and the Theory

Leave a comment

Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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