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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Perspectives on Defeat

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Ravi Z

A few years ago Forbes magazine published a special edition issue dedicated entirely to a theme they boldly called “the biggest concern of our age.” The articles began with the blunt assertion that “we’ve beaten or at least stymied most of humanity’s monsters: disease, climate, geography, and memory. But time still defeats us. Lately its victories seem more complete than ever. Those timesaving inventions of the last half-century have somehow turned on us. We now hold cell phone meetings in traffic jams, and ’24/7′ has become the most terrifying phrase in modern life.”(1) Certainly this statement is a telling look at some of our modern assumptions. Particularly fascinating is the categorizing of time as a monster. Time is limiting after all and, no doubt, the greatest modern monster of all is to find ourselves limited in any way.

I was reminded of this article and its fearful expressions of limitation while reading something in the book of Psalms. Like the candid passage above, the Psalms are known for their sincere expressions of troubling ailments and enemies. And yet the gigantic differences in worldview are not only evident but helpful in uncovering a logical perspective. It is easy to be blinded by progress and convenience such that we find “humanity’s monsters” to be the problem that needs correcting—and not humanity itself. Limitation is far from what ails us. Yet, it is often what brings us to the physician.

Significantly, the psalmist presents his list of the various monsters that limit and block his way before the God he seeks. “Be merciful to me, O Lord,” writes the psalmist, “for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief” (Psalm 31:9). Standing before one who is limitless casts limitation in a wholly different light. The psalmist powerfully concludes, “But I trust in you, O Lord, I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands… Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.” Gazing at trustworthy hands that hold fleeting days, the psalmist recognizes that, like time itself, all that limits and weakens us will also eventually fade—but God’s unfailing love will not.

The Christian perception of weakness is also one steeped in the person and character of God. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of something he calls the “thorn in his flesh.” No doubt a striking expression of limitation, scholars have debated for centuries what this thorn might have been—a physical ailment, a burdensome opponent, a disability of some sort. No one can be sure.  But what is certain is that Paul was a uniquely significant influence in spite of this limiting thorn. He writes, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But God said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” “Therefore,” continues Paul, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).

It is a countercultural proclamation for sure. Yet what God can do with us through hardship, through limitation, even through seeming failure, is a testimony to the grace and authority, sovereignty and care of the God these weak proclaim.

What is in the time you hold before you this very moment? Do you see limits and fear? Or do you see as Paul saw, limitations and impossibilities made approachable by the power of a God who is near? Even in our weakness, maybe because of our weakness, God can accomplish far more than seems available. No one hoped for a weak Messiah. No one would have asked for a suffering servant where a military leader was needed. No one thought the death of Jesus could be the catalyst for a powerful grace. The defeat of Jesus as a display of power still seems a foolish suggestion. But the love of God is jarringly given in the broken gift of the Son. God’s defeat is boldly God’s victory. And the last are made first, the broken made beautiful, and the weak made strong in the power and the life of the Spirit.

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

(1) Forbes, special edition, 2000, emphasis mine.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A New Legalism

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Some time ago, I attended a conference in which a well-known speaker related the cultural and value differences between his current home in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and his childhood home in a small town in the Southwest United States. These cultural and value differences found their expression in a set of rules. As a young man, his church culture enforced a particularly prescribed set of rules: no dancing, no drinking, no card playing, no long hair. These were rules that could not be violated. To do so would not only invite censure from the community, but he was also warned that it would put his eternal standing with Almighty God in jeopardy.

As it sometimes happens with this kind of upbringing, the conference speaker moved as far away from his hometown rigidity as he could. He escaped to the Pacific Northwest—a part of the United States known for its laidback attitude and freethinking ways. The speaker believed that he had finally found a community that would be free from the constricting rules and legalisms of his childhood. He was in for quite a surprise. While he had indeed moved far away from the many rules of his childhood town, he discovered that the rules of his new neighborhood involved minute intricacies relating to garbage, the banning of plastic bags at the grocery store, and skateboarders or musicians in the common areas of his upscale townhome complex. The wrath of God may not have been invoked in the threats of punishment, but the speaker suffered the self-righteous censure of this community just as bound by legalism as the one in which he grew up. In both communities, oddly, he found that the rules seemed more beloved than the people they were meant to shape.

In listening to the speaker relating this story, I was embarrassed at the sting of self-recognition, finding myself within the details of his story. I might have easily looked down on one set of rules, while perhaps elevating the rules of the other. Yet, I grimaced at the irony of my own self-righteous response. Regardless of the community rules involved, human beings seem to be lovers of legalities.

Why is it that human beings become legalists regardless of the rules involved? The desire to have clear boundaries, and a concern for decency and order to guide communities, is both necessary and prudent. Yet somehow rules meant to offer shape for community living often grow into gods we come to worship—gods who serve as judge and jury for all who fall short of their dictates. Clear boundaries become walls of separation dividing human relationships and community, and the enforcers quickly draw lines around the righteous and the unrighteous. Legalism prompts one to declare her “virtue” as the clearly superior standard.

Perhaps humans find it easier to love legalities because it is easier than loving people. People are inconsistent and imperfect, and are more easily controlled and confined by rules. Jesus, in his life and ministry, frequently shattered these easy definitions put in place by those legalists in his day. He upended expectations and eluded the tightly drawn categories of those who sought to control him. He often kept company with those deemed unrighteous—prostitutes, tax collectors, and others called sinners—and he earned the label of “glutton and a drunkard” by those whose laws drew clear boundaries around appropriate company. For those who had clear rules about the Messiah of Israel, Jesus eschewed political power and stood silently before those who would eventually order his crucifixion. And for those who wanted a “rebel” Jesus, wholly antinomian and defying every convention, he answered by challenging his followers towards a righteousness that exceeded that of the most religious-of-the-religious in his day. In his own words he told those who would follow him that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Far from being a measure for establishing self-righteousness or from creating a new legalism for his followers, Jesus fulfilled the law by revealing its true intention. He showed the true intention of the Sabbath law for rest on the seventh day not by enforcing rest rigidly but by healing those who were diseased, broken, and therefore kept separate from their communities. The rest God intended for humanity was expressed not in the rule of non-work per se, but in the spirit of good for all in need of reconciliation. Fulfilling the law, he restored relationships and opened the door for transformation; he reconciled persons to one another and to God.

Indeed, when he was questioned about the greatest commandment Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Jesus understood that the ground of the law was a love for God and a love for persons. To replace the love of persons with a love of the rules missed the point. Loving the rules for rules’ sake engenders self-love; loving God engenders love for others.

As the conference speaker suggested in his twin-stories of community legalism, human beings often miss the command to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves. As legalists of many stripes, we often prefer to apply our community rules broadly and widely as a function of our self-love. But in the idolatry of legalism and the attempt to prove self-righteousness, we ironically depict a truth spoken long ago: The letter kills but the Spirit gives life.

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

(1) Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Reflecting Pool

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French playwright Moliere once uttered this curious line:  “Nearly all men die of their medicines, and not of their maladies.”(1) Modern musician Tori Amos asserts something similar in the chorus of one of her songs: “She’s addicted to nicotine patches/she’s afraid of a light in the dark.” Both of these artists are perhaps known for exposing the hypocrisies of society in biting verse. Through satire, Moliere sought to amuse, but also to instruct his audience with the peculiarities of human behavior, while Amos croons of life as she sees it, through blunt, often angry, lyrics.

Certainly, artistic observation of humanity can rouse insight and inspire an inward look at our own lives. But do these artists communicate a common truth about the human condition? I think they might. We have all known people who seem blind to their own malady, and people who would prefer their pain to change. But I also believe there is something that communicates the complexities of human behavior even more accurately.

Abraham Heschel referred to Scripture not as humanity’s theology, as it is often received, but as God’s anthropology. Surely there is much that can be said about the convincing proofs for the reliability of Scripture, but as Malcolm Muggeridge often stated, one of the most convincing proofs is the irrefutability of human depravity. In these ancient Scriptures, human behavior, human emotion, human duplicity is all depicted with curious accuracy. And often, in these pages, that God knows us far better than we know ourselves is displayed in the form of a question. To study the great questions posed in Scripture is a remarkably convicting study in human nature and behavior.

Chronicled in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John is one such example. The chapter is an account of Jesus’s interaction with a paralytic man sitting beside the pool of Bethesda. It was commonly believed that when the waters of the pool stirred an angel was present, and anyone who entered the water would be healed. Thus, many would gather by pools such as this waiting for their opportunity to be healed. We are told that this man at the pool of Bethesda had been ill for 38 years. The scene is one of desperation; one can only imagine how many years had past as this man watched and waited, leaving each day exactly as he came. Yet Jesus approached this dismal scene and posed the oddest of questions. To the man on the mat, he asked, “Do you want to get well?”

The question seems redundant at best, maybe even offensive, given his situation. And yet, this man bound by illness for 38 years does not reply with the resounding “yes!” or “of course!” or “why on earth would you ask me this?” we might expect. In fact, he does not even answer the question. Holding fast to his identity as a paralytic, he explains his condition by pointing to those around him—who no doubt have let him down. “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me” (John 5:7).

Yet Jesus’s question points to something in this man’s life that went much deeper than paralysis of the body. Do you want to get well? Has your medicine become your malady? Do you now prefer your pain? Your true illness, Jesus seems to say, reaches far beyond your physical malady. We are in need of a cure that is much more holistic. By this pool, we are shown a truth common to the human condition: seldom do we know the depths of our own illness.

But there is one who does. Christ calls our maladies into question as symptoms of something other than creation as he intended and he points to the way of wellness.

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

(1) Moliere in La Malade Imaginaire.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Filled with Reason

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As the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary proclaiming all that would come to pass, she was perplexed, and yet the text reports that she believed.

“Nothing will be impossible with God,” the angel assured her, and he added news of another miracle close at hand: “Behold, your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age. She who was called barren is now in her sixth month.”(1)

The scene is hardly the slow motion picture we often imagine it to be in Christmas plays. Undoubtedly as full of questions as she was faith, Mary nonetheless said to Gabriel, “May it be done to me according to your word.” And we are told that immediately Mary arose and went to the house of Elizabeth.

This visit seems a detail easily overlooked. If something fearful and wonderful were to affront the routine of your ordinary day, who would you run to tell first? Mary didn’t immediately run to the man she was promised to marry. She didn’t go first to the religious leaders for their insight into her encounter with God or to her parents for help in dealing with the ramifications of unwed motherhood. She went in a hurry to Elizabeth, though we are not entirely told why. Perhaps Mary was as startled about Elizabeth’s womb as she was about her own. Perhaps she ran to verify Gabriel’s words about her barren relative and in so doing the words about herself. Perhaps she rushed to the one person in her life who would be most conscious of the miraculous hand of God. I imagine a terrified but anticipant teenager running expectantly toward the house of her older relative. “Is it true?”

Yet instead of describing what was going on inside of Mary, the text describes what was going on inside of Elizabeth. As Mary burst through the door with her greeting, the child leaped inside Elizabeth’s womb and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice Elizabeth cried out: “How has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”

If Mary rushed to Elizabeth’s house for affirmation of all that was said to her and all that was to come, she did not turn away disheartened or disillusioned: God was surely among them. The truth of all that was spoken to Mary in a jarring visit from an angel was affirmed in that visit with Elizabeth. And Mary burst into song, uttering one of the most beautiful doxologies in all of Scripture:

My soul exalts the Lord,

And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.

For God has had regard for the humble state of his bondslave;

For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.

Two thousand years ago, a young girl somehow believed that the promises of God spoken to her were miraculous enough to affect generations to come. But more than recognizing God’s words as true, Mary allowed truth to turn her life in a direction she never would have dreamed for herself. She took Gabriel’s invitation to participate in the redemptive narrative of God and accepted with everything in her, despite any fearful, sorrowful cost. Such an orientation may seem irrational to many, but it reflects the beauty of a soul able to be filled with God. As Madeleine L’Engle observes in her poem “After Annunciation”:

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild,

Had Mary been filled with reason

There’d have been no room for the child.

Mary received God and God’s promises as more than mere words. Beyond reason or rationality, she surrendered to God as author, allowing her life to be deeply and personally transformed, in both wonder and pain. Standing with Elizabeth, Mary praised the mighty one for the things God had done for her, knowing much was still yet to come for both. As was prophesied long before, the Messiah was drawing near, inviting the world to be filled with an invitation bright and wild. As was promised to Mary, the Holy Spirit came upon her, the power of the most high overshadowed her, and the holy child was the light of God.

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

(1) See Luke 1:36-48.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Our Heads in Shame

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Earlier this morning I was enjoying my breakfast at the YWCA’s International Guest house on Parliament Street in New Delhi, India. I am here in the city to fulfil speaking commitments on behalf of our team. Across the room I saw a young Westerner reading the morning’s paper. From the look on her face it was evident that the headline of the day had more than caught her attention. The report was titled, “Mumbai gang rape accused says gang has done it before.”

For a young woman from across cultures, receiving such news in a country thousands of miles away from home can be unnerving to say the least. I picked up the paper after she put it back on the rack. I had first read of the incident on my way to Delhi and it had saddened and angered me and sent me to my knees.

Let me recapture the report for you as briefly as I can. On the evening of Thursday the 22nd of August 2013 a 22 year old photojournalist and her male colleague entered a deserted mill compound in the city of Mumbai. They were on an assignment to capture some pictures for a magazine feature. Upon entering the place they were accosted by two young men, pretending to be policemen, who asked if they had permission to shoot. The two then took the woman and her colleague to another spot where, along with three others, they tied the colleague to a tree and brutalized the young woman. Media reports allege that they raped her five times that evening. One of the accused who was arrested allegedly told the police that the five had committed similar crimes earlier and got away with it by recording video clips of the victims to intimidate them.(1)

For those familiar with news in this country, Thursday’s incident transported us to the 16th of December 2012 when a 23 year old physiotherapy intern was raped by six men in a bus in our capital city. The nation mourned and protested as that young woman, Nirabaya, battled the physical consequences of having been brutally gang raped, injured and abandoned. She died 13 days later unable to fight any more. Her sad story caught our national imagination. It sent social activists on the warpath, the police force on greater alert, the government on a string of protective measures, and the perpetrators to prison.

Sadly since Nirabaya’s death the media has continued to report incidents of the violation of women and children. The National Crime Records Bureau reports that a woman is raped every 20 minutes somewhere in India. It also states that crimes against women have increased by 7.1% nationwide since 2010, and that child rape cases have increased by 336% in the last 10 years.(2)

As I sat down to write today, I couldn’t escape the magnitude of those figures and their indictment upon our moral condition as a nation. I also couldn’t help but recall the words of Indian writer Shoba De from her article dated 24th August 2013 about the cold-blooded, pre-meditated daylight murder of Narendra Dabholkar. The article was titled, “Silencing the Rationalist” and hailed Dabholkar as a towering figure who was appreciated all over India for his progressive worldview and his sustained campaign against practitioners of black magic and…his strong views against casteism. Shoba De observes in that article, “It is pretty difficult to shock India. We have become ‘violence-proof’ as it were.”(3)

Weighty questions arise as we think of these circumstances don’t they? Should the sheer frequency of such brutal and inhuman violations be allowed to numb our moral senses that we be rendered “violence-proof”? Can the logic, or shall we say “illogic” that a great amount of wrong has the power to obliterate what is right, ever stand the test of truth? Does apathy coupled with short-lived public memory only place the wounded in obituary sections for the passing world to lay its flowers and candles and then walk away to once again repeat its offenses?

At this moment there is an on-going debate about the age of one of the accused in the Mumbai rape case. His family argue that he is under 17 and therefore by provisions in the law does not stand punishable to the extent of the others. The tragedy is that there seems to be no feeling of remorse or regret that one from the family has so ravaged the innocence and personality of a young woman. “Blood is thicker than water” as the old line goes, but what when blood is shed and pain inflicted in so inhuman a fashion? That question may also speak for Egypt, Syria, and other parts of our fragile world where violence abounds and so also bloodshed.

The Psalmist records a short line bearing deep implications: “For your love is ever before me, and I will continually walk in your truth.” For some of us love brings comfort, for others it brings security, for still others it inspires service, but for the Psalmist it became the bedrock upon which his convictions would stand. God’s love became his inspiration to walk in God’s truth continually.

Has it not struck you that if truth was ever anchored in us, we would end up having about six billion versions of it? That’s why it is very critical for us to understand that “truth” in the Christian worldview is not a concept nor a principle, but a person. Jesus distinguished himself to that claim when he declared, “I am the truth.”

As I try to bring this reflection to a close, let me quote from what I shared in one of my sermons yesterday. There have been times when I have counselled and prayed with men who had entered the dark world of pornography with the excuse that their spouses were either “unkind or uncaring.” The step into pornography was their violation, the alleged failure of the spouse, the justification! I have appealed to such men that they would only find themselves deeper in the quagmire of guilt and dirt and that there could be no moral justification for the plunge they had taken. I have also gone further to tell them that the Holy God of the Bible mercifully offers cleansing and forgiveness when he declares, “Come now, let us reason together, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”(4)

Yes, we can moralize about the men who violated that young photojournalist in Mumbai city. We can stand in rallies to protest and cry for justice. We can appear to be on the right side of the right while all along making compromises within ourselves that no one else or few others know about. So, let me say it as clearly as one must hear it: You may not have much of a right to charge the Mumbai offenders, if you are on the sly subscribing to or viewing pornography. You may not have the moral right to speak in defence of defenceless women (or for that matter, men), if you are unkind to your spouse at home. You may not have the moral right to legislate against such crimes, until you meditate upon the condition of your own soul. And when you do, you must draw near to the one who says, “Come let us reason together…”

The truth of God stands far above the vagaries of time, the whims of our cultures, the “open-mindedness” of our scholars and the scepticism of our peers: It stands in the One in whom “yesterday, today and forever” converge to spell “I AM.”

Until we see that truth, not in print as much as in our entire beings, our heads may hang in shame not only for the violations that we read about in our newspapers but for the violations that dwell within our hearts!

Arun Andrews is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bangalore, India.

(1) V. Narayan, “Mumbai gang rape accused says gang has done it before,” Times of India, 26 August 2013.

(2) Spence Feingold, “One rape every 20 minutes in country” Times of India, 25 August 2013.

(3) Shobhaa De, “Silencing the Rationalist,” Deccan Chronicle, 24 August 2013.

(4) Isaiah 1:18.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Undermining Our Own Mines

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G.K. Chesterton once made the proclamation that it is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God. We live in a world where objections are made to everything under the sun. Yet, the moment any of us condemns something, we have to assume there is some standard by which to condemn it. The modern day rebel, as Chesterton refers to the skeptic, has no standard left because he has rejected everything. Thus, he lives in contradiction. Chesterton reasons:

The new rebel is a sceptic and will not entirely trust anything… [T]he fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation applies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces but the doctrine by which he denounces it… As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, as a philosopher, that all life is a waste of time. [He] goes to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.(1)

If the whole universe has no meaning, C.S. Lewis said similarly, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. The very cry of skeptical objection often betrays the skeptic himself. And yet, I have no doubt that the peculiar act of undermining one’s own mines is hardly a skill left only to the skeptic.

In this, the Gospel is unique in its power to pull down our own contradictions. Jesus repeatedly challenges the way we experience reality, the way we experience ourselves as alive. What seems solid reasoning, Christ establishes as contradictory. What we might denounce as a total loss, he describes as found. What we would be quick to discard as broken, he shows us the meaning of whole.

A friend of mine in college profoundly illustrated to me this very truth. He was born with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, and as a result he is unable to speak or walk or feed himself. He communicates through a computerized voice by typing with his toes. Overcoming more in his lifetime than most can imagine, he was in a public speaking class when I first became acquainted with him. Though an unlikely candidate for a career in public speaking, he has become exactly that, and is now a much in-demand speaker. His message is as powerful as his will to proclaim it. “My body,” he says through the voice of a computer, “is a slow moving, twisted shell of uncontrollable muscle, and yet my life is a picture of nothing short of wholeness. This glorious contradiction I attribute entirely to Jesus Christ.”

Jesus compels us to drastically redefine what we mean by life, just as he compelled the disciples on Easter Sunday. “They were the ones marked out for death,” writes author Paul W. Hoon, “[Christ], the ‘dead’ was really the living.”(2) Lives that are littered with inconsistencies, blind to the ways in which we undermine our own mines, are given a new picture of what it means to be human. Giving him a life to reassemble, we are given wholeness.

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

(1) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Haddonfield, NJ: Dodd, Mead & Co, 2013), 28-29.

(2) Paul W. Hoon, Integrity of Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), 141.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Jars of Clay

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In conversations with people considering the Christian faith, I am often asked why I believe. Sometimes, a litany of offenses associated with Christianity is rehearsed for me as evidence against believing: all the bloodshed and religious wars, the Inquisition, anti-Semitism, etc. I actually don’t mind these kinds of critiques or questions about the heritage of Christendom. They are very important, and it would be foolish of me to pretend that the record of Christianity in the world was spotless. Much has been done in the name of God by those who claim to be Christians, for which there should be collective shame.

But sometimes even the acknowledgement of wrongs done isn’t enough to satisfy my skeptical friends. Their scrutiny then turns to the Bible. Who wrote it? Can we trust it? How can it be said to be God’s word? When it comes to the Bible, I also understand why these kinds of questions are raised. There are some fairly obscure passages, culturally specific events and contexts, and incidents that display the worst of humanity. In combination, these factors can make the work of translation in this contemporary time difficult at best even for the most astute scholars—let alone for those who are completely unfamiliar with it and reading it for the first time. Again, it would be foolish if those who studied the Bible pretended to understand everything within its narrative perfectly or completely.

One thing that is not difficult to see or understand, however, is the humanity on display throughout the biblical narrative. Even the most ‘heroic’ or ‘epic’ of biblical characters have significant flaws; and their weaknesses are as much on display as their strengths. For example, Moses, Israel’s great deliverer is long past his prime having been exiled from the abundance of royal life in Egypt. He is reduced to tending sheep in the barren wilderness. Not skilled in speech, and perhaps suffering from a speech impediment, he is the least likely candidate to be standing before the Pharaoh of Egypt to argue his case for the release of his people. If this were not enough, he also struggled with his temper—killing an Egyptian in his youth, and striking a rock in anger with such violence that he was not permitted to enter the Promised Land.

King David, the greatest king of Israel is the youngest of his family when he is anointed as king, an honor normally reserved for the first born. He committed murder and adultery, conducted a census against God’s specific prohibition—and yet he is the one described as a “man after God’s heart.” David likely penned most of Israel’s psalter—a psalter still used in both Jewish and Christian worship today. In this psalter, the record of human emotions, human experience, and human questioning is on display. These are songs of sacred worship even as they represent the full-spectrum of human experience and the deepest cries of the human heart.

There are also the twelve disciples; humble fishermen without much education who lived and learned from Jesus, himself. Despite their proximity to Jesus for three years, one would betray him, another would deny having even known him, and all of them would flee from him in his greatest hour of need. Despite having access to this great teacher, they often failed to understand what he was saying. Likewise, the apostle Paul, who penned most of the New Testament letters, was formerly a murderer of Christians and a legalist of legalists. Even though he is the first apostle of the church, he couldn’t prevent a disagreement over John Mark, between himself and Barnabus, from separating them and ending their ministry together.

Given all this, some want to overlook the humanity in the Bible. Perhaps it causes embarrassment or creates fear that these less than stellar lives are evidence against transformed lives. I don’t see it that way at all. In fact, time and again when I have struggled with doubts in my faith, I am reminded of all these human individuals used by God as witnesses to the greatness of God’s love and redemption. It is why I am able to proclaim the trustworthiness and faithfulness of the Biblical record, and indeed, the Christian faith. For, unlike any other sacred text, as lofty and as grand as their epics might be, or as poetic and beautiful as their texts read, they do not show the full portrait of humanity on display as the Bible does. What kind of God, indeed what kind of religion, takes fallen and broken human beings and includes them as key players in the plan of salvation? As the apostle Paul proclaimed as the foundation of his own ministry; “for God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness made the light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Cor. 4:6-7).

Skeptics and critics of Christianity might still have well-reasoned arguments and legitimate issues to raise with the faith (and with the faithful), but what cannot be denied is that the God on display in the Bible is not afraid or averse towards humanity, nor does that God shy away from making heroes out of those many would consider undesirable.

And if all of that weren’t enough, the biblical writers speak of God loving humanity so much that human flesh became a temple. God became one of us—filling jars of clay with immeasurable treasure. It is the uniqueness of the divine-human allegiance that keeps me believing. Even in the face of hard critique, it is the prevalence of humanity in the narrative of Scripture that keeps me believing in the truth and relevance of the God willing to come near.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Great Unknowns

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Ravi Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) See Acts 17:23.

(2) Acts 17:24-27.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Flickering Minds

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Gallery statistics report that the average time a person spends looking at a particular work of art is three seconds. To those who spend their lives caring for the great art museums of the world, I imagine this is a disheartening sight to behold day after day. It would have been interesting to hear the thoughts of the St. Petersburg curators who watched as Henri Nouwen sat before Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son for more than four hours.

I suppose most of us are more often like the three-second viewer than the captivated Nouwen, moving through our days with our eyes barely open. How often are we surrounded by creative mastery but unaware and unseeing—missing, in our absence, the bigger picture? One of my favorite poems begins with the lines, “Lord, not you, it is I who am absent.”(1) In a culture filled with tools and media whose very aim seems to be keeping us from being where we are, it is a brave and fitting admission for whomever you can manage to confess it.

The parable of the prodigal son is typically understood as a story that speaks to those who have wandered away in belief or obedience, content, at least for a time, in being absent. It is a phrase used in religious and secular settings to denote the black sheep and wayward souls of our communities. Others claim the title more personally to explain a specific time in our lives—a time of testing the waters, turning away from home or upbringing, experimenting with life or faith or philosophy. It is a parable that at one time or another describes many of us. Perhaps it is also a parable that describes us daily. In the daily struggle to see, in the constant battles for our attention and distraction, it is a daily effort to be present and conscious in this place. We come and go like prodigals.

The story as Jesus tells it explains that the wayward child had a plan for returning to his father’s house: he would confess his sin against heaven and against his father, and then he would ask to be treated as one of the hired servants. He would work his way back into his father’s life. But the father in the story doesn’t even give him a chance to fully present the offer. Upon seeing his son, he says to his slaves, “‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.”(2) With every symbol of restoration, the father who was waiting, embraces the prodigal child.

Gripped by the intensity of the massive painting before him, Henri Nouwen found himself becoming “more and more part of the story that Jesus once told and Rembrandt once painted.” Yet in Rembrandt’s painting we do not find the father eagerly rushing out to greet his wayward son as it is described in the Gospel of Luke. Rather, we find stillness; we find the parable’s characters at rest. Rembrandt slows flickering minds to a scene that captures a thousand words for our daily situation: “Lord, not you, it is I who am absent.” In this scene, the son has returned, and he is kneeling before his father in his ragged shoes and torn clothes exactly as he is: the one who insisted upon defining himself apart from his father, the one who was absent. But in pursuit of life beyond his father, the child lost sight of life itself.

In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus invites a distracted world to slow down, wherever you are in faith or absence of faith, to taste and see, to be still and to be present. In this culture of absence, the Father is near; waiting, though we put off him off, keeping vigil over wandering lives and attention-spans, and running in grace toward those who even half-heartedly attempt to be present.

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

(1) Denise Levertov, “Flickering Mind,” The Stream and the Sapphire (New York: New Directions, 1997), 15.

(2) Luke 15:22-25.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Faith, Trust, and Evidence

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I’ve been trying to avoid using the word ‘faith’ recently. It just doesn’t get the message across. ‘Faith’ is a word that’s now misused and twisted. ‘Faith’ today is what you try to use when the reasons are stacking up against what you think you ought to believe. Greg Koukl sums up the popular view of faith, “It’s religious wishful thinking, in which one squeezes out spiritual hope by intense acts of sheer will. People of ‘faith’ believe the impossible. People of ‘faith’ believe that which is contrary to fact. People of ‘faith’ believe that which is contrary to evidence. People of ‘faith’ ignore reality.” It shouldn’t therefore come as a great surprise to us, that people raise their eyebrows when ‘faith’ in Christ is mentioned. Is it strange that they seem to prefer what seems like reason over insanity?

It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t overemphasize the individual elements of the whole picture of faith, like we so often do. But what does the Bible say about faith? Is it what Simon Peter demonstrates when he climbs out of the boat and walks over the water towards Jesus? Or is it what Thomas has after he has put his hand in Jesus’s side? Interestingly, biblical faith isn’t believing against the evidence. Instead, faith is a kind of knowing that results in action. The clearest definition comes from Hebrews 11:1. This verse says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In fact, when the New Testament talks about faith positively it only uses words derived from the Greek root [pistis], which means ‘to be persuaded.’ In those verses from Hebrews, we find the words, “hope,” “assurance,” “conviction” that is, confidence. Now, what gives us this confidence?

Christian faith is not belief in the absence of evidence. It is the proper response to the evidence. Koukl explains that, “Christian faith cares about the evidence…the facts matter. You can’t have assurance for something you don’t know you’re going to get. You can only hope for it. This is why the resurrection of Jesus is so important. It gives assurance to the hope. Because of a Christian view of faith, Paul is able to say in 1 Corinthians 15 that when it comes to the resurrection, if we have only hope, but no assurance—if Jesus didn’t indeed rise from the dead in time/space history—then we are of most men to be pitied. This confidence Paul is talking about is not a confidence in a mere ‘faith’ resurrection, a mythical resurrection, a story-telling resurrection. Instead, it’s a belief in a real resurrection. If the real resurrection didn’t happen, then we’re in trouble. The Bible knows nothing of a bold leap-in-the-dark faith, a hope-against-hope faith, a faith with no evidence. Rather, if the evidence doesn’t correspond to the hope, then the faith is in vain, as even Paul has said.”

So in conclusion, faith is not a kind of religious hoping that you do in spite of the facts. In fact, faith is a kind of knowing that results in doing. A knowing that is so passionately and intelligently faithful to Jesus Christ that it will not submit to fideism, scientism, nor any other secularist attempt to divert and cauterize the human soul by hijacking knowledge.

Tom Price is an academic tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Sleepers Arise

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In a major newspaper, full, as newspapers are, of active images, lively debate, and the steady buzz of daily life, a seemingly out of place essay brought my own morning routine to an introspective halt. It was a short article found in the editorial section, though it seemed out of place even there. It did not suggest a refutable opinion, or a thought to stir action, but a silent picture of our frail existence—a quiet look at sleep-needing humans. The writer described the nightly scene on a commuter train, after workday armor has been mentally laid aside, and one “can see pajamas in homebound eyes.” The author’s conclusion was as unassuming as the passengers he described: “As long as I’ve been riding trains into New York—some 25 years by now—I’m still struck by the collective intimacy of a passenger car full of sleeping strangers.”

It was for me a picture worth many words. Something in this scene that easily transported me beside napping strangers also brought me to my own weakness that morning, to life’s frailty, to my need. Something as simple as our bodies demand for sleep is a bold reminder that we are not machines, but creatures. “I am poor and needy,” agrees the psalmist. “Remind me that my days are fleeting.”

The human condition is inescapable; it is something we all share. Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who devoted his life to tracking down those responsible for the mass murdering of Jews in World War II, announced at age 94, that he has ended his search. In an interview, he told reporters, “If there’s a few I didn’t look for, they are now too old and too fragile to stand trial.” What a bold indication of our days. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, minutes before incarnate Christ would be in the grip of those who would hand him over to die, the disciples, too, were sleeping. He was sweating blood, but they felt the heaviness of their eyes instead of the heaviness of the moment—or perhaps because they felt the heaviness of the moment they could not escape the heaviness of their eyes. He asked them to stay awake and pray, but they could not. It’s a sincere look at humanity, not unlike sleeping commuters and dying regimes: weak and unaware, asleep, unseeing, and in need.

The liturgy of the Christian life is patterned in such a way that we hold before us this condition throughout our days, counter-culturally living it before the world. The ashes of Ash Wednesday unmistakably declare the dust we came from and the dust to which we will return. The expectant waiting of Advent comes with the cry to stay alert within our sleeping world for a God who takes embodiment quite seriously. And the crushing weight of Holy Week pleads for us to seek a hope far beyond our fickle and weak humanity.

Day by day,” instructs the Rule of Saint Benedict, “remind yourself that you are going to die.” Within a culture generally terrified of aging, uncomfortable with death, and desperate for accomplishments to distract us, the instruction would likely be unpopular. And yet, to keep this reality of our weakness in mind need not be a source of despair, but a means of living honestly, and of seeking and seeing God. “As for me, I am poor and needy,” the psalmist writes, “but the Lord remembers me.” The apostle Paul cries likewise: “‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”(1) The condition is fatal, proclaims the Christian, but it is far from without hope.

Minutes before his own last breath in this life, Jesus was asked by the criminal beside him to remember him. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he asked. There are perhaps no words more human, no prayer by the dying that can be more sincerely uttered—however close to that last breath we might be. Remember me. As Christ responded to the one beside him, so he responds to the needy, sleeping soul, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” To a sleeping world, the way of Christ is a call to wakefulness. It also thankfully introduces us to the one who neither sleeps nor slumbers.

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

(1) Psalm 40:17, Ephesians 5:13-14.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Influence

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Ravi Z

Every year Time magazine publishes its list of the world’s one hundred most influential people.(1) Of these “influencers” the magazine’s editorial staff grouped them into categories of influence—from leaders and revolutionaries to builders and titans, from artists and entertainers to heroes and icons, scientists and thinkers.  Interestingly enough, the magazine even includes those whose influence is deemed wholly negative. Past “honorees” included Bernard Madoff, who stole a reported sixty billion dollars from investors and bankrupted many charitable organizations, and Joaquin Guzman, the Mexican druglord behind the horrific violence that has claimed well-over 15,000 lives in his home country and abroad.

Defining influence seems a tricky business and the editors of Time admit this. “What is influence and how can we possibly compare the influence of an underworld druglord, for example, with a heroic 21 year old soldier who saved his company of Marines while he almost bled to death?”(2) The etymology of the word gives us some understanding of its use and of this kind of comparison. Originally, the word was used as an astrological term, denoting “streaming ethereal power from the stars acting upon the character or destiny of men.”(3) Ultimately, influence is a force or substance flowing from someone or something, which moves the heart or actions of someone else-whether for good or for evil.

For the majority of those listed, however, I suspect that their fame is their influence. In other words, influence becomes less about the one acted upon and more a reflection of an individual. Persons are deemed influential because of their own accomplishments; they amassed vast monetary resources or media empires, held political power or oversight. Most names on the list are cultural icons of one sort or another whose influence is at best mercurial; like shooting stars their light is seen and then just as quickly fades from sight.

One year, while flipping through this issue, three individuals were listed that I suspect are known to very few people. Had influence been determined by a vote, I suspect that most readers of Time magazine would not have deemed them influential. Their names are Brady Gustafson, Mary Scullion, and Somaly Mam. Brady Gustafson, just 21 years of age, saved his fellow Marines when they came under direct attack in Afghanistan. Though Brady himself had suffered a life-threatening injury, he fought to save his friends and fellow Marines until help arrived. Mary Scullion works tirelessly with an organization to help the homeless in Philadelphia, stating that “none of us are home until all of us are home.” As a result of her efforts, there are now less than 200 homeless men and women in Philadelphia. Somaly Mam was sold into the sex trade at age 12 and for over a decade suffered at the hands of her abusers. As an adult, having escaped from her captors and having every opportunity to make a new life for herself, Mam instead returned to Cambodia to try and save others who are still enslaved. She has suffered death threats and her own daughter was raped in retaliation for her efforts to shut down the brothels in which young girls lose their lives daily.

In our society, influence generally indicates power over others-power that inevitably reflects back on the one who is influencing. But for these three individuals, influence has very little to do with their own glory. Their influence is characterized by their work on behalf of others. Indeed, their influence is not about making a name for themselves, but rather about lifting up those without names and faces who have no influence, and who most of the world will never know: homeless men and women, child-victims of the sex trafficking industry, and small-town young men who defend American interests in places of extreme violence and conflict. Offering their lives in this way opens up the possibility of creating lasting influence in the lives of the world’s least influential.

When Jesus spoke about influence in his sermon on the mount, he likened it to salt. Salt is not a flashy spice like cayenne pepper or nutmeg. It rarely calls attention to itself as a predominant flavor. Salt is basic. And yet, salt is essential. Without it, food is bland and tasteless, for salt enlivens all the flavors. Without it, decay and degradation ensue, for salt preserves and produces longevity. Salt cleanses and heals. In recipes, salt serves all the other ingredients, by coaxing out and enhancing their fullest expression and flavor. Jesus calls his followers to be influencers in the way that salt influences a meal: often in the background, and not a self-promoting or singular flavor. Like Somaly Mam, Brady Gufstason and Mary Scullion, influence is like salt; it may be the behind-the-scenes player in the world of ingredients, often hardly noticed, yet powerfully effective in creating a full and lasting result.

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

(1) Time, “The World’s 100 Most Influential People,” Vol. 173, No. 18, May 11, 2009.

(2) Ibid.

(3) As noted in the Online Etymology Dictionary, http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=influence.

(4) Matthew 5:13-16.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Unsearchable Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) Genesis 28:16.

(2) Genesis 16:13.

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

(4) 1 Chronicles 17:19,20.

(5) Jeremiah 33:3.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Rethinking Atheism

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“The story I have to tell is the history of the next two centuries….For a long time now our whole civilization has been driving, with a tortured intensity growing from decade to decade, as if towards a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, tempestuously, like a mighty river desiring the end of its journey, without pausing to reflect, indeed fearful of reflection….Where we live, soon nobody will be able to exist.”(1)

This terrifying place without human existence is the world after the death of God as envisioned by Friedrich Nietzsche. His vision casts a bleak view of humanity and paints a frightening portrait of a world where the memory of God is but a void. Nietzsche’s vision directly contrasts with many of the contemporary anthems that sing the praises of a world without God and without religion.

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace.(2)

In many ways, the vision of Nietzsche won the day in the early part of the twentieth century. Under regimes like that of Stalin in Russia or Pol Pot in Cambodia millions of people were slaughtered. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution saw religious institutions as priority targets. Buddhist temples, churches and mosques were razed to the ground or converted to other uses. Sacred texts, as well as Confucian writings, were burned, along with religious statues and other artwork. Ironically, Nietzsche offers a healthy critique of the optimistic atheism of Lennon, various communist regimes, or popular authors who envision a world free of religion, and perhaps religious people.

Nietzsche’s vision, in and of itself, can offer the theist a healthy offensive to the typical onslaught of atheistic critiques on religion. In addition, there are many other questions that can be offered by theists to those who might come to atheistic or agnostic conclusions. If there is no God, for example, many of “the big questions” remain unanswered. Where did everything come from and why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet and why is there a near-universal desire to assign meaning to sometimes the smallest of events? Does human history lead anywhere or is it all in vain since death is merely the end? How does one come to understand good and evil, right and wrong? If these concepts are merely social constructions or human opinions, where does one look to determine morality?

Without God there is both a crisis of meaning and morality. Without God, as Nietzsche articulated, meaning becomes nothing more than one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes. Without God, the world is just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.

Moreover, without God or any sort of transcendent standard, how can atheists critique religions or religious people in the first place? Whose voice will be heard? Whose tastes or preferences will be honored? Without God, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway? Societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun, from slavery to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy. Human taste or opinion, societal laws or culture are hardly dependable arbiters of truth.

The problem of evil and suffering are in no way solved without a God to blame for allowing them to happen. Where does one locate hope for the redemption of suffering and evil? Without God it is neither redemptive nor redeemable.  It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort.  There is only madness and confusion in the face of suffering and evil.

Finally, if there is no God, human beings don’t make sense.  How does one explain human longing and desire for the transcendent? How do we explain human questions for meaning and purpose or inner thoughts of unfulfillment or emptiness? Why do humans hunger for the spiritual? How can we understand these questions if nothing exists beyond the material world? How do we get laws out of luck or predictable processes out of brute chance? If all that makes us different from animals is learning and altruism, why do the brutish seemingly outnumber the wise in our world?

Nietzsche argued that the death of God would bring the upheaval of all morality and meaning and not its preservation. By raising these questions, Christians remind atheists who see the possibility of morality, meaning, and hope without God of their own prophetic heritage.

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

(1) As quoted by Erich Heller in The Importance of Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5.

(2) John Lennon, Imagine (September, 1971).

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Yesterday’s News

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Some years ago, we saw, almost hourly, pictures of the rocky surface of Mars flashing across our television screens, upfront and in color.  With the aid of the robotic “Spirit Rover,” a combination microscope and camera, scientists were in awe of their recent successes and the media saw fit to thoroughly cover it.

As NASA searched for signs that told of water and life on Mars, questions began to emerge in editorials and intellects: “What is life?” “What if we find it?” “Where did it come from?” and “Where did it go?” It was a news story that seemed to dredge up interest not only from scientists, but philosophers, anthropologists, ethicists, and educators. Carried within these age-old questions was a new sense of excitement.

Even ancient observations also seemed to take on new meaning. It was modern technology that was making it possible that along with the scientists themselves, we were looking at things never before seen. But the sentiment was similar. “Lift your eyes,” cried the ancient prophet, “and look to the heavens: Who created all these?”(1) There was the common sense that we were beholding in some of these images, things more wonderful than we could get our minds around. ”When I consider your heavens,” proclaimed another, “the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”(2) There was a contagious sense of awe. “We hit the sweet spot,” exclaimed scientist Steven W. Squyres of NASA’s successful landing in a crater on the surface of Mars.

But for some, there was also a sense, even in the midst of bright pictures and brimming scientists, that it was all, already, yesterday’s news.

“Unlike the scientists behind the Mars mission,” proclaimed one editorialist, “I feel neither shocked nor awed.” The article was a lament over what often seems the growing dullness of life because of the ease of the instantaneous, because we have been awed into boredom, and lulled into indifference. Mourning a handful of instant gratifiers within our consumer-driven, resource-abounding culture, the writer argued, “What used to seem out of reach is now within easy reach… the world offers too much, too easily, and demands too little.” It was a certain expression of what C.S. Lewis would have called “our horror of the Same Old Thing.” But the most fascinating thing about this lament was the author’s conclusion. “I want to go deep, not far,” she concluded. And she hastened back to a day spent on the beach with two children, examining sand in awe.

Ancient writers of Scripture seem to describe the awe of a child as vital to life in all stages. “Did I not tell you,” said Jesus beside the tomb of Lazarus, “that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”(3) In his words to the mourning Mary and Martha, Jesus equates the glory of God to the shock and awe of life and new life where death threatens. Jesus calls their brother Lazarus out of the tomb and says as the dead man steps forward, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’” The glory of the one who created life is shown in life all around us and in his jarring triumph over death.

Whether still looking at Mars and marveling at the sight or glancing away at the unimpressive flow of perpetually yesterday’s news, life begs for another glance. In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian and the Interpreter along their journey come across a man with a muck rake in his hand. Steadily raking filth from the floor, the man “could look no way but downwards” and so, could not see the celestial crown being offered him from above.

“Lift your eyes,” cried the ancient, “and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name.”(4) God, the prophets of old insist, is worthy of our wonder—yesterday, today, and forever.

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

(1) Isaiah 40:26.

(2) Psalm 8:3.

(3) John 11:40-44.

(4) Isaiah 40:26.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – For the Desperate

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The picture painted in the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah is a depiction of realized hope and reconciliation. It is a stirring picture of wholeness:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn;

to grant to those who mourn in Zion–

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;

that they may be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.(1)

The prophet Isaiah outlines God’s plan for restoration: putting into words the hopeful cry of justice and liberty, marking the end of mourning and ashes. It was no doubt a passage that sustained the Israelites through hardship and bitter exile. I imagine in Babylon the imagery in this chapter was often longingly upon their hearts, the promise of God’s comfort and grace treasured words upon their lips. I imagine in Jerusalem congregations delighted to hear Isaiah 61 proclaimed from the scrolls in worship.

Consequently, I imagine faces of utter shock, when after reading these familiar words before a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus commented: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”(2)

According to New Testament scholar Darrell Bock, the Gospel of Luke has often been the neglected gospel in the life of the Church. Yet more so than any of the other gospel accounts, Luke depicts in detail how a small part of history in a small part of the world reveals the plan of God for the nations. Luke writes the story of Christ across the pages of human history, showing the tension between that which blinds us to the work of God and that which points us to our desperate need of God. Luke’s portrait of Jesus shows God acting among the oppressed and downtrodden, the captives and the blind. As he carefully places the parables and teachings of Christ before his readers, Luke forces us to see that whether we deliberately make a choice to follow him or not, a choice is always made.

At the synagogue visit where Isaiah 61 was read aloud, Jesus reveals himself as the fulfillment of a story set in motion long before his time on earth. His words put both the hearer of that day and the reader of the present in the position of having to make a choice. All of the promises of God stand before us in the person of Christ. He is the fulfillment of God’s plan. He brings liberation to the captives. He brings sight to the blind. He binds the brokenhearted. He brings peace—or he does not. In this particular synagogue, the people ran him out of town.

Scottish theologian James Stewart once noted, “Christianity is not for the well-meaning; it is for the desperate.” In Jesus we encounter a story of God among us, the certainty of our captivity, and the hope of our release. He comes to bind the broken.  The invitation to receive him is a startling invitation to wholeness.

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

(1) Isaiah 61:1-3.

(2) See Luke 4:14-30.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Rethinking Atheism

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“The story I have to tell is the history of the next two centuries….For a long time now our whole civilization has been driving, with a tortured intensity growing from decade to decade, as if towards a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, tempestuously, like a mighty river desiring the end of its journey, without pausing to reflect, indeed fearful of reflection….Where we live, soon nobody will be able to exist.”(1)

This terrifying place without human existence is the world after the death of God as envisioned by Friedrich Nietzsche. His vision casts a bleak view of humanity and paints a frightening portrait of a world where the memory of God is but a void. Nietzsche’s vision directly contrasts with many of the contemporary anthems that sing the praises of a world without God and without religion.

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace.(2)

In many ways, the vision of Nietzsche won the day in the early part of the twentieth century. Under regimes like that of Stalin in Russia or Pol Pot in Cambodia millions of people were slaughtered. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution saw religious institutions as priority targets. Buddhist temples, churches and mosques were razed to the ground or converted to other uses. Sacred texts, as well as Confucian writings, were burned, along with religious statues and other artwork. Ironically, Nietzsche offers a healthy critique of the optimistic atheism of Lennon, various communist regimes, or popular authors who envision a world free of religion, and perhaps religious people.

Nietzsche’s vision, in and of itself, can offer the theist a healthy offensive to the typical onslaught of atheistic critiques on religion. In addition, there are many other questions that can be offered by theists to those who might come to atheistic or agnostic conclusions. If there is no God, for example, many of “the big questions” remain unanswered. Where did everything come from and why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet and why is there a near-universal desire to assign meaning to sometimes the smallest of events? Does human history lead anywhere or is it all in vain since death is merely the end? How does one come to understand good and evil, right and wrong? If these concepts are merely social constructions or human opinions, where does one look to determine morality?

Without God there is both a crisis of meaning and morality. Without God, as Nietzsche articulated, meaning becomes nothing more than one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes. Without God, the world is just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.

Moreover, without God or any sort of transcendent standard, how can atheists critique religions or religious people in the first place? Whose voice will be heard? Whose tastes or preferences will be honored? Without God, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway? Societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun, from slavery to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy. Human taste or opinion, societal laws or culture are hardly dependable arbiters of truth.

The problem of evil and suffering are in no way solved without a God to blame for allowing them to happen. Where does one locate hope for the redemption of suffering and evil? Without God it is neither redemptive nor redeemable.  It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort.  There is only madness and confusion in the face of suffering and evil.

Finally, if there is no God, human beings don’t make sense.  How does one explain human longing and desire for the transcendent? How do we explain human questions for meaning and purpose or inner thoughts of unfulfillment or emptiness? Why do humans hunger for the spiritual? How can we understand these questions if nothing exists beyond the material world? How do we get laws out of luck or predictable processes out of brute chance? If all that makes us different from animals is learning and altruism, why do the brutish seemingly outnumber the wise in our world?

Nietzsche argued that the death of God would bring the upheaval of all morality and meaning and not its preservation. By raising these questions, Christians remind atheists who see the possibility of morality, meaning, and hope without God of their own prophetic heritage.

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

(1) As quoted by Erich Heller in The Importance of Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5.

(2) John Lennon, Imagine (September, 1971).

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Only the Sick

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Jeremiah was the prophet who wept. “Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I mourn, and horror grips me.”(1)

Jeremiah spoke within a period of turbulent unrest among the nations. From the start, his prophecy was surrounded by conflict. As with many prophets, the people refused to heed his message. At times, they abused and even imprisoned the messenger. Yet despite their impetuous misdeeds and faithless offenses, Jeremiah’s empathetic words and earnest prayers portray his love for the people of Judah. As they were crushed, he was crushed. As they continued to turn from God, he mourned. Flattened by the horrors of his day and the agony of pleading with a people who would not listen, Jeremiah asked: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”

Certainly Jeremiah longed to see the people comforted in their misery and healed of their iniquities, and yet his question here is rhetorical. Gilead was a city that represented prosperity, a city abounding in the spices and aromatic gums that were used as balms and medicine. Comforting balms were in no shortage; physicians could be found. But there was no salve that could heal, nor doctor who could mend, a people that would not see what was wrong. There is no healing for wounds that won’t be changed.  At this, poets still weep with Jeremiah:

We would rather be ruined than changed;

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

It is sad, the consistent assembly of voices insisting that if there is a God, this God has not tried hard enough to reach us. This God has not tried hard enough to reach us in our needs, to meet us in our despair. Knowing the sad and desperate eyes of a child who won’t let you pull the splinter out of his foot or give him the medicine that will make him feel better, it seems more likely that it is not God’s arm that is too short to save or gather us, but we who might tie God’s hands. Could it be that God is not far off, but that in our dread we push God aside? Is it not possible that we cut ourselves off from his cure by refusing to see our own ailment?

The God of the Christian story is powerfully represented as longing to be gracious to the one who makes even the slightest attempt to move nearer. God is imagined as the Father who runs to embrace the prodigal who is yet a great distance off, the hen who longs to gather her chicks under her wings. God is described as inclining his ear and searching hearts. God is shown as one who receives human tears as they fall silently on his human feet. God is presented as one who whispers in our prayers and interprets even groanings when words are lost. Though we make our beds in the depths, the God of faith is mercifully shown as one who draws near.

The people of Judah during the ministry of Jeremiah refused to see their incessant struggle as tearing them apart from the God who longed, like the prophet himself, to reach them. They cried for help, but they wouldn’t see what ailed them or the physician asking to help. They would not see their own behavior as causing further pain and violence to themselves. “Why has this people perpetually turned away?” asked the Lord. “They have held fast to deceit; they have refused to return. I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken honestly. No one repents wickedness, asking, ‘What have I done?’”

In this simple admission may well be the balm of the cross. In the disclosure of pain and illness is the proclamation of comfort and cure: This sickness will not end in death. But it is only the sick who need a physician.

 

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

(1) See Jeremiah 8.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Thinking Faith

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In many circles today, we are given the impression that we face a choice between thinking and faith. We are given the impression that somehow the postures of faith and reason are mutually exclusive. We live with words in our culture that seem to confirm a divide between fact and value. There is a real world of objective things, science, and hard realities; and there is the world of tastes, opinions, and personal values. The gulf, we are told, is real and to be held to at all times. This division is further reinforced by the notion of public and private worlds, whereby one set of values or criteria rules in one sphere and a different set rules in the other. And this is then often compounded in the church with the divide between sacred and secular. The language employed is one that clearly divides that which is deemed “of God”—preaching, praying, and evangelism—and that which is deemed of “the world”—business, politics, media, and so forth.

 

Within such a context, belief is seen as something mystical, existential, and defying rational boundaries or requirements. For the Christian in such a context, thinking, theology, and reasoning can be seen as unnecessary distractions to “simple” or “pure” faith.

Yet the biblical reflection of faith is quite the contrary. We are presented with what it means to be made in the image of God, and what it means to live and function in a created order. God has given us various faculties that are the vehicles of our knowing and understanding. Reason, experience, and revelation are all legitimate means and provisions of God for us and to us.

In the words of the prophets and the cries of the psalmist we see many references to reason in relation to faith. The book of Job is an extended discussion on the “reasonableness” of Job’s situation, and though reason does not discover a right answer and makes many blunders, it is not refuted in and of itself. The entire wisdom tradition enjoins the pursuit of knowledge and understanding as an expression of worshipping God. Nowhere do we get the impression of blind faith or esoteric leaps into ecstatic union.

Moreover, in the life of Jesus, the sound use of soul, heart, and mind is further exemplified. His teaching required careful listening and comparison, as in the Sermon on the Mount. He asked questions which were structured to require reasoning, such as in the healing of the paralytic.(1) Even when asked by John about whether he was the Christ, Jesus essentially tells John to think through his own conclusions, sending messengers back to report what they heard and saw.(2) Christ’s use of questions, parables, and dialogues shows boldly that reasoning is not ruled out of our spiritual life but is a central component of it.

Indeed, when reason and faith are set up as juxtaposing postures, much is lost. In a world of many voices and demanding messages, faith and reason can be seen as interrelated partners and not enemies. The outcome of faith is a more complete understanding of truth than is possible otherwise. The outcome of seeking, knowing, and following Christ is a coherent and abundant life of which no mind has conceived all that God has prepared for those who love Him.

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

(1) See Matthew 9:1-8.

(2) See John 11:1-6.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Neighbor and Kingdom

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The Gospel of Luke tells of an occasion when a religious expert stood up to test Jesus as he was teaching. “Rabbi,” the young man asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Inviting him to answer his own question Jesus inquired, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”  The man answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind. And, love your neighbor as yourself.” Affirming this answer, Jesus replied, “Do this and you will live.” But the man, wanting to justify his question, was not yet satisfied. Putting another question before the poised and confident rabbi, he asked, “And who is my neighbor?”

When I read this story, I imagine the impish grin that appears in the aftermath the young man’s words, the satisfied ring of his question echoing into the crowd. Human motivation is so interesting. Did the young man really want an answer to that question? Was he trying to trap Jesus and his words somewhere within a philosophical or theological debate? Did he care about his neighbor in the least?

Wherever the question was intended to take them, Jesus had no qualms commandeering it toward a mysterious kingdom, in a manner that was often his style. He told a parable:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coinsand gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have’ (Luke 10:30-35).

Closing the parable then with a question that could not be manipulated, Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

It is interesting to note that Jesus did not give us the reasons the Levite and the priest passed the injured man on the road—though there may have been many that came to mind. In his lack of explanation, it is as if Jesus hints that there is no reason that justifies their apathy. In any case, both men in the parable seem to approach the situation with a personal thought in mind: “What will happen to me if I stop and help this man?” They may have reasoned that they didn’t have time, that if they stopped they would be late to wherever it was they were going. They may have reasoned that someone else would eventually stop. Yet in the response of the Samaritan, the question of the former travelers is reversed: “What will happen to this man if I don’t stop?” he seems to ask. What will happen to my neighbor if I refuse to see him?

Jesus once said, “If you are not for me, you are against me.” His words seem harsh, and yet, anyone who has ever suffered from any kind of racial or religious oppression is painfully aware of the truth that is spoken in his words. Those who stand apathetically in the background of persecution, persecute by passivity. If you are not for me, you are against me. To be sure, a non-answer very clearly becomes an answer. So it is with our neighbor. So it is with Christ. In the kingdom he presents, there is a cost to inaction or distraction or calculated dismissal. The words of Christ still ring into a lonely world, “Whatever you did for the least of these, so you did for me.”

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